The Sims 3

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1, StreetPass Supported

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Review:

I’ve never been a huge fan of The Sims series, so unfortunately I cannot comment on the changes The Sims 3 brings to the popular “Life Sim” style of Management Simulation, or how well the game transitioned from the original release in 2009 on PC and mobile devices, to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2010, and then to the Nintendo 3DS when that platform launched in 2011. For those unaware, The Sims as a franchise is about micromanaging the day-to-day life choices and household purchases of a simulated person going about their life. And for my part I’ll be describing my experience with the game and whether it succeeds in its own right, rather than how it compares to the rest of the franchise.

Graphically, The Sims on Nintendo 3DS feels like it’s trying to bite off more than it can chew. Its 3D characters and environments are fairly low-poly, but the players’ ability to freely manipulate the camera, drop in and move around furniture, and have multiple characters doing things in the area all at the same time seems to be too much for Nintendo’s handheld, with the framerates being pretty poor, pathfinding and hit detection being spotty, and objects occasionally flickering in the environment. At the very least, this game does a wonderful job bringing over the series’ signature incomprehensible “simlish” gobbledygook speak, which even shows up in the game’s diegetic music over the radio, a delightful touch.

When it comes to the gameplay, I feel it should be noted that the core of the Sims formula translates well to the Nintendo 3DS. It works. However, I should note that it works poorly and inconsistently. At times, characters seemed to inexplicably have problems with doors. My sim kept complaining about lighting at night despite being surrounded by lights. At one point, I served dinner to a guest, who inexplicably proceeded to serve herself a dozen plates of food, immediately placing each on the floor before moving on to grab another. These sorts of issues popped up so frequently that I strongly suspect that the playtesting process for the game was sabotaged, if it even got playtesting in the first place.

Even without these nasty bugs, the game has major issues. Players often aren’t provided enough information. I can see when a character is hungry, but once they’ve eaten the game gives no indication when they’ll need their next meal until their hunger is already a problem. At one point, the game gave me the goal of getting my Sim’s partner to “woohoo” (The Sims’ term for sex), but no matter how much making out and massages I instigated, the option never came up, and the game gave me no idea why. Even something as simple as getting rid of a piece of furniture seems to be something I can’t do, or if I can, the game does not give an indication how.

In theory, the touchscreen controls should make all of this easier, but in practice it often just makes it more of a mess. Tapping the current task brings up a description and gives you the option of canceling that task, but the cancel command overlaps with a camera control button, meaning that you might have to make multiple attempts to cancel the command as the game mistakes your intention for moving the camera. Speaking of which, dragging the stylus on the screen to move the view results in the screen going the opposite direction, a game design choice so boneheaded I have to wonder if anyone who worked on the game even played it before releasing it.

And beyond all of this, beyond the bugs and glitches, beyond the terrible design choices, there’s also the fact that the underlying game is kinda’ tedious. When I want to go about getting my Sim to realize their goals of improving their career, upgrading their living quarters, and having an amazing social life, it’s really frustrating to have this interrupted every few minutes by them demanding one of their basic needs to be met. I can’t hang out with friends, I need to shower, I can’t woo my love interest, I need to eat. Okay, I served dinner to my guest, but now my Sim is freaking out about the mess. Okay, now I got that taken care of, but my guest got bored and left. And I tried to do something else, but my Sim decided it was time to sleep instead. Oh yes, that’s another thing – your Sim will actually struggle with you over the decisions you make for them and their life. You’re told to micromanage their life, and then the game sometimes won’t even let you do that!

There’s so much that really frustrated me about Sims 3 on Nintendo 3DS, but what maybe frustrated me the most was that I felt like there was a compelling experience buried underneath all the problems, under all the bugs and design flaws, under all the tedious busywork. But inevitably, whenever I’d close in on the fun buried deep within this game, some issue would come up that would frustrate my attempt to enjoy the game. Trust me, if you want to play The Sims on Nintendo 3DS, get The Sims 3: Pets instead.

tl;dr – The Nintendo 3DS port of The Sims 3 has players managing the life of their simulated person in a Management Simulation that manages to get the basics of the Sims series gameplay right, but fumbles just about everything else. This game is a buggy, poorly-designed, tedious mess, and while I can sense the fun struggling deep in here somewhere trying to get out, it seems that someone pulled up the ladder from that pool, leaving players’ hopes to drown in this sub-standard port.

Grade: D+

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