I'm going to make this easy, just point out some good and bad things. At the end of this list I will let off some steam about some technical issues. These are picked out of the game straight out of the box without no patches or custom content.
The big improvements
+ Windows and mac version on same purchase disc
+ Free neighborhood traveling, there's no going back to the loading screens
+ Living, breathing atmosphere, everybody goes about their business
+ Create a sim has improved along with the face models, ability to create pretty lifelike sims with a little practice
+ Traits replacing personality points; more humanlike abilites and attributes
+ Different voices for different sims
+ Ability to color and texturize almost everything
+ Means of transport around the city: Car, bike, taxi, jogging
+ Reduced needs and more flexible: Hunger and energy don't affect mood even when they're at under 50%
+ Sim inventory is fun and creates more individual sim realism
+ User can drag and drop books into bookshelfs without using sims and turn on and off tvs and stereos
+ Mood changes more realistic
+ Lifetime rewards are awesome (steel bladder :D )
The big misses
- Flash-based game launcher/updater is a mess and definetly not necessary
- Pathfinding and free will seem to be much inferior to Sims 2
- Again loosing many favourite items from Sims 2, like pianos and poker tables
- User cannot insert more lots or freely move lots like in Sims 2, clear regression
- User cannot create more neighborhoods anymore like in Sims 2
- Only one town straight out of the box
- Still can't have more sims in a family than eight
- Additional content on EA Sims store costs real money. This was predictable but talk about underestimate the customer: Why not give the game itself more purchase value right away?
- No game modification tools like bodyshop out of the box and still non existant as of writing this list
- Mac issues, not equal to pc version
Little good things
+ Ability to affect what to do when at work, while still not full control
+ Groceries, different foods require different ingredients
+ Different means of workouts on body skill
+ Some traits give funny results and different options when clicking sim itself
+ Book store and how you have to buy more advanced books to get better in skills
+ Ability to stretch sleeping, workouts and some activites to "when fully rested" etc.
+ More cars out of the box
+ Ability to adjust roof height in build mode
+ Aging can be turned off without a cheat code
+ Lifetime can be adjusted from options
Small misses, nitpicking
- Create a sim isn't as easy to use, creating a full eight headed family can take long
- Too little hairstyles, especially for men, not even a fully bald head!
- Body adjusting possibilities still limited, no height or specific body part sliders, to me this is a big disappointment
- Sims seem to be more passive socially by themself compared to Sims 2
- No interiors to workplaces, grocery store, restaurant
- Still no noticable increasement of objects - amount as same in Sims 2
- Where are two and three stories pillars? Very low number of doors also
- Horrible plants
- No improvement in foundations, making a basements requires practice
- No noticable improvements in build mode to create ease and possibilites.
- I don't like the new object sorting in buy mode
- Game saving seems to take forever
- In Mac version the install is one 6gb .app file
Here's a rant on some techincal mac stuff, overall summary provided after that.
I pulled the game from the dvd box for the first time. Installed. Launched the game; the flash based launcher pops up, notifies that I need a update. I click yes and update. The update seems to do the update but at the end notifies that "some files have been notified, please re-install". What? I relaunch the launcher and it crashes. I re-relaunch the launcher and it crashes. At this point I tried to reinstall the game since I can't even get the game to get past of the launcer. After reinstalling, I open the launcher and it crashes. Since It's flash-based I downloaded the newest flash player and it finally doesn't crash and I am able to start playing.
WHY ON EARTH DO YOU NEED THE NEWEST FLASH PLAYER TO LAUNCH A GAME THIS BIG?
After playing I saw that there was a new town available at EA Store for free, but the game notifies that I can't dload it since my game isn't on par with the current updates. But I can't update the game since the updater launched from the launcher doesn't fully complete the update since "some files have been modified". WTF! So because I can't update my game, I can't download the new town. Now that's a fail for EA. I would probably need an external patch file that would patch the launcher, so the launcher could update my game! That's horrible design!
Bottom line : Don't use a flash based launcher that's not fully functional!!!
Yea some mac issues also. My sim grabbed a guitar for the first time and now it's impaled through his elbow. Now he walks around with a guitar stuck in his chest and he can't go swimming. I can't take off the guitar and it stays there even when I completely exit the game.
Overall
I think Sims 3 is a good game. It's fun to play and it's the most important thing. There are limitations on how much you can take a Sims game, since it's Sims and that's a good and a bad thing at the same time. Sims 3 is a good clicking game and overall is a good improvement over v2, while surprisingly fails on some stuff Sims 2 had without expansions, like creating more neighborhoods. I like this game and will like it even more if the modding community gets tools to fix some of the limitations of it.
