The Sims 3 Review: 5 Months Later

Okay, so it’s been about 5 months since I last played TS3.  Has my opinion changed?

The answer is: slightly.

• Seamless neighborhood: still yay.
• Traits: yay, sometimes to a loltastic extent.
• Voice customization: has grown on me.
• Graphic effects: good, but I’m getting some really weird looking glitches this time around.  More on that later.
• Moodlets: yay, but like the graphics I think something is fucked up.
• Jobs: still enjoying them and the opportunities.  However, it still seems too easy, and I’d enjoy more careers.  Maybe that’s in the World Adventures expansion, I honestly have no fucking idea.
• Base items:  less issues with the lack of content with Mod The Sims and other custom content sites.  Current problems with custom content will be discussed later as well.
• Lack of Body Shop: given the amount of custom content, people have obviously found some other method of making their own shit.  So this is no longer an issue, especially since I don’t even play this game anymore.
• Faces: Less strange looking to me.  Then again I’ve been melting my mind playing Fallout 3, and the dead-shark eyes, stiff movements, and lack of facial expressions of those characters make most anything better.
• Motive system: can’t really tell because I don’t even pay that much attention to them.  Also, I don’t remember what the Sims 2 system was like at all.
• Behavior: nothing the Awesomemod couldn’t solve.
• Community rabbit holes: meh.
• Stand-alone game: I s’pose.  Again, it’s been so long since I’ve played Sims 2, and fucking ages since I’ve played Sims 1, that I barely even remember what they entail.
• One neighborhood: I think they’re fixing that with a Create-A-World program I just saw literally an hour ago.
• Storytelling mode: again, Awesomemod (and probably some of the patches, too) solved everything.  The shit that happens when I’m not watching makes sense now.
• Sims 3 Store: still a bunch of bullshit.  The uploads on Mod The Sims are better than anything I’ve seen in the store.

My main problem this go around is mainly with EAxis and the developers of the game.  Why?  This time around, there seem to be a shitton more glitches and issues.  From the quick searching I did, it seems like they’re more related to the patches.  Basically, their patches screwed up more shit than they fixed, or at least created more issues.  Then the guy who makes Awesomemod has to fix their mistakes, because he actually fixes shit in a timely manner and releases the mod for free, unlike the multi-million dollar company who just say they’ve identified the problem and are working on it.  Great.

First problem, I can’t install 90% of the custom content I downloaded.  I didn’t have this problem before.  It will say that the items have installed, but it will have lied to me.  Seriously, fuck you too, Sims 3 Launcher.  And others are having the same issues.  It’s not like I can’t play without custom shoes, but goddamn I would hope that a game I paid $50 for would what it’s supposed to.

Graphics issues are also quite apparent.  One of my pixel dudes was teaching his toddler how to walk, and he helped the child stand up from a good sim-meter away, not even touching the child.  Either that’s a graphical error or my sim is a jedi.  Their pixel lady neighbor also read a book but it was levitating a few sim-inches away from her hands.  Seriously, if the goal was to make all Sims jedi then that’s great.  Otherwise, I am concerned.

There are also some gameplay glitches.  Some of the moodlets’ influence on mood seems completely borked.  Teen!Mortimer Goth had the “Anxious to Advance” moodlet, which is something like –15 on mood. He also had the Honor Roll and Beautiful Vista moodlets, which I don’t remember exactly what their influence is but I’m positive they would outweigh the negative one.  All of his motives were in the green.  Yet, his mood was down in the red.  WAT.  I exited the house, switched to a different household and back, and it seemed to be fixed.  Huh.

Look, I understand that this is a ridiculously fucking complex game.  I think most people understand that.  However, it’s still a product that you want consumers to buy.  Consumers aren’t going to buy or want to play a screwy product.  I would be willing to wait longer to get something if I knew that most of the bugs would be worked out.  But it seems that EAxis just sort of throws patches together, puts them up and then walks away.  Even some of the Sims 2 patches were pretty fucking awful.  Seriously, they should just do more testing.  It’s definitely worthwhile in the end.  Or hire some of these modders, because they’re making EAxis look pretty bad.

Basically my point is, decent game, shitty development.  EAxis definitely needs to pay more attention to their consumers, or at least spend more time testing their shit to make sure what should be functional actually is.  Even if there are bugs, they get them fixed in a timely manner so that their consumers aren’t saying, “Well they’re not going to fix it anytime soon, so let’s see what we can do.”  Creates a nice comradery between them, but again, it makes EAxis look shitty and almost like a joke.

Time to go see if I can edit some files and get this shit working.