Sims 3 - TWO THUMBS UP - even though there are issues.

never2frisky

I am so far very impressed by the Sims 3 game.

There have been a few issues that I have encountered during game play, probably more than I should have for a game that has been released to the public but I digress. It can't be easy for the level of complexity this game has now become.

Negatives: The game isn't very intuitive, buttons that are dominant, shouldn’t have been. I love the edge scrolling & rotating with the mouse because it makes for faster experience. The buttons they’ve designated for the rotation keys are so large that they over power the top & bottom button for the house floor controls. In my opinion jumping up & down levels within the house is more of a predominant control than the rotation tools and should be reversed &/or have that whole two button area redesigned.


As for the neighborhood, I understand that with loading an entire neighborhood that you cannot possibly have it rendered completely or else it would take forever to load, however when you finally get to your destination, sometimes parts of the house fail to render fully. When ever my house fails to render properly upon arrival I have to leave the lot again, go somewhere else, and re-enter my lot until it renders. Depending on the intensity of this flaw the rendering can be so bad that you can't even recognize what the house is. It looks like a big blob of smuged colour paint with parts of the house missing.

The customized furniture, as much as I love the concept it has so far been a love hate experience. I love the fact that I can now properly match a chair to a table (which wasn't always an option in the sims 2, with some sets never being complete) however it takes me even LONGER to create my house now. I wish there would be the basic options as in the last game with a set of pre-set designs and styles, with the option to change it. There are sometimes more than one option however the thumbnail is so blurry and unclear that it is very hard to make out what the picture is or what the colour of the wood is.

The speed of the game Fast > Faster > and Fastest DOES NOT WORK!!! It has the same runtime as the fast option which isn't very fast. The Ultra Fast (-4) is the same speed as the fast (-2). I really hope this gets corrected because this makes for a very un-enjoyable gaming experience as you await for the needed events to finish.

Positives: I love the fact that they have entered a numerical colour code version RGB# because than all my reds will be exact. This was great thinking on who ever did this, but also you have the option of entering the RGB# as a collective number so that when creating pattern layouts in Photoshop the colours will also be an exact match to the design.

I like how I no longer have to wait for my Sim to go to community lots and listen to that god for saken music over and over again as I venture out. I like how you can jog around the neighbourhood and then run into the grocery store to get an apple if your appetite requires it or your sim desires it. This has become such an important element in the game I felt was missing in older verisons.

I like that when you do grocery and you buy too much food that it will actually go bad if it is in there too long and the options that are now available in the work place are also brilliant.

My sim can hang out with co-workers while at work building relationships with them, but also have the option of either working hard or taking it easy delending how much energy you have in your body.

So far this game has been an Easter Egg of delights trying to uncover all of the little nit bits. The game has proven to be more challenging than in previous versions with at times having a hard time to remember everything that your sim needs to get accomplished before the week is up which is awesome.

I am excited that I got the game to finally run on my system (not excited that the car I got with the limited edition package isn't downloading properly for me) but happy so far with the potential this version is going to be.

Although it is not perfect yet, when the repairs and patches are complete, this game is gonna rock your world if you are a Pro Sim Player.

Thanks EA for all your hard work and I look forward to the patches to make this game complete!

gamer_mom

Thank you! finally someone has a frickin brain on this site. Everyone keeps whining about something missing that was in the sims 2 (like the ability to go in buildings) What I have been TRYIN to tell these people is that there is always a reason and something they don't understand. HELLO IT WILL NEVER LOAD IF THEY GIVE YOU ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING. some people will just have to actually get into the business to even begin to comprehend anything. I guess most of them are just doomed to being ignorant jerks.

gamer_mom

Everyone needs to see the positive and stop focusing on the negative. I understand some people can't get their games to work, but they keep insisting it's not their computer when I can almost guarantee, if it isn't downloading... it probably is your computer. It's like if you're playing playstation with a seemingly perfect disk and the screen goes black on you. You need to clean out your playstation, not go to the game store and yell at them about your disk, cuz guess what? If they test your disk, it MIGHT work fine on their equipment and you look bad. My only real problem is with the faces. it is definately a step down from the sims2 but the cas in general is awesome with the freedom to color and make patterns on all the clothes. The traits thing is awesome too. Sooooo many options it took forever to read through them, and so hard to just choose five, but it has so much potential to make a really fun sim. really in depth personality

never2frisky

I had to laugh when you mentioned the faces... they are a little on the creepy side, there was a glitch where my eyeballs on my sim went missing and it looked like my sim was possessed and kind of freaked me out for a minute. The faces have gone down in the quality but I will just patiently wait until someone comes up with a realistic skin that is nice and I will download it.

The traits are amazing, I love that. I love even more how they will actually behave according to the traits that they are assigned. That's nice.

I think that this game has so much more to offer than the other versions. Personally I could care less if they are in a community building and I can't see them eating in a restaurant. I just use the time they are in the restaurant to look at my stats and see if there is anything that I am suppose to do next. I find that there is more to keep track of in this version which makes it more challenging but as soon as I come up with a technique I am sure it will get easier.

My only qualm is when it asks you to find certain people say 'Talk to Malcom at the gym to earn your reward' but Malcom is never there and I can't find him anywhere, or the Chef 'what's his name' wants to talk to you to get your feedback on a recipe (something along those lines) but it doesn't tell you where to find him. There are certain things like that make the game a bit frustrating so I've just been deleting them until I can figure that aspect out.

I ALSO LOOOVE how you can see other Sims performing shenanigans all around you... makes me laugh when I see the police men chasing other sims around... too funny!

SXyPiXie

I love the game as well, it's unfortunate that the good feedback and honest ideas are beeing washed away by the flood of pointless QQ here...

hey Frisky, I notice A LOT of graphics loading delays on my older machine.
my newer machine is seemless.

key resources affecting the models loading on the screen are going to be Video memory > System Memory > Virtual Memory (in order of importance)

your video card memory is going to be the biggest one, the card is going to be asked to load and unload textures and other resources to draw all the models, the more memory it has the less it will be duplicating work loading things in and out as the come in and out of the screen.
Unfortunatly memory capacity is one of the larger cost factors in graphics cards.
I didn't write the game, but i'm assuming reducing the texture size in your graphics settings will allow your card to "fit more" in and do less reloading.

your system memory is there to step in for things the video memory can't cover, most games load some graphics there for fast loading into the graphics card. system memory is a little cheeper to upgrade and will help out general performance of the game too. these days 2 gigs is like a minimum, you'll be happiest with 4, or if you have a newer 64 bit machine get 6-8 GB, games these days will use it.

Virtual memory is when your video card and system memory combined are not sufficient. this usualy resides on your Hard Drive, which is pitifuly slow compared to other memory.
getting a faster hard drive, like a Vilociraptor can make a big difference in game performance, not only in speeding up virtual memory but in loading of the games files as well. this will also help general computer performance all over the board.
another option on Windows Vista / 7 machines is "readyboost" pop a USB flash drive in your computer and configure it for readyboost (use that plumb bob drive you got from the special eddition). this is used as virtual memory that is faster than your hard disk.

Happy simming!