As for that new EP, I’ll put my brief thoughts on it here while I’m at it. I think it is at risk of falling to the problem of the “Sims 3 facade” – the principle that everything outside the active household is fair game for the story progression and opportunity/event engines. You can see the results in the game’s utter disregard for the other inhabitants of your town, randomly inflicting on them death and misfortune via EA story progression, or by its random plucking of denizens for jobs and roles (in the theatrical sense) they are in no way suited for. (I’ve probably touched on it before – ever been asked to convince a genius scientist and computer whiz about the supremacy of logic? Or been asked by a neighbor to repair a TV that 1) you know they don’t own 2) you’ve never seen before and 3) you never will? When they’re a technophobe, to boot?)

Ambitions might just be a continuation of the same trend, drafting town inhabitants to play roles without regard to the consequences of having certain problems or dilemmas. What do I mean? Well, such as Sims calling for doctors because they’re sick even though they never act sick or spread disease. They’re just sick for the sake of giving your locum Sim another mission. (I really do want sickness/infectious diseases to be in the game, though? How fun would that be?) Or for firefighters, starting random fires around town in places that don’t make much sense. I hope they check for obvious things like fireproof appliances and fire alarms.

If you agree or disagree with me, feel free to comment.

DISCLAIMER: These are just my personal opinions. As I’m a storytelling player more than a gamer or modder, that’s the perspective from which I’ll approach my choices. Also, I completely ignored the mods that fixed many of the problems I mention. EA/Maxis didn’t provide those; the community did.

On with the awards…

“Most Annoying NPC” goes to….

Rod Humble from FreeTime

Every one of TS2’s EPs added NPCs to the game. Rod Humble was the worst. Sim Rod Humble, upon installing FreeTime, would appear on every lot and bring you a shiny new computer loaded with Lies and Propaganda for…The Sims 3, of all things! Way to break immersion. Sim Humble would also give families free computers, effectively free money; and he was annoying. What more can I say.

Honorable mentions go to: strays from Pets, the professors from Uni, and the apartment townies from Apartment Life.

“Least Value For Money” goes to…

Pets

The Sims: Unleashed added a slew of great features besides pets: Old Town, gardening, the sweet sax player, all that carnival stuff… What did The Sims 2: Pets add? Pets, strays, werewolves, some superfluous build/buy stuff…and you could breed pets. Not that much new gameplay for the price. Nevertheless, Pets was EA/Maxis’ highest-selling EP. Go figure…

They definitely knew that pets were the #1 most demanded feature, and proceeded to charge full price for pets and pets alone. And they got away with it. I’ll never understand the appeal of having virtual pets to go with your virtual humans. They take too long to train anyway. Boring.

“Worst Supernatural Creature” goes to…

Bigfoot from Bon Voyage

Bigfoot is completely illogical. He is a master of every skill, gets free gifts from co-workers EVERY DAY, and is sterile (where’s the fun?) Plus his name is ‘Bigfoot Bigfoot’. And you couldn’t ‘create’ a Bigfoot or ‘become’ one; you had to go out and drag him home by sucking up to him. WTF?

“Most Detrimental to Storytelling” goes to…

University

Sure, Uni was fun the first few times… but it takes so freaking long to complete if you don’t cheat. If you play a hood ‘by the book’ you end up going through Uni for every Sim. It’s hard to avoid because the game intrinsically awards and punishes Sims based on university. So monotonous and there was only so much I could take of it.

“Worst Supporting Stuff Pack” goes to…

H&M Fashion Stuff

H&MFS signalled EAxis’ first foray into the realm of licensed, non-free product placement. Whether the content was fashionable or not is a question I’ll leave to others. No, this SP was the worst because of its blatant in-game advertising. They gave players building tools and decorations to design their very own H&M fashion store to place in their hoods. So what do impressionable players do? Write H&M stores into their stories like it’s second nature! There’s a name for that: guerrilla marketing. (I think.) Thanks, EAxis, for outright marketing expensive clothing to kids through a video game so subliminally – and making the kids pay for the privilege.

H&M only edges out IKEA Stuff by being 1) the first in time and 2) advertising a brand not even available in the countries it was released in! At least we have an IKEA here.

”Worst Expansion Pack” goes to…

Bon Voyage

Rehash of old EP? Check. Crippling, game-breaking bugs on release? Check. Boring after the first time? Check (for me). Badly integrated with other EPs? Check. No spring break from college. No pets on vacation. No running a hotel as a business.

I enjoyed TS3’s freedom from expansions while it lasted, but all good things come to an end. EA have announced the first TS3 expansion.

I am wholly, WHOLLY unimpressed with a single flaw in this game design.

From the press release:

"[Players will] discover new cities in China, France, and Egypt, and share new stories."

Why am I unimpressed?

Because using real countries is a freaking stupid idea.

I once called this sort of thing a rule of the Sims universe: it’s not Earth! It’s fiction! Suspension of disbelief matters – but obviously not to EA, where money comes ahead of creating a coherent, entertaining game. Did not one person designing this game speak up and point out the ridiculousness of using real country names? Maybe they didn’t want to lose their jobs.

See, the sensible angle would be to describe locations as “European”, “Eastern”, or “Egyptian” (whatever, it’s a dead civilization anyway.) These vacation towns already have unique names – why not market the game with those, like Bon Voyage did?

Seriously, are we to believe that there’s a Sim Taiwan/China and a Sim Israel/Palestine too?

Will these places have real-world languages (hell no), terrible accented gibberish (probably) or just the same Simlish we’re used to (most likely)?

Are the developers trying to shove pro-Yankee imperialism down our throats by having Sims governed by a Leader of the Free World?

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Just the fact that all these questions exist shatter my suspension of disbelief and will ruin any enjoyment I could probably get out of this expansion.

But don’t worry, I’ve got plenty more reasons to hate on World Adventures. The linear, mission-based stories turning the game into less and less of a Wrightian sandbox. The inevitable bugs. Being the harbinger of the upgrade cycle. Cultural stereotyping. My loathing of Vacation and Bon Voyage. The content-stripping (taking content out of the game to plump out future EPs/SPs/the Store).

And the neighbourhood editor that has yet to see the light of day and probably never will. Now that EA is on the expansion wagon, this is the kind of thing that will get pushed to the bottom of the pile and stay there, despite pre-release ‘representations’ that it would be out a few weeks after release.

Really, the editor is the one thing that I’m still ‘following’ TS3 for apart from modding because I will never get attached to premades and premade towns.

Anyway, I’ve never been in this camp before. Before I would eagerly look forward to new expansions. Actually with the Sims, it would be what ‘brought me back to the game’ after not playing it for some time. But I am not going to buy World Adventures. I have no interest in it at all.

For instance, pets are all but confirmed.

The fact that ages are defined for the same animals as in TS2 seems to reduce the chances of a Farm EP. I mean, farm animals age too.

Also, Piano?

Did they cut pianos from the game? You know, I’m 99% sure one of the Store hairs was shown in a preview video somewhere as part of CAS. As if you needed more evidence that EA is out for the money.

• “… we open up a whole bunch of the game to modders that I think will impress people. Not sure where this idea that [modding] was harder came from. Newer, yes, different yes but not harder.”
• “I assure you, there will be fully featured very large expansions.”
• “Similar to Sims 2, the new formats will start out hard and get easier as the team works with the modders and updates/releases tools.”
• “Meshes are at the high end of hard (as you would expect). I just went down and asked the (very tired) Sims 3 team leads. It is very high on their agenda.”
• “Making meshes to put in the game is not that hard, its getting everything to work perfectly throughout the game that is the tough part.”
• On availability of nude/no-censor mods: “Given the priorities of modders, learning the system, testing time, audience demand etc I would say ………. Day 1.”
  

That seems to confirm post-release tools (neighborhood editor FIRST please!) and technical support for modders.

Also, Rod Humble thinks Sims players are perverts. Aren’t we all? :)

Damn you EA! Always putting neat new objects into expansion packs I have no intention of buying!

I’m definitely in the minority here, as a player who doesn’t actively ‘play to kill’, but I do wish that random death would occur, you know, autonomously. It’s the natural consequence of story progression. Would it kill EA to occassionally have an adult Sim die of some accidental cause offscreen?

With the additional possibility that players have custom hoods, they’re going to need a creative way of ‘expanding’ the play area and allowing access to those features. I believe they will do this with ‘ploppable’ community lots, and creating a new town in each EP (not so much to ask for, is it?)

Anyway, here’s my wish-list of additional buildings:

• A golf course. Golf! If any sport could be plausibly integrated with The Sims 3, golf would be it. Sims could also work there in a special Golfer career. It would be fun to take them out for a round and see them walking around the course, which I’d imagine would be one huge, flat rabbit-hole of a building. (or gopher-hole.)
• On the same theme: other sports places. It could be the theme for a whole EP. Football/soccer, baseball, paintball (?)
• An airport if there’s going to be a vacation EP. Could tie in with working as a Pilot.
• A bank if EA wants to do a business EP. Criminals could hold up the bank! Sims could deposit/withdraw money there to make interest (or over the phone/computer) or to borrow money. This IS wishful thinking, I know – EA doesn’t care about economic realism!
• A TV Station for a show business type career or TV journalist.
• Remember the Tourist Trap from Simcity 4? Or an Amusement Park. Or a Carnival. Or a Castle! Give our Sims the opportunity to run hotels and engage in Fawlty Towers-style shenanigans.
• An open market. Would tie in well with Seasons: in winter-time it could be a like a Christmas market like those in Germany. Autumn could be a farmer’s market. Summer, a flea market; spring, something else…maybe a food festival?

So presuming you don’t like college, but like the instruments (for sake of example), you keep Uni installed and put up with the annoyances.

EVERY TS2 EP did this, mainly through those persistent wants to go on a date/buy a pet/hire so-and-so/go on vacation etc.

I’ve been thinking about how this relates to telling a neighbourhood storyline.

The added features seem to create the need to ‘write them into’ the story somehow. I really resent how TS2 compels you to add a college, or if you want to go all-out build one from scratch. Each EP added superfluous features which I personally didn’t enjoy (can’t speak for you of course) and over time build up to create a sense of ‘gameplay bloat’. Maybe they were fun the first time, but not the fiftieth.

“I’ll buy a pet for this family. Oooh, they should go on a honeymoon vacation! Let’s join the secret society. She wants to start a business – let’s run it out of her living room”.

Yes, it’s optional, and you can reduce the annoyances with mods, but I ended up taking the drastic approach. The last time I installed TS2 I stuck to the EPs I liked the most – University (for instruments!), Nightlife, OFB, Seasons and Freetime. I didn’t add any sub neighborhoods. I was mostly happy.

I want to play a computer game and be creative, not put up with bloated gameplay.

TS3 will, no doubt, come with close to a dozen expansion packs in the next few years. I’m going to be happy playing a streamlined, EP-free base game for a while.