I'M GOD NOW! HAHAHA!

Okay, where to start. I’m a big Sims fan, but I’m a fan of the console versions of the game – I can’t stand playing games on PC. It’s just so awkward, I end up forgetting the controls quickly, and I doubt my laptop was built to play games as it overheats when I so much as watch a high-quality video on Youtube – heck, I had to hold my breath when I opened word to begin my rant.

So yeah. I own all of the Sims games on Playstation consoles; The Sims, The Sims Busin’ Out, The Urbz: Sims in the City, The Sims 2, The Sims 2: Pets, The Sims Castaway and now I have The Sims 3. Which is a fun game, but it’s definitely not my favourite. And here’s why: WHERE THE HELL ARE MY DIRECT CONTROLS?!

I suppose by that reaction, you can tell which my favourite Sims game was... In The Sims 2, you could control the movement of your Sims, which was amazing. It made the game less boring because you could really take control of your little people and play God like never before. I hardly ever touched the point and click option because there really was no point. Also, because you could control your Sims, there wasn’t ever any awkward movements around other Sims – with point and click, your Sims seem to have a problem when someone walks in front of them, and will sometimes throw a tantrum because of it. Also, I LOVED some of the items you could use only with direct controls, like the vacuum you could put on your back to clean up puddles and trash – came in a lot of handy when I threw a wild party and the millions of times my sink broke. Honestly, after playing The Sims 2 games, I didn’t go back to point and click adventures in the previous games.

The Sims 3 was first released on PC last June, I think. I was so disappointed that there was no definite news for a PS3/360 version until almost a year later. But I told myself that it’d be better if I wait, because I’ll most likely get direct controls, and that’d be really awesome. As a matter of fact, it was because of that which stopped me from buying The Sims 3, despite a friend going on and on and on about it, and how much they wanted to play it. I waited from June 2009 to November 2010 for my version... and there was no direct control.

Oh. But the Nintendo Wii gets the direct controls! Yippe! Okay, but seriously. That console to me was more-so designed for point and click games – not the PS3 and 360. I don’t understand why they decided that that would be a good move. The Wii controller controls what you see on the screen by pointing and clicking anyway, whereas the PS3 and 360 controls have analogue sticks – it’s a no brainer to me. I’ve heard on forums where people are hanging on to a little bit of hope that a patch or DLC will be released allowing the direct controls, but I doubt it’ll happen – Oblivion will sooner get a trophy patch than this will get a direct control patch. /lesigh

The one thing that really annoyed me about the Sims 2/direct control games was the lack of family. The Sims 2 let you WooHoo with who you wanted, but you couldn’t have or design kids. The Sims 2 Pets didn’t even let you WooHoo (or engage in any other remotely sexual conversational options The Sims 2 had), but let you have pets. In The Sims Castaway, it was all pecks on the cheek, marriages on the beach and no honeymoon. Not having kids is boring, even though the little wretches eventually get on my nerves (you have The Sims 3 to blame for that one, which I’ll get to in a minute).
Do direct controls make sims infertile? Is that it? Is that why it was taken out of The Sims 3? /logic

Okay, back to The Sims 3. You have everything but direct controls. Oh, and pool tables, hot tubs, pets, bigger paintings, 3D gaming machines, arcade games, and layered clothing. Pretty much everything that made the other games where you couldn’t have kids cool.

One thing that I like is the customisation tools, being able to save the styles and textures I create, and then uploading them for other Simfanatics to see. Navigating around My Studio and The Exchange is a very long process though, as each page takes up to five seconds to load – not a big deal until you want to delete the hundreds of things you accidently saved. As well as it taking forever, the items images are small; I have a thirty inch television and I still can’t work out what I’m deleting.

As for making your own textures and items... I’ve found the process annoying and overly complicated. I never know if I’m saving a whole outfit, or just a piece of it, hence why I get frustrated with My Studio and its speed. The amount of times I’ve hit the circle button to come out of a menu to go back to something else, and I’ve had to start at the beginning is ridiculous. It took me long enough to work out where to find the Create a Style option... it would have been better in My Studio with view and rotate options so that you could see what you where designing, rather than designing it where you place it.

As with all Sims games, I really HATE the wallpapers. Seriously, whoever designs them hasn’t the least bit of internal designer in them. I remember all of my houses in the previous games having the same themes throughout. At least in this game, you can design the colour of your wallpaper. However, I’m more of a one colour in a room girl, maybe with a feature wall if I design the rooms properly. The one colour option, my Sims didn’t like. At all. I had to litter my entire house with art to stop them from noticing. Which is really freaking annoying if you have a small lot because then you have floating obstacles everywhere, preventing you from seeing the action.

Having an upstairs is amazing. It saves so much space, especially on small lots where you’d quite like to have a front and back yard. My only dislike is the stairs. Sims take forever going up and down them. They have to pause for two Sim minutes before using them. If I stood at the top of the stairs for two minutes before going down them, I’d never get anything done. My house is on foundation blocks, so I need stairs to leave the house... and my carpool isn’t very patient with me. As well as that, having a wall built around them takes up so much space – I think it’d be cool to have items stashed away under them – it’d make my kitchen one hell of a lot bigger, and I’d be able to get that breakfast bar I always wanted. Spiral staircases would be pretty cool too for the smaller houses I’d like to build, and one house I have in mind would need a spiral staircase to get to the tower on the top.

Vehicles are cool. I liked being able to pick my own in Busin' Out, and I did miss them. However, they're really expensive if you plan on getting anywhere fast. I also noticed that my son has a bike sometimes, which is odd because I never bought one. It's fine, and is a little perk, but... yeah. What's the point on having an option to buy something if it's already free? I don't condone stealing, if that's what he gets up to when he's out with friends. Also, carpools and school buses park inside each other. The school bus used to hide my carpool every single day, and made it look as though the school bus had six wheels. Cool, but not cool. There should be more NPC parking spaces along the pavement.

Now for Karma Powers. What the hell? Okay, so some of them have come in handy when I’m pestering my boss for a raise or if I want to give him a really bad day out of revenge, but I’ve had enough to waking up at midnight because of an earthquake. I wouldn’t mind, but I’m hardly using my Karma Powers, so I’m not upsetting the worldly karma balance or anything by using them. I remember that I’d spent a good §10,000 getting a new bathroom and kitchen sink fitted, then literally a few hours later, my husband was running around fixing everything for me (I couldn’t afford to get a repair man.. doh!). I think they’re unnecessary. Karma should go up by a random amount every evening, and if there’s anything bad to happen, there should be good things too – I’d be happy with a one percentage rate of a random karma power fixing and cleaning everything, and improving everyone’s moods. Last things my Sims need is to be fixing sinks at 1am in the morning when they have to be up for work at 4am.

I also miss being in control of a town with my own people running around it. I want to be able to go into a “My Town” menu, and switch families for a while as quickly as I can say my ABCs. Maybe you can do that, but you have to have multiple saves; one per family and that. In The Sims 2, there was a free mode where you could manage four families, and that was horrible – to pick one of the other families to play as, it was back to the main menu to load them with you.

Trophies seem reasonable enough too. A couple of tricky, time consuming ones, but it’s a straight forward Platinum for those interested them as none of them are hidden.
I’m looking forward to see what the store has to offer when it finally gets some items. I’m hoping for that pool table and hot tub. A firework bench wouldn’t go a miss either!

Gameplay: 7/10 I really want to give this something like a five or a six for the lack of direct controls, but it’s still playable. I guess it depends on what you like. It’s easy enough to get used to, but just confusing and complicated in a lot of places.

Story: N/A. No story, really. You make your own.

Play Time: 10/10. It’s a Sims game, so there’s a long way to becoming a multi-millionaire and getting that cliffside mansion and swimming pool you always dreamed of.