The Sims 3: Generations Preview
The Sims 3: Generations - Preview
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: The Sims Studio
Category: Life Simulation
The Sims as a series has been growing ever since it first exploded onto the market in the year 2000. The first instalment of the series was a life sim, constantly being built upon by expansion packs that added new content to keep the game fresh. Here we are 11 years down the line with the third game in the series – it’s a life sim, constantly being built upon by expansion packs that add new content to keep the game fresh. On paper it sounds identical, but The Sims 3 was a huge step forward for the series and we were eager to see how much further the latest expansion pack, Generations, pushes the game.
A short tale
I look to my left and my buddy Steve is deeply engrossed in making his sim a very sleazy love rat, slowly destroying the family we’ve each been given. I look to my right and someone is deep in thought designing a house, building extra rooms and furnishing them beautifully. Not me. I’m a clicker.
I can’t spend ages designing or furnishing and I certainly can’t create a narrative I want my sims to live out, I click things just to see what happens; fridge-make dinner, chair-sit, child-attack with claw, wife-talk, self-cell phone- send child to boarding school. What? You can send kids to boarding school now? Wicked. So I sent all my kids to military school. Haha, that’ll teach the little bastards to have fun in my house! (I told the teenager to set up a prank on the kitchen sink and the dad got soaked – I laughed and everyone in the room looked at me). But it must have been all of two minutes before I realised I wanted the teenager to throw a massive party and trash the place with his friends so I brought him back.
After making the parents go out somewhere I invited all the local teens over and watched the party, it’s things like this I love about the sims, spur of the moment things you want to organise then let unfold make the game for me, it’s funny though – a game about control and playing God is the only game I want to let sort itself out. While his buddies were going mental with the radio the mother of the family came home, she got the video camera out and I made her film it all. The next day I played the home video on the TV and made that little brat watch it with his mum, then I sent him back to military school. That’ll learn ‘im.
What’s new?
If reading that didn’t make you start to plan what crazy stuff you’ll be able to make your sims do, then this will; there’s a load of new content for your sims in this expansion, however the new things to dress your sims in and the new items for the home are a token gesture so “new items” can be put on the back of the box. You’ll forgive them for it though because the non-material elements have been dramatically added to.
Every stage of life has a theme; children can now let their imagination run wild with the addition of imaginary friends, these characters can only be seen by the sim who is imagining them unless you can figure out a way to bring them into reality... Teenagers will now find it easier to be rebellious little rock’n’rolla’s as pranks have been added and parties have gotten bigger, as your sim progresses into young adulthood and into adulthood they’ll start to be more bothered about how other sims see them and will want to work on their relationships with others. Finally, in the waning years of their life, elders will reminisce about the good old days and show off pictures of their grandchildren to any sim unlucky enough to be nearby.
Generations is all about your sims lives, there’s very little in this expansion that doesn’t directly affect the life of sims and this expansion feels better for it, in the past some add-ons have impacted very little on the sims themselves, so it’s nice and refreshing to see an expansion that revolves around your sims.
Overall then...
Generations is just boost The Sims 3 needs about now. Few material items are going to be added, but it makes sense as the few items that will be added all fit in nicely with the new theme of living your sims life to the full. The new traits will give veterans of the series something new to play with while the helpful pop-ups won’t leave newbies in the dark. I’m genuinely looking forward to this new edition to the sims range, and I haven’t said that in a while.
Also, you can now put body hair on adult sims. It does leave you wondering, however, has the development team were taking on ideas requested by the community; who the Hell asked the devs to add that?
