Sims 3 - Xbox 360

The Sims 3, like its predecessors, is a real-time simulation game in which the player controls the life of one or more people in a family, including their work life and social activities. To do this, the player creates one or more characters at the start of the game on the character creation screen, which has been further expanded since The Sims 2. In addition to more choices regarding appearance, clothing, colours and so on, the player also selects five personality traits from a set of 63, sorted into the four groups “Mental”, “Physical”, “Social” and “Lifestyle”, as well as a lifetime wish. The personality traits influence how the Sim reacts to every event in the game. The “Workaholic” trait, for example, means the Sim enjoys going to work and allows them to use a computer at home to schedule extra hours.

The lifetime wish, on the other hand, is similar to regular wishes, but requires a lot of work to achieve. While fulfilling wishes can be as simple as ordering a pizza, a player’s lifetime wish to make their Sim the CEO of a major company won’t happen overnight. As a trade-off, fulfilling a lifetime wish grants the player a very large amount of lifetime happiness points, unlike regular wishes. These lifetime happiness points are used to purchase numerous forms of relief, including the ability to make the Sim immune to hunger. This allows the player to focus less on meeting a Sim’s basic needs and more on improving their skills and building relationships with neighbours, colleagues and other people in town. The six needs themselves are the same as before, including fun, hygiene and hunger.

Unlike its predecessors, the game is not limited to a Sim’s own property, with loading times in between when travelling to other locations, such as family holiday destinations. Instead, The Sims 3 now simulates an entire town in which the player’s Sim can move around freely and do as they please, including working and socialising, but also buying groceries or books and attending classes to further improve their personal skills. However, not every building can be seen from the inside. While the gym works like a normal house, with the option to remove the walls and look inside, the Sim simply enters other locations, including the workplace, the bookshop and the hospital, and disappears until their business there is done.

The only influence the player can have in the case of the workplace is how their Sim should do their job. Should they work through their lunch break, befriend the boss, or chat with their colleagues, and so on? All of this affects both their happiness and their work performance, and once their work performance reaches a certain level, they get promoted, which comes with a higher salary and sometimes different working hours. During their visits, the Sim can also collect rocks, gems, metals, insects, butterflies and seeds to use in their garden as decoration or jewellery. If they get really bored, they can even go fishing at one of the lakes or rivers.

With the money a Sim earns at the start of and throughout the game, they either buy a pre-built lot or build/expand their own house from scratch, including all the interior design. This time, items can even be placed at a 45° angle.

The console versions introduce Karma Powers, which give players god-like powers to influence their Sims’ lives for better or worse.

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