The good, the bad, and the ugly.
Well, the game has quite a few notable qualities . The graphics are now a lot better than before. The house building tools are now a lot easier to use and there are a few new ones, mainly to ease the pain and suffering of creating a swimming pool in earlier titles. A whole lot of character modeling features, including various levels of grizzledom, fat , muscularity etc... even though your six-packs barely flicker as you run the slider back and forth. The trait picking system is also new and interesting, I think it captures and displays the personality of the sim a lot better than the old one. The addition of various places to visit and the option of leaving the house and going for a casual walk, feels more immersive and natural. The wish list that helps unlock special skills is also a pleasant surprise, since they make the game a bit easier later on. The rest is just the standard sims stuff, not much of a change there except the bad parts.
The bad:
Firstly, the realism factor. This game is the third title in the series, surely one would expect that by now, the developers would make this game as close to reality as possible(while keeping the sims formula of course). For example, if I walk around in the streets alone in the middle of the night, why can't I get robbed? Why can't I rob the local bank if I work as a criminal? Why is the sim height modeling feature curiously absent? also I remember that in the original sims I could pick up and hold three or four plates at the same time, and not being able to do so, turns house cleaning into a nightmare after a party. I've also come across a glitch in the game, in which a previously accessible item becomes inaccessible for some reason, and the sim will not interact with it until I move it. Why are there so few items to furnish my house with? If that's EA's idea of making money by releasing dozens of expansion packs, then I'm definitely not going to buy them. I want to be able to build a castle with 8 floors and have a garage with to hold all my 16 cars. I want to be able to shag every woman in the game, and have 82 cats and 44 dogs in my house. That's what will wrights openness was all about. You can't do that when your sim has a lower life span than a butterfly. Even the original game didn't have such an absurd aging system that causes your sim to drop dead after playing for only a few hours. Besides, I got attached to my sim so much, I don't want him to die. I love my half crazed, psychotic evil mastermind and his black top hat. Also, maybe its my personal retardation, but I couldn't find a way to populate the same valley with all of my own sims. All this game seems to do is create a new valley every time I create a new family, which is really annoying.
The ugly:
Peter Molyneux.
Meh, I guess this comes across more as a rant than an actual review. But then again, if I spotted so many flaws then it justifies my poor score. My suggestion is to stay away from this game unless EA magically produces an add-on that fixes all those issues. And judging by the way thing are going so far, they probably will. For a steep price no less. Until then, enjoy your original copy of The sims1, because that's the best you will ever get from this series.