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The Sims 3 | 
| From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $49.99
Buy Used: $23.78
as of 11/24/2009 10:56 CST details
You Save: $26.21 (52%)
New (87) Used (64) from $23.78
Seller: Crative Aliens
Rating:  446 reviews
Sales Rank: 94
Format: CD-ROM
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X
Genre: life_simulation_strategy_games
ESRB: Teen
Media: DVD-ROM
Edition: Standard
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 12 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: 15390
Model: 15390
UPC: 014633153903
EAN: 0014633153903
ASIN: B00166N6SA
Release Date: June 2, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | New Seamless, Open NeighborhoodExplore the neighborhood freely. | | • | New Create A Sim Create any Sim you can imagine. | | • | New Realistic PersonalitiesEvery Sim is a unique person, with a distinct personality. | | • | New Unlimited CustomizationEveryone can customize everything! | | • | The freedom of The Sims 3 will inspire you with endless possibilities and amuse you with unexpected moments of surprise and mischief. |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Get inspired by the endless creative possibilities and unexpected moments of surprise and mischief in The Sims 3! Customize your Sims' appearances and choose up to five traits to create individual personalities. From the “Romantic” trait or “kleptomaniac” trait to “evil” trait, create millions of unique Sims from the vast amount of personalities. New goal-oriented gameplay enables you to choose which short or long-term objectives you want your Sims to pursue and even determine your Sims' destinies in life. Create and edit your own movies by capturing your gameplay moments or select from a library of clips. Then join The Sims 3 online community where you can show off all of your creations, get free bonus content, hear the latest news, and more!
Amazon.com Product Description
The freedom of The Sims 3 will inspire you with endless creative possibilities and amuse you with unexpected moments of surprise and mischief. Create millions of unique Sims and control their lives. Customize their appearances and personalities. Build their homes - design everything from exquisitely furnished dream homes to quaint cottages. Then, send your Sims out to explore their ever-changing neighborhood and to meet other Sims in the town center. With all-new quick challenges and rewarding game play, The Sims 3 gives you the freedom to choose whether (or not) to fulfill your Sims' destinies and make their wishes come true. 
Create like never before.
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New seamless neighborhoods.
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New create a Sim and personalities.
View larger. | 
Extreme home customization.
View larger. | Key Game Features: - New Seamless, Living Neighborhood
- Explore the ever-changing neighborhood—and take your Sims to meet friends in the park, go on a date at the bistro, visit neighbors’ homes, converse with less-than-savory characters in the graveyard and more. Who knows what might happen?
- Admire the natural beauty of the beach, the mountains, and more.
- New Create a Sim Functionality
- Create any Sim you can imagine with easy-to-use design tools that allow for unlimited customization of facial features, hair color, eye color, and more.
- Fine tune your Sims’ body shape from thin to curvy to muscular.
- New Personality Traits
- Create over a million different personalities with traits such as evil, insane, kleptomaniac, romantic, and more.
- Influence the behaviors of your Sims with the traits you’ve chosen. Will you create a neurotic romantic with a heart of gold, or a geeky super-genius with an evil streak?
- New Unlimited Customization
- Everyone can customize everything—design and build your dream house and decorate it to fit your Sims’ personalities.
- Customize everything from floors to décor, shirts to sofas, wallpaper to window shades.
- New Gameplay That’s Rewarding and Quick
- Face short and long-term challenges and reap the rewards.
- Your Sims can pursue random opportunities to get fast cash, get ahead, get even, and more.
- Choose whether, or not, to fulfill your Sims’ destinies by making their wishes come true. Will your Sims be thieves, rock stars, world leaders? The choice is yours.
- Get Connected and Share Your Creations with The Sims 3 Online Community
- Get free bonus content—download Sims, outfits, furnishings, houses and more.
- Create and Share Sims, houses, movies and more with anyone.
- Join The Sims 3 community to share ideas with fans of The Sims from around the world.
System Requirements: | Minimum Specifications: | | OS: | Windows Vista (SP1)/Windows XP (SP2) | Mac OS X 10.5.7 Leopard or higher | | Processor: | Vista - 2.4 GHz P4 or equivalent/XP - 2.0 GHz P4 or equivalent | Intel Core Duo Processor | | RAM: | Vista - 1.5 GB/XP - 1GB | 2GB | | Disc Drive: | 8x DVD ROM or faster | 8x DVD ROM or faster | | Hard Drive: | Vista & XP - 8 GB or more | At least 6.1 GB of hard drive space, with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content and saved games. | | Video Card: | 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0. Supported video cards include: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900, FX 5950, 6200, 6500, 6600, 6800, 7200, 7300, 7600, 7800, 7900, 7950, 8400, 8500, 8600, 8800, 9600, 9800, GTX 260, GTX 280 (GeForce FX unsupported under Vista); ATI Radeon 9500, 9600, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800, X850, X1300, X1600, X1800, X1900, X1950, 2400, 2600, 2900, 3450, 3650, 3850, 3870, 4850, 4870; Intel Extreme Graphics GMA X3x00 series. | ATI X1600 or Nvidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100. | | Other: | Laptop versions of chipsets above may work, but may run comparatively slower. | * This game will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) based Mac systems, or the GMA 950 class of integrated video cards. |
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 446
 Impressed June 3, 2009
Jessica Cave (Seattle, Wa)
99 out of 132 found this review helpful
No one can deny how hyped up this game was. After all, it was moved back from a February launch to a June launch for more marketing. Maybe it was just a ploy to get us riled up and to make us want it more, but I'm sure it worked.
I've noticed from trolling the forums for the last hour or so that a lot of people are simply complaining about the game. I don't think there's enough to really complain about and I think that there should be more praise for EA for coming out with a dang good game. I've compiled a list of the good things and the bad things that I've noticed in a day's worth of playing. Here's a few highlights and lowlights:
Cons:
1. Timing is off. This seems like more of an overlook to me - the 2nd and 3rd fast forward buttons don't really make it jump forward very fast. It takes about 3 to 5 real minutes to make a Sim sleep through the night. This is easily fixable with a patch.
2. Small object variety. EA seems to be trying to market the Sims3 Store more than ever. In reality, the game probably has close to the equivalent of objects that the Sims2 base game shipped with. We're just used to a ton more thanks to custom content, expansion packs, and stuff packs. There are lots of customizable options which are nice, but the game could definitely handle more objects.
3. High Spec Requirements. This limits playing on even slightly older machines in a huge way. My laptop, which easily ran The Sims 2, is only 3 years old and was top-of-the-line when I purchased it, cannot run the game. My brother's $500 laptop purchased ready-made from Best Buy can, however, which is how I'm playing it now. Until I can get a new one, I'm out of luck.
Pros:
1. Moodlets. These are fabulous additions to the game. They remind me heavily of the Sims 2 Vacation perks, but more common and more easily achieved.
2. Wishes. These are a big easier to manage than Wants and seem to fit more with a Sim's personality. If my Sim is big into gardening, she'll get wishes to plant or find a seed or learn more about gardening. It makes much more sense now.
3. Clothing options. I've heard people complaining about this, but I found myself quite happy with the options that were there. There were plenty of choices and unlimited design options.
4. The world itself. I love being able to just walk around the neighborhood, searching for rocks and bugs and seeds. I like walking to the bookstore and buying something new. I like taking cooking classes at the diner. It brings a whole new level to the gaming.
5. Traits. Sims seem so much more customizable. Traits allow us to make them into their own people. The optinos are excellent and give us far more options than before. Choosing favorites is fun, but essentially unimportant.
6. Interactions. Traits deal heavily into the interactions that are available between Sims. If your Sim is a Hopeless Romantic, you'll have more options in the Romance category. If your Sim is a Natural Cook, you'll have the option to talk about cooking, enthuse about cooking, etc.
Overall, I'm pleased with the game. I was looking forward to it and I'm not let down whatsoever. There are things that could be made better and it is sad that EA is so determined to make us spend money, but the core game is pretty dang good. Thanks, EA, for making a great game!
If you use the new stuff - Great Game - NOT AN EXPANSION = GOOD THING June 4, 2009
W. Dodd
20 out of 30 found this review helpful
At first I wanted to slam this game - Ultra speed is too slow, no 'expansion' stuff like pets, appartments, seasons, and other goodies from Sims 2...I was extremely dissapointed.
I gave it a second go the following day, created a big family, built my own house and started utilizing some of the new features and I couldn't stop playing. The seamless neighborhood which I thought was stupid is actually pretty sweet after all. You can come and go as you please, there's people everwhere in town and there's some new interaction stuff with the personality types and special personality traits that make the relationship aspect of the game a little more meaningful than previous versions. Perhaps my favorite thing about this game is that you don't need meaningless relationships anymore to advance your careers, a HUGE improvement in my opinion...no more tedium. Let me clarify - The whole 'have 5 friends, now 8 friends, now 10....' was the most useless and most tedious part of Sims 2...no mas. You don't have to spend 90% of your time getting people to come over and then spamming chat/hug/play to advance in the game!!! Career advancement is improved so that your job performance, which may include your relationship with your boss, certain skill advancements, and your mood, is what drives your career.
There is a much improved random-factor as well, you constantly get little side quests (even if you're a child) that can improve your job/school performance, help you learn cooking recipes/skills, help build relationships, or make you some side money. Add the short term and long term wishes that your Sims have and you have an RPGish thing going on which adds a lot of depth to the game.
Other things that are deeper are the inventory system, careers and schooling are deeper because you get to choose how you want to behave while on the job/at school (you can work in a normal mode you can choose to get to know people at work/school, you can work extra hard which will increase performance but add stress), and there's also career paths within each career as well. You have moodlets which add temporary benefits/curses that effect your mood (ie. fatigued -20 mood for 4hrs and you can't excercise, or 'having a blast' +40 mood for 10hrs etc etc). You can also choose how hard you want to work out, the size of the painting you want to create, you can tweak recipes, you can even modify your toilet to be self cleaning, if you have the skill...all these little things make the game deeper, in my opinion.
Building is also streamlined a bit, you can place bought items diagonallly, you can create your own patterns etc. There are, collectively, less items, which is understandable considering all the expansions that will surely be released, but this version of the Sims is less about sitting in your pad and playing with all your new stuff and constantly buying new stuff, and more about going out there and utilizing other features of the game.
I think people are initially slamming the game since we're all in 'expansion mode', having lived through a dozen Sims 2 expansions, and we collectively expected an expansion of Sims 2 with a few new features and a ton of items, but this game is different and is not an expansion. Not having hot tubs, not seeing people open doors to get into cars, not having the crazy woohoo animations is NOT A BAD THING. It's a much deeper game, regardless of what people say, you just have to use the features to enjoy it.
Addicting June 15, 2009
C. R. Laird (The Forgotten Part of Florida)
20 out of 30 found this review helpful
Well, I had some reservations when I ordered this game, but I'm such a sims addict that I took the chance.
The graphics -
Good - They are better than the sims 2 and feel like an improvement to me, especially in the surroundings.
Bad - While playing sims 3 my laptop will overheat and crash sometimes, but it does that with World of Warcraft also, so it is not the game.
Open Neighborhood -
Good - I love having no loading screens, I always played sims 2 with a book that I would read while I loaded.
Bad - When I move from sim to sim sometimes it comes in at a weird camera angle and I have to adjust.
Traits -
Good - The sims are definently more individualized, I don't fell like they're carbon copies of each other.
Bad - I miss the likes and dislikes, I feel like I'm starting over again by not being able to have my sim scope a room, so finding someone to love is harder.
Timing -
Good - You can adjust the lifespans of your sims quite easily.
Bad - Speed 3 is not nearly as fast in TS3 as it was in TS2.
Objects -
Despite the complaints I feel that the amount of objects in TS3 is the same if not more than it was in TS2 before all of the expansions. Because of this I will be anticipating expansions that expand the content and objects, just like in TS2.
Sim Store -
The only stuff pack I ever bought was on clerance (celebration pack), I played this game with only the basics and the expansions and enjoyed it quite a bit. If people are whinning about the store they should grow up, just because it's there doesn't mean they have to buy it.
Internet -
I bought the game through Amazon on a disc and I am able to play while disconnected from the internet quite easily.
Securom -
If it is here than it has caused me no problems in the week I've had the game. My cd/dvd player is still playing cds and dvds. I'm having no system problems.
This game is completely addicting and I find it just as engaging, if not more so than TS2. The family I'm playing right now don't have jobs, they just garden, paint, and write books. The books and royalties are quite amazing and truly make having a family survive without jobs quite easy. Yet I've also had a sim that is working her up through the athletic career, I enjoyed the new choices at work and the fact that I didn't have to get 8 friends or something to succeed.
Excelent work!! The best sims made. But... November 18, 2009
S. Castillo (Costa Rica)
I am a really huge fan of the sims, and the sims 3 is just better in a lot ways than the sims 2, and I dont believe that the people doesnt like it; and my reasons are:
1. The sims 3 is a town, is more big, complex, there a lot more of interactions with the neighbors, co-workers, you can meet anyone, you can go to their houses and have plenty of fun inside (this mode in the sims 2 doesnt exist), you can go to the bookshop, library, groceries store, to see a movie, eat at the Bistro restaurant, to the beach, diferents types of lakes, the graveyard (explore the catacombs is a lot of fun), stonehenge, mine,etc. For this reason I will never play the sims 2 again, is a lot better, thats all. YOU CAN EAT FREE IN THE MAIN STREET, READ BOOKS FOR LEARNING SKILLS FREE IN THE LIBRARY, MAKE A GRILL IN THE MAIN STREET, YOU CAN INVITE ANYONE YOU HAD MEET TO ANY PLACE IN ALL THE TOWN, YOU CAN GO TO THE GYM TO EXCERCISE, SWIM IN THE COMMUNITY POOL, ETC..
2. When you make a sim, I love it; because you can do it the way you like it, there is pleny of tools to make it perfect. The traits (30 or more) you have to choose it carefully, for example i love angler, thumb green, loves outdoors, ambitious, natural cook, etc. That will make you perfect in fishing, gardening and cooking.. And my wife is charismatic that has 70 friendships, and is the governor of the town.. And is more and more; the sims 2 cant never reach it.....
3. The lifetime points is similar to the sims 2, but is better too. You have to make your sims to get all your wishes possible, to reach the highest lifetime wishes.
4. In the sims 3; you can collect gems, rocks, butterflies, space rocks, and it has their proper value, and this is very fun to play.
5. Fishing, gardening, writing are perfect... You write a book and it is a best seller you can see your own novel in the shop book.. Fishing you will see your sim catching a tragic clown fish, swordfish, angelfish; etc.. Gardening you can look for seeds, there is a lot of types of plants, trees, etc to produce..
6. All your family will grow with the members of the town at same time, if you dont want to grow up you have to eat ambrosia, or go to options and dont age, ok.. I accept is more difficult with children because you have to care about them, take care of friendships, the garden, work, etc. I prefer to play with 4 or 5 members at max, because more is very exhausted...
7. There a lot of carreers and each one has its own opportunities, and at the highest position of each job you get a special reward, it is very fun.
8. Ok.. All of this you can play without problems if you have a good video card, memory, proccesor to play; because this game is much, much bigger than the sims 2, so you can imagine, if you have 4 members of your family in different places, the camara switch from one place to another if you want to see whats is going with the other sim, and without a good computer it will take time, and I hate that!! And remember to play in more than 19" LCD monitor, it is better...
9. THE ONLY THING I DONT LIKE IS THAT IF YOU WANT SOMETHING NEW FOR THE GAME (FURNITURE, ETC) YOU HAVE TO BUY IT, AND IT MAKES VERY DISSAPOINTING WHEN YOU KNOW THAT ELECTRONICS ARTS HAS A LOT OF MONEY SELLING ALL THEIR STUFF, SO WHY?????
10. For the new players is better to play sims 2 first to know how to play and later go to the sims 3...
Great improvement on the Sims 2 November 19, 2009
mea23611 (Minneapolis, MN)
I've been playing The Sims 2 for years, and loved it. When The Sims 3 came out, I wasn't planning to buy it. But I'm so glad that I did! So much has been added to the game. The open neighborhood is great -- my Sims actually go places, instead of staying cooped up in their houses because I don't want to wait for community lots to load. They meet Sims outside of school and work. I love the new wants system, which I think is a vast improvement on the old one -- I like that the wants are tailored to the personality of your Sim, and that his/her personality is more than just "family" or "romance." I love that you don't have to buy clothes, even with the hacked coathook for The Sims 2 that was a pain. Overall it's a great game. I'm really enjoying exploring the town, playing the different premade families and a few of my own. It's interesting to check in on various pre-made families after a couple of generations and see what's happened to them.
Two cons: For some reason the game occasionally doesn't work if I have iTunes open. This only happens sometimes -- and not after I've had an iPod or something plugged in, like the FAQ suggests. But it's easy enough to fix. Closing iTunes and rebooting gets rid of the disc error, and then you can just put it into windowed mode quickly and reopen iTunes. Secondly, I'm using a Mac, and installing custom content is quite a production. They made it pretty much impossible (unless of course you buy from their overpriced store, which I'm not inclined to do). I don't use much CC, since I can recolor things on my own, but it would be nice if that were easier.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 446
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