My wedding was a disaster, beginning when one of the guests died during the party. We weren't close, but witnessing his ghost prompted a recurring wish to see more. Soon I was wandering the catacombs beneath the graveyard, getting emotionally scarred by zombie bears and emerging, smeared with dirt, in only my underpants.
To make matters worse, I misunderstood the purpose of a 'Wedding Party'. It's not meant to celebrate the engagement, but to be the wedding itself. My guests left unhappy when no marriage took place, and both my fiancée and I felt guilty for missing our big day. Make no mistake. That 'I' is me - a smaller, virtual but no less hairy me. The Sims 3, like the previous games, is all about controlling people.
You begin by moulding their appearance (bearded, thinnish, roguishly handsome), selecting their five personality traits (Childish, Good, Friendly, Artistic, Computer Whizz) and dropping them into their own home in suburbia (two-bedroom, single floor, modest).
The Sims 3
Official trailer
1:40We don't get it...
The Sims 3
Official trailer
1:40We don't get it...
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In the original game, what followed inevitably trapped you into being a kind of incorporeal maid, buying the furniture and making sure your little masters didn't wet themselves. Those days are gone. Set their free will to full and your Sims are now capable of maintaining their own needs: Hunger, Social, Bladder, Hygiene, Energy, Fun. Stick the game on fast forward, wander off, and when you return your characters will have showered, used the toilet and gone off to work all by themselves. You can, if you want, completely ignore their needs and focus on the far more enjoyable job of fulfilling their wishes. That desire to see ghosts? That wasn't mine, that was Little Graham's.
Replacing the system of wants and fears from The Sims 2, wishes take two forms. Lifetime Wishes are chosen when you first create a Sim and limited by your selected personality traits - Graham's life goal is to become Master of the Arts by learning to paint and play guitar. Along the way, smaller wishes inspired by the events in a Sim's life present themselves. When your Sim wishes something, you can dismiss it or promise to make it happen. There's no punishment for failure, but accomplishing wishes gathers Lifetime Happiness points that can be spent on special rewards. Like, for example, a fertility treatment that increases the chance of twins and triplets. A ghost seen, a wife married, a newly learned recipe and some guitar practice later, little Ada and Boudica are born.
Wishes not only give your play direction, but meaning. Events inspire wishes. The fulfilment of wishes in turn inspires more events. Life moves forward in a compulsive loop of improving skills, gaining promotions and buying new stuff, all of it purposeful because your Sim wanted it, and had a reason for wanting it.
Broadly defined, there are three roles a Sims player can assume: The Narcissist, who creates their own lives in lovingly accurate or idealised detail; The Soap Writer, who crafts tales of illicit affairs and melodrama; and The Sociopath, who locks Sims in a room, removes the door and watches unfeelingly as they weep, collapse and eventually starve to death. I find I move from one role to the next as my interest and attachment fluctuates.
Modelling Sims on yourself and your loved ones changes the way you play. The callous whims that might otherwise dictate your decisions are now too uncomfortable to pursue. I only want a quiet, comfortable life for Little Graham. The great flaw of The Sims, unchanged in The Sims 3, is that accomplishing this goal renders the game boring. Each day becomes rote: go to work, come home, help the kids, kiss my wife, go to bed and start over. I become trapped in a life of Ballardian comfort, and it's here that I hit my mid-life crisis as a player.
In lieu of erotic car crashes, I start hitting fast forward. I strive for more anecdotes, quicker, but the character being me encourages caution. Eventually, I wish for nothing more exciting than to cook a good meal.
We know this from every other storytelling medium: the most interesting lives involve suffering. My next creations are still inspired by the real world, but I'm far more willing to lead them to pain and heartbreak. Meet Ross, Tim, Craig, Tom and Tony, five bachelors sharing a two-bedroom house, each shabbily designed in the insanely detailed Create-a-Sim tool. I put myself in there, too. I couldn't resist.
Their house is in Sunset Valley, the only town to ship with the game. While The Sims 2 had destinations beyond your own house, visiting them meant a discouragingly long load. Now your hometown is exactly that, explorable on foot, bike or car. While you run your Sims, others are living, dying and breeding all around you. This once claustrophobic game now has a greater scope and a sense of exploration.
Each location serves a purpose. Tom's Lifetime Wish is to become a Creature-Robot Cross Breeder, so he gets a job at the science facility. Tim wants to be an international secret agent, and starts by working at the police station. If you have the funds, you can become a partner or owner of these businesses. Tim also bought the local diner, Tim's House of Meat-Like Byproducts, and became a director of the local hospital. Tim's wages kept the entire household in spaghetti.
You can't see inside any of the work-related buildings. Your Sims' actions there are influenced via a drop-down menu. Tom's Workaholic trait causes him to default to 'Work Hard' status, but I make sure to set Ross, the resident Party Animal, to 'Meet Co-workers'. Graham, meanwhile, is directed to use the fitness facilities at the military base. Time at a local French restaurant has rendered him chubby.
Buildings you can see inside include community lots - a gym, an art gallery, the park - or neighbourhood houses. Ross visited one of the rich families in town, letting me try their cool, expensive toys. After being distracted by Tim, who had again set fire to the kitchen back home, I was surprised by a message telling me Ross had stolen a lamp from his new friends. Possessed by the Kleptomaniac trait, Ross could - with or without provocation from me - thieve randomly. Coincidentally, I'd later direct Ross to befriend all the other rich families in town, gradually collecting a nice living-room set in the process.
Traits let you clearly define the personalities of your characters, and create entirely different situations. Craig's Evil trait inspires him to pursue the criminal career path, but he struggles because he's also Inappropriate and Insane. Aside from being arrested after his first day of work, he's also stolen candy from a baby, insulted that baby to her mother, and eventually entered into a fistfight with the woman. Which he lost. These things wouldn't happen with Tim, whose Excitable, Childish and Over-Excitable traits mostly just cause him to really like playing computer games.
Fundamentally, The Sims 3 is still The Sims. Although a significant improvement, wishes are just a small change from The Sims 2's wants and fears. Traits are just a better version of the previous personality points. The roamable town feels essential, but it's mostly a technological leap. There are new video editing tools, letting you create sets, soundtracks, edit and share custom content, but people were doing that before, too. You'll be doing exactly the kinds of things you did in previous games. It's just a lot slicker.
What EA have done is create a platform for a new generation of expansion packs and downloadable content. Depending on where they take it, this might be like 'needing' to buy all your old films again on Blu-ray, or it might allow for new, exciting additions as towns expand in scope and scale. If you already have expansion packs for Sims 2 that add seasons, pets and witches, the basic Sims 3 feels like a step back.
Yet the core of The Sims 3 is more powerful than ever. Their world, all jaunty music and exaggerated animation, isn't just a platform for expansion packs, but for exploring your own feelings.
Tony was the first of us in the house to die. 93 days old, he was cleaning some dishes in the kitchen when it happened. We buried him in the front garden next to a gigantic meteorite Ross had found, and engraved upon his tombstone an epitaph: "He made our writing gooder. A lot." That night the entire house mourned. Even Craig. At the far corner of the house, Tony's bed stood out, empty. After playing for nearly 40 hours, I still haven't reached the role of The Sociopath.
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