The Sims 3 - another dose of digital crack

So I caved and got myself a copy of Sims 3 after reading that wonderful blog the other day.

I have to say I'm very impressed with the improvements and as you can see by the timestamp on this post I'm completely addicted. The world is a lot more convincing now with no loading screens between locations as the game engine now encompasses a complete town you can zoom in and out of. The Sims have real personality and the Sims I created based on me and a friend started off very convincingly. The interface is good, although a little strangely structured at times. The Sims are quite a bit better at generally looking after themselves and will general keep themselves alive quite happily.

Here's the problem though: The developers didn't want to take the risk of upsetting any of the players of the game. Even with the Sims set at the highest level of free will they will never do anything situation changing. They'll repeatedly freak out at a broken appliance but won't try to repair it or call a repairman in without your say so lest the spend some of your precious money. They'll never take on or leave a job unless you give the go ahead. Hell they wont even let someone into their house as far as I can tell!

Half the appeal in this sort of game for me is watching the unexpected, and it first I was pleasantly surprised with the minor day-to-day actions the Sims were performing matching their chosen traits. However it's only the minor stuff that's automated. Everything else seems to be up to you to do.

Fair enough, this sort of micromanagement is what the existing user base is used to, and what they probably want. Me, I really want to just wind them up and watch them go. It disappoints me that the developers didn't add an option for true free will for people like me that primarily want to see things unfold. Also why the hell isn't the purchasing of extra content integrated directly into the build menu instead of a ruddy website? That's so 90s ;).

Still, that's complaining about the game for what it isn't. What it is,is by far the best version of the Sims so far, which I will no doubt lose weeks of my life playing with. I just can't help the niggling feeling that the developers took the safe route and it isn't quite the game it could have been.