PC - Sims 3

Sims 3 by EA Games

I recently purchased Sims 3 and here is the Gamezelot take on this game. It is definitely not an improvement over the Sims 2. There are still far too many quirky problems that have yet to be resolved in this game from Sims 2. The one major thing they improved is the loading times when moving around the map. But, that's really as far as the improvements go. The game and pacing are cloned from Sims 2.

Yes, it is a human simulator. No, it is not perfect. Let's hop back in time to 'Little Computer People'. This was actually the first (and arguably) the best human simulator that's been devised for the computer. You took care of a single household with its occupants and pets. You had to feed the dog and you had to manage the people in the game. You could play games with them and interact (or not). Fast forward to the Sims (as a copy of Little Computer People). Now, that's not to say that the Sims is a bad simulator, it's just a bit too quirky. And, you'd think by the third time around that EA could have finally fixed all of the major problems with this game. Alas, they haven't.

Gameplay

If you haven't played The Sims, here's the rundown. It's a game where you can build houses and have these houses become occupied by computer controlled people. In the first game, there was little you could do with your 'Sim' (short for your player). They did whatever they did and they had mostly bland personalities. By the Sims 2, the focus was taken away from the building and placed onto the people. So, EA tried to give the people personalities, but that it was only somewhat successful. The problems with the Sims 2 were numerous... from your constantly having to run to the bathroom to pee, to constant things breaking (the toilet, TV, computer, etc) to fires and burglary. Each day it was always something different, but there was always something. So, your sim ended up spending far too much time cleaning up messes that the game simulator made for you and not socializing or going places.

Enter Sims 3 and, unfortunately, you are still cleaning up far too many simulator created messes. Basically, it's one household disaster after another. The person builder is great, but that's really where the game fun mostly stops. Once you get into the game, the game is overly verbose with tutorials even though you can turn this off from the options menu. That's fine if you've never played a Sims before. It's completely annoying when you already know what to do.

As you progress, you begin running into many of the same problems that plagued The Sims 2. You also quickly realize that very little has been added in the way of substantial new features. At least, that's what I thought that a new game was supposed to be. The things that remained are still annoying. For example, while your character does not need to go to the bathroom as often, other things have now taken the place of that stupid and quirky issue. The main problem is that there is not enough time in 'Live Mode'. For example, in order to get money to buy things, your sim needs a job. Once your sim lands that job, the job kills most of the day so your sim can't do hardly anything but work. Once your sim is off of work, your sim is so tired he/she can't even go grocery shopping. You have to send them straight home to nap or play video games. Even then, the energy runs out very rapidly.

Passage of time is also too fast in 'live mode' and too slow in 'turbo mode'. So, for example, your sim needs to wake up at 6am for his job at 7am. Here's the perfect example with 'Live Mode' time. Your sim usually needs to take a shower, use the toilet and eat breakfast (and possibly even do more than this). Unfortunately, you can't do that many things in a 1 sim hour. It's just not possible. This issue plagued Sims 2 and I was expecting it to have been resolved in Sims 3. In real life, it would certainly be possible to complete all three of these things. But, in The Sims 3, it doesn't work. So, you end up having to cut the sleep time (yes, your sim has to sleep to regain energy) in order to get more stuff done. The problem with that is that by cutting sleep short, your sim doesn't get 'well rested'. Your sim runs out of energy very rapidly during the day. So, there are all of these stupid quirky things. Basically, in order to solve one problem, you create others.

Worse, in preparation for work, your sim usually ends up breaking something like the toilet, shower or sink. Or, in preparing food for breakfast, the surfaces get grimy or dirty dishes pile up. In this game, perfect cleanliness is a must or the 'mood meter' takes a firm nosedive. At least in the Sims 2, you could choose if your character was a clean freak or not. In the Sims 3, your character is now always a clean freak. He complains when he stinks, when others stink or when dirty dishes stink. When a sim complains, that reduces 15-30 mood points.

Mood Meter

The mood meter is the barometer by which your sim is happy or unhappy. When green, the sim is perfectly happy. When red, the sim needs something (food, sleep, etc). Your sim doesn't stay happy for very long, so expect to have him/her constantly do something to please them. The sims will do for themselves, but usually not that well.

Birthdays

After a period of time, your sim will 'Grow Up'. This is a complete disaster of a feature. I don't necessarily WANT my sim to grow up, or at least as fast as it does. But, you don't know how long you need for your sim until you've actually played the game. Suffice it to say, the default settings for a sim to age is not nearly long enough to complete sim goals. For example, I started my sim as an Adult. Within just a few hours of play, my sim had a birthday and turned into an elderly old man. It's like HUH? Why didn't I get a say in this matter? The game should ask you if you want to your sim to age instead of just outright doing it.

And why to an elderly old man? Where are the other stages between adult and elderly? So now, the game I've just spent several hours playing is pointless. I don't want to continue to play this game as some crotchety old geezer. That's not what I expected or intended for my character. It also negates the point of the game. The game changes your sim from a healthy robust adult around 45-48 years old to a 70 year old geezer. With the growing up feature enabled, you need to start your sim on at least young adult for maximum play time. Otherwise, you need to extend your sims lifespan (or turn off aging).

Life Stages / Aging

Further, the aging system is not well designed. You have baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, adult and elederly. Between the first six stages, there's an age progression of 5-15 years. Between adult and elderly, you're talking about a 30 year jump to 'retirement age'. EA should have added at least 2 more stages between Adult and Elderly. This is part of the reason EA is failing as a game company. They cut so many corners to produce games, this is what you get.

The Urbz / no story mode

Let's jump back in time again for comparisons. Here is another Sims title where EA decided to take the Sims in a new direction. Instead of the free form gameplay of Sims 2, the Urbz created small stories and completion goals. It was linear progression in that you had to get your sim to do very specific things in order to progress in the game. Comparing this to the Sims 3, there is none of that. I was full well expecting at least some story progression system to have been added. So, as you complete small stories, the rest of the game (city) becomes unlocked so you can move forward. For me, this would have been an improvement over the Sims 2. Yet, it didn't happen.

Sim Needs

The Sims 3 requires you to constantly baby your sim. Like, for example, the sim simply won't pay any bills on his own. You have to make him do it. Sure, you can press buttons in the interface to do this, but the sim should simply do this task on his own without your help. If the bills don't get paid, people come and repo the purchased possessions. Again, I'm like HUH? I paid for the things outright. How is it that I need to any pay bills? This is a pointless stupid activity and just wastes time (and money) for the sim.

Because of the constant hands on to keep the sim in line, you can't really spend much time socializing as there's always something getting in the way (phone ringing, potty break, hungry, needs to have fun, etc). If you want to go any place, expect that that's the only place you be able to visit in a single day.

New Game Design and Sequels

I'm not sure why people tend to feel satisfied with clones of previous games. Sure, there's something to be said for releasing a game that's very similar to a previous title. After all, you want lightning to strike twice as a developer. At the same time, you want to provide the gamer with a unique and different experience from the previous title on which s sequel is based. You don't want them walking away feeling that they were duped into buying a slightly upgraded sequel. Well, unfortunately, that's exactly what Sims 3 is. Everything that's in the Sims 3 could have been added to the Sims 2 as upgrades and expansion packs. The Sims 3 is not a new game more than an expansion of the Sims 2. When you design a sequel, you want to retain many of the better elements from the sequel, but you also want to add new features that make the gameplay unique and new over its older cousin. EA's developers failed at producing a game system that was uniquely different from the Sims 2 in the Sims 3. So, $50 for this title is not really justified. An upgrade or expansion pack to the Sims 2 would have cost far less than the outright purchase of this title. EA is now effectively grasping at straws trying to keep this franchise alive. And this is part of the reason that EA is known for making mediocre titles. Unlike developers like Bethesda, Rockstar, Bungie, Ubisoft and Bioware, EA just doesn't go the extra mile to produce the perfect game.

Working

Here is the sorest point of this entire game (excluding Birthdays which is really just bad design). Unless you strike up a relationship with someone first thing out (so you end up with two sims to play with), during the work day there is absolutely nothing to do but wait. Literally. You can't even build on your home because time progression stops while you do this. Instead, you have to sit through an arduously long work day waiting on the sim instead of actually playing the game. In real minutes, that's about 10-15 minutes of real dead game time per sim work day. You actually do nothing during this period of time inside of the game. You might as well go do something in Real Life during that period (like check email, surf the web or make a sandwich).

This, in game design terms, is a complete and utter disaster. You NEVER want your game to come to a complete standstill forcing the gamer to do absolutely nothing. Worse, when your sim is it work, you can't even see the sim. You get to watch the sim's icon parked inside of a building. You can't watch the sim work, you only hear sounds while he/she does it. Again, one more failure from EA. If this game had been complete, they would have added the ability to actually control your sim while at work and make him walk around and do things. Instead, you're limited to a drop down menu that lets you change how hard your sim works. Even that is somewhat pointless. A fully in depth game (which is expected from a new version) would have allowed you to control your sim's behavior 100% of the time both at home and at work. Again, this is EA cutting corners.

EA's missed opportunities

I could probably write a book on all of the poor design choices in the Sims 3. Suffice it to say that what is covered in this review only scratches the surface of the issues. If you choose to wade through the myriad of issues, be warned that there is more than what I'm discussing here (including mediocre graphics). However, if you like the minutiae of making your sim do every little thing and the dead time waiting for your sim at work (and about 10 minutes real time waiting), waiting even longer watching them sleep or spending most of the home time cleaning and fixing, then you might like the Sims 3. I was hoping that EA would have taken this minutiae out of Sims 3 to replace it with something more story based like the Urbz, but it didn't happen.

Multiplayer

What multiplayer? Exactly. In this day and age with services like Xbox Live and PS3's online gaming, where is the multiplayer in Sims 3? Again, EA completely botched this. There is no multiplayer mode at all in Sims 3. Adding that feature would have been a huge enhancement. In fact, it would have been awesome to share sims back and forth between online players. Perhaps in Sims 4, EA can finally get all of this right.

Overall

I would have preferred far less minutiae and for more things like socializing, sim control 100% of the time, story goals (like the Urbz) and working on relationships and life goals. Having to spend time sending your sim to the office every day is useless and a waste of time (especially because you waste about 10-15 real dead minutes waiting for this activity to complete). In fact, I would prefer just to completely skip that work time altogether. If you're not going to allow 100% control over the sim, then show the sim leaving for work and show him coming back with the amount of hours missing (in two small cutscenes) and then place the cash in the bank. I don't need to watch the sim sitting in a building losing energy for 10 real minutes.

That level of micro management may have been good in The Sims 2, but I'm well past that. For me, the point to this game isn't to micro manage every little detail, it's to play a game (which includes building up the house, having the sim do things, having the sim learn things and having the sim socialize). That's the point in the sims. The minutiae of fixing broken sinks, fixing and scrubbing toilets I can really do without. It was fun in the Sims 2 (for a while), but in the Sims 3 it should be gone.

Finally, the two biggest game design flaws are the birthdays and work. The jumps between each of your sims' life stages leave a lot to be desired and should be more consistent. If you play with the default settings, you need to start your sim out as a kid in order to be able to actually attain your life goal. If you start your sim as an adult, you don't have enough time... and there is no warning of this if you begin your game with your sim as an adult. If you want to start your sim as an adult, you need to change the aging options of the game to actually complete the game. Work time is complete gamer dead time. Dead time in a game is as bad as a game can get. You ALWAYS want the gamer engaged in the game and doing something moving the game forward. Work time, unfortunately, makes the game come to a complete stop where the gamer literally has nothing to do during this time (assuming only one Sim). To avoid the dead time, you need to start a family as the first thing you do in Sims 3 so you have at least two sims to control. In fact, the game should have started you with two sims to avoid the dead time issue.

Score

• Sound: 8/10 (reminds me of Desperate Housewives)
  
• Graphics: 6/10 (useable, but not great)
• Gameplay: 5/10 (too much minutiae)
• Story: 1/10 (no story)
• Bugginess: No issues
• Controls: 8.5/10 (reasonable, but not the problem)
• Bang-to-buck: 2/10 (not worth the price)
• Play Value: $15 (buy the Sims 2 instead)
• Overall: 3/10 (too many disasters and distractions, too much deadtime, time speed incorrect, bad gaming design not an improvement over Sims 2)

Note, you can alter some of these issues by altering the options in the menu. What you can't alter is the lack of improvement over Sims 2, the complete dead time that is work, the repetitive and constant babying of your sim, the repetitive nature of this game and the lack of actual gaming goals or a story that move this game forward. The game gets a 3/10 rating because it is a sequel and is not enough of an improvement over the Sims 2 and, thus, doesn't warrant the full price tag of a new game.

Xbox 360 - Mass Effect

Mass Effect by Bioware

While I want to love this as an RPG, I just can't. Unfortunately, Mass Effect has so many problems that it really ends up a mediocre RPG in among this genre of game. Frankly, with the poor level of graphics performance of this game, I'm surprised it was released at all.

Graphics Engine

Let's start with the graphics. Clearly, the 3D imagery is highly detailed with every attempt to make the characters seem lifelike in this world. On the one hand, this is one of the most visually detailed games I've seen to date. On the other hand, BioWare obviously worked so hard on the stunningly realistic visuals that they let too many other things slide. This makes for a rather overall disappointing game. Even as detailed and stunning as this game is visually, there are major performance problems that really hinder the game experience.

The 3D movement and performance is herky-jerky. The game pauses every time it has to load information from the media (which is extremely frequent). The game's graphics rendering has severe issues including screen breakup (striping as the entire screen moves), lagging, slowness and overall performance issues. These 3D issues are completely unacceptable in this day and age on a console. If the console doesn't have enough game power to display the game properly, the game should never have made it past the concept phase. Alternatively, they should have redesigned the graphics to give smooth 3D gameplay experience most of the time. To actually let Mass Effect get all the way into production with these major graphics performance issues is just incredibly stupid.

Granted, the performance issues don't prevent you from playing the game, but it does become a continual inconvenience as you progress through the game. Yes, it is even an inconvenience that really almost makes you want to stop playing, it's that bad. I, however, am continuing to play Mass Effect because I've started it and want to see the conclusion. Consider that Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR was BioWare's previous RPG) had none of these graphics performance issues on the Xbox.

RPG Aspects

Having played recent RPGs including completing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (and KOTOR), this game really doesn't much advance the RPG format in any substantial way. In fact, it takes a step back from Oblivion in several ways. It even takes a step back from some aspects of KOTOR. As examples of things missing:

• KOTOR would let you swap team members and use a specific team member's skill to do a certain thing. Like, one of the team might be skilled at security, so you use that member to unlock doors or cabinets. Another might be skilled in the Force, so you let them use their Force powers.
  
• With Mass Effect, you cannot swap your team and you cannot ask your team to do things like open locks. Your main 'Shepard' character must do everything.
• In Oblivion, quests are stored in a journal as is Mass Effect's quests. But, Oblivion takes it one step further by letting you locate where you need to be directly from the Journal entry.
  
• In Mass Effect, you are left to fend for yourself to find out where you need to be. While the Journal might tell you where you need to go, you have to back out of a ton of screens to get to the map and find the location. This makes finding where you need to be next a chore.
  
• There are many many people wandering around on the levels, but you can only talk to a handful of specific people. In Oblivion, every wandering person was a potential new quest. In Mass Effect, other characters are completely ignored.
• The Citadel is sprawling... and while it is huge, there's really very little to do in it. There're few people to talk to and even fewer things to actually do. While it's impressive to see the world they built, it really goes to waste.
• Oblivion's objectives were always clearly documented in the quest journal. So, you knew exactly what to do next.
  
• The Journal in Mass Effect is a bit on the confusing side. Yes, it's off the main menu, but then once you get into it, each quest expands and collapses. It also puts check marks beside the portion of the quest completed. But, it fails to really show you exactly what you need to be doing or where you need to go next.
  
• With Oblivion, each quest objective was clearly marked on the map.
  
• With Mass Effect, nothing is marked on the map. If you want it marked, you have to get out of the journal, open the map and then mark it yourself. So, you have to write down or remember what the current quest objective to know what you want to mark. Not impossible, but a hassle. Worse, if the objective is not on your present level, you can't get to that map to mark it.

Leveling Up

It's not very clear what levels you up and what doesn't. But, frankly, there aren't enough quests or battles per level to really help you level up. I found that the quests and battles were far too sparse and the dialog scenes were far too abundant. Ditch the dialog and add more action. Or, at least balance the dialog with action.

Because of this, leveling up is difficult. But, at the same time, it also looks like Bioware was aware of this issue and, thus, gives a LOT of experience points for completing even the tiniest little quest event. If there had been more quests and more action, then the game's RPG portions would have been more complete.

Character Creation

While I understand that Bioware kept the formula from KOTOR for this game (giving you a specific character with a specific history) and then letting you customize the look (to a degree), this really isn't an RPG. Yes, you can pick the 'class' your main character is, but unless you pick the combat class, you can't make it through the game. The other classes are so weak, you can't even make it through the first quest. So, this is a HUGE weakness for this game.

Even with Oblivion, there were weak classes, but you could make up for that weakness in other ways. In Mass Effect, there is no way to make up for those weaknesses. Maybe you call it making the game more challenging, I call it a defect.

Inventory

The inventory system is limited to 150 items. This limitation isn't a problem until you pick up item 151. Then, it forces you into a screen that you can't get out of. You must convert one or more items into Omni-Gel (an all-purpose substance). This screen is extremely annoying. The inventory system works much like KOTOR's system, but with obvious differences.

Game Saves

While I applaud BioWare for giving a 'save anywhere' system, the limitations of this system are abundant:

• You can only have a limited number of saves (15-20, I think). After you have used them up, you have to overwrite previous saves. Not smart if you want to be able to go back to a critical point and rework what you did.
• When you die and the game 'resumes' it assumes you want the last Autosave rather than the last actual save. Because it autosaves so infrequently, you're likely loading an extremely old save point. So then, you have to waste time loading another save.
• This goes with the previous point. The Autosave system saves too infrequently. The resume functionality assumes you want to use the last Autosave rather than using the most recent save. You can end up playing through an entire level before it Autosaves again. Bioware should have dumped the Autosave feature altogether and required only manual saves.
  
• The system prevents you from saving while enemies are present. I don't get this one. Oblivion would let you save anytime, even during battle. I guess Bioware didn't want to have to deal with programming a save system that would save a battle sequence in action.
  

Audio / Soundtrack

While I wanted to like the audio, the backing tracks while you are roaming the levels are too repetitive and annoying. It's not soothing, it's not calming, it's just there and annoying. The backing tracks repeat far too frequently to not be completely repetitive. Oblivion's soundtracks got old after while too, but the rotation of the soundtracks and the length/differences were often enough that it kept from becoming completely boring. Even as I play Oblivion today, I've heard them all, but I can still listen to them without being annoyed.

Music should ALWAYS be under the volume control for Music. In the Hotel on one of the planets, the background music is considered a sound effect. This is wrong. Music should never be a sound effect. The music in the hotel is very annoying. I also wanted to play my own music from the XBox 360. But, because it is a sound effect, it mixed in with talking and other effect noises. There's no way to turn the music down as a result (or at least, no way without affecting dialog and other sound effects). Bioware needs to fix this issue.

Combat System

The combat system is downright horrible. For one thing, each 'enemy' gets completely blocked visually by this HUGE red triangle. So, instead of aiming at a character, you just see the triangle. This means, most of the time you don't really even know what you're shooting at visually. You have to rely on the identification text. It's also very difficult to determine exactly when someone has shot you. The character's response to being shot is not responsive. In Oblivion, the health meter was plainly visible and you knew how much health you had left. With Mass Effect, it's extremely hard to gauge the health.

Team Effort

While Mass Effect let's you build a team up, it really doesn't give you much to do with the team once you have it. With KOTOR, you could at least rotate among the characters and use the skills they offered. With Mass Effect, there is no such rotation. You can't choose to use any characters in your team for anything other than combat. Even then, they do what they want and the best you can do is tell them to move to a specific position. More often than not, your team members get in the way. They stand or crouch exactly where you want to be.

In fact, there was one battle where they were so stupid, they just stood and took fire until they died. It wasn't a particularly hard gun battle, it's just that their AI wasn't sophisticated enough to deal with the situation. I ended up waiting until they 'died' and I finished the battle myself so I didn't have to compete with their stupid AI.

Gameplay

The gameplay is fair. Not great, not excellent, but fair. You wander the levels hoping to find things, but you find relatively little to do. Shepard runs very slowly, so it takes an age to go from one side of a level to another.

Renegade vs Paragon

As with KOTOR, you can choose to be 'bad' or 'good'. In Mass Effect, you can be both at the same time. The problem is that there is no clearcut distinction in the dialog which specific dialog leads to which outcome. Sure, you can sometimes tell based on a smart mouthed comment, but in other cases it's not that clearcut. So, you're constantly trying to find which leads to paragon and which leads to renegade. I guess it doesn't really matter much unless you're trying to get 100% paragon or 100% renegade. It's still frustrating.

Dialog

Here's where Bioware dropped the ball. While there are many choices of dialog, the words in the menu almost never match the outcome dialog. This is extremely frustrating. So, while the menu says one thing, Shepard ends up saying something completely different. The menu dialog should have matched the actual dialog word for word.. another Bioware failure.

Character movement

The character moves reasonably well, but about as well as can be expected from this kind of game. I would have preferred an eye level view so I don't have to watch the character from the back all the time. As I said above, he runs rather slowly.

Story Line / Ending

The storyline is not horrible, but not the best I've seen either. Because this is an RPG, there really should be many stories here. Not just one main one. However, because this game is mostly linear, the side stories don't mean much. The side stories are also just offshoots of the main story. On completion of the game, the entire game ends. You can't complete any uncompleted quests, you're just tossed into the credits and given the heave-ho. If you're a true RPG, the ending of the main quest shouldn't end the game. The Darkness (review coming soon) also followed this ending and I also didn't like that ending either. Again, I go back to Oblivion. Oblivion got all of the pieces right in terms of the RPG aspects of the game. Even the way to handle the ending of the main quest story line.

Xbox Live

There is no live component to Mass Effect. This is a single player game.

Overall

While I would like to give this game an 8 or a 9 rating on a 10 point scale, I can't. The flaws are graphical performance issues are too numerous and problems too abundant for this style of RPG. The lack of side and free quests make this game more or less linear. These issues really preclude Mass Effect from being a full out RPG. Yes, it does have some RPG aspects, but overall it lacks in too many ways to really be what Oblivion was.

If Bioware wants to make a real RPG, they need to sit down in a room and play Oblivion. Then, from that game craft a new better game from the same things that made Oblivion work.

Ratings

• Graphics: 6/10 (9/10 for details, 2/10 for gfx performance)
• Music: 6/10 (too repetitive, not inspired, out of context)
• Sound Effects: 9/10
• Control: 9/10
• Gameplay: 6/10
  
• Combat: 5/10 (combat system really bad, lack of proper team commands)
• RPG: 7/10 (works, but not outstanding)
• Replay Value: 3/10 (little replay value unless you want to pick up game challenge points)
  
• Overall: 5/10 (needs work)