Since this is a translation of our own, Dutch article and names, some in-game terms can differ slightly from the corresponding English terms in your game.
What an exciting day ahead …
I, TenerifeTerreur from Sims 3 Nieuws, am going to meet some other team members AND I am going to visit EA.
Anita, the Community Manager of EA Netherlands, heartily welcomed us and told us we could start playing right away.
My very first impression: the loading screen of this new town looks great and tranquilizing. I am delighted to see lots of new buildings and families in Twinbrook. And just as with Sunset Valley and Riverview this town is introduced by a nice story.
After a short, but critical look at Twinbrook, we quickly agree, that Twinbrook combines the best of Sunset Valley and Riverview.
On with it. The first step is (of course) selecting a family to play with.
The first option which I thought was nice to look at, was ‘moving house’. Your mobile gives you the option to ‘look at real estate’, which means you get to see all houses that are for sale. Since no Sims had had the time to put their houses on for sale yet, I chose the option to ‘move house’. So I wasn’t able to look into further options of this function ‘look at real estate’.
We still think it is a pity, there is no option to move your Sims from one town to another. But then again, Twinbrook has got a great deal of opportunities to choose a nice spot to go and live.
Next I chose to split my family and discover Twinbrook with the woman of the family.
As soon as I had chosen a nice, empty lot the time was there to have a better look at the new build-options.
Immediately there was this first WOW-moment. We do have the possibility to recolor the sides of the floor tiles, at balconies for instance. No more ugly, grey sides anymore!!!
I experienced a second WOW-moment when I looked into the option to recolor the ceilings. There is a new category with quite some nice, new patterns for this option, including some with this beautiful, ornamental plastering.
Of course we had a look at the new option to separately adjust the height of your roofs on a lot. It simply is marvelous. When having 2 or more roofs, you can simply adjust the height of each one separately with one click and using the slider. Alas, we still do not get the option to recolor those roofs separately, but of course we mentioned to the EA employees that some of you are still wishing for this to come. Another beautiful thing are the new columns: with a slider you can adjust their height to up to 3 stories. This cannot be done to all columns that are in the game. The ones you can’t use this option on are grayed out, so you can easily see which ones to use.
With ‘Ambitions’ there comes a lot of nice, new items. We noticed that the new doors and windows blend in fabulously with the existing ones, already available in the base game. We don’t want to give away too much details about those new items and things, but we would like to mention we were pleasantly surprised by at least one of the new terrain paints: a second asphalt pattern.
Now let’s have a look at the new neighborhood tool.
It’s nice we can place empty lots in the neighborhood from now on. It does have a restriction though. You cannot place a lot where trees and the like are in the way. But those can be removed to make room for your new lot.
New lots can be rotated. Thereby skew placing is possible. And with your ALT-key pressed the 360 degrees, free rotation is available. So you are able to place your new lot nice, but above all, exactly the way you want it at the borders of the lake.
Amongst the new items, especially for placement in your neighborhood, the top of the bill-one for us was a beautiful, old train with some rails underneath, ready to be placed wherever you want. Another one, a picnic bench for placement in your neighborhood, still had a little bug we think. After placement, the bench went white instead of getting the wooden texture we saw in the small picture.
You don’t have the possibility to recolor neighborhood items with your ‘Create a Style’ tool.
We liked the new furniture, sparse as it may be. Especially that one, pouflike table caught our eye. And the new, digital photo frames are marvelous.
The new washing machine and dryer look great and realistic. And to make things even more realistic, there are some nice decorative items, like washing powder and a pile of nicely cleaned and ironed laundry. On top of this, you can even place a laundry basket in your house, so the piles of dirty laundry, don’t have to stay lying around your house. Eco-friendly Sims don’t have the possibility to do their washes in the sink.
They dislike driving around in a car or on a motorcycle, feeling they are being poisoned. But then again, they do get a brand new, nice recycling bin. And although there is a junkyard in town we did not see a tumbrel moving around town. Anita told us there are none in the game.
We did like the new motorcycle a lot. It can be placed at the same parking spot you use for your car. Too bad we only get one type of motorcycle. But that creates a perfect opportunity for Custom Content makers.
How nice it was to learn more about SimBot.
You get SimBot, by spending quite a few points from your Lifetime reward pool, or you can try to invent it.
SimBot is a character of its own and becomes a full family member. He/she gets a nice first name and the family surname. Too bad SimBot cannot be recolored with ‘Create a Style’.
The needs of SimBot are::
– Junk reserve – comparable to ‘hunger’
– Production of waste – comparable to ‘bladder’
– Recharge – comparable to ‘energy’
– Human interaction – comparable to ‘social’
– Trivial entertainment – comparable tot ‘fun’
SimBot can destroy old furniture and after that eat the remaining junk and scrap. Or he can try and invent something nice with this material. It is lots of fun to use the new trampoline together with SimBot or play the new two-person lawn game.
Let’s have a look at the possibilities of the new professions.
The differentiation between the old jobs and new professions is nice and clear: jobs are the old ones and professions are the new ones.
It is not possible to start a new profession by using the cheat ‘testingcheatsenabled true’- SHIFT/Mailbox. You can start them by looking up the add in a newspaper and possibly through using your computer. We didn’t check that, but it has been mentioned in other, earlier previews. And we are a very trusting team.
Fire fighter
A beautiful profession. Especially the fire animation looks great. The cheat ‘Placefires’ gives you a nice chance to even start bigger fires.
We’re not sure if you get a fire truck as a reward during your career. But we do know you can place one at the parking spot on your lot by using the ‘BuyDebug’ cheat. Now your Sims can go shopping or visit the park with screaming sirens and flashing beacons.
We did not encounter a garden gnome invasion. For now that seems to be EA’s best kept secret. But we can give away there are two new gnomes: a sort of inventor-gnome and a prehistoric looking one.
Doctor
The hospital still is a rabbit hole. Your Sims won’t be able to stay at the hospital. When giving birth there, you still won’t be able to be present.
Giving birth at home has not changed. You see the same animation, your Sim shouts, and shouts, and shouts and ‘poofff’, a baby falls from the sky right into your arms.
We did not see any hospital or doctor stuff using the ‘Buydebug’ cheat (perhaps we did not see those, because of what we write a little bit further on). Items, related to other professions were there, though.
Interior designer/Architect
A profession we are delighted with.
The jobs you get are hopeless cases in which Sims are asking you to do a re-decoration.
It is important to keep a sharp eye on the budget used already. The maximum you can use is twice the budget. If you exceed that, you won’t be able to buy new things anymore.
The design table for architects only functions if you place a stool. But after you have done so, your Sim will draw some of the nicest things, all concept art of the Sims. Our architect for instance drew a nice design sketch of the apron of the inventor.
By going for this profession you will be able to see your influence throughout the town; a very positive point.
Tattooist
Endless, great possibilities.
Tattoos can be placed all over your Sim’s body (with exception of the head and the legs).
You are able to layer multiple tattoos en resize each layer separately. Adjusting the transparency of a tattoo affects all layers at the same time.
We found 2 different chairs for this profession: the normal one, where another Sim places your new tattoo and the fully automated one, which applies your tattoo. Using the latter still leaves you the choice which tattoo you like and where to apply it. We spontaneously started laughing at the start of the tattoo process of this chair. They managed to make a very nice animation of that.
Privat Investigato
A profession we did not have the chance to look at (4 hours of play was too short to investigate everything of this expansion).
But we noticed a special, new door for this profession, which you will be able to use at home (if your PI likes to work from home). The door has a milk glass window with a large reading glass on it.
We thought it a pity there are no doors for other professions, like a door with a tribal for a tattooist or one with a brush for an interior designer. But again we see lots of opportunities for custom content makers here.
Inventor
Again a very nice profession (to be honest, we thought all professions to be very beautiful and realistic).
You can visit the junkyard to collect scrap and junk for your new inventions. Of course you could use SimBot too, to destroy your old furniture and collect scrap that way
The inventions you can do are really amazing with the creation of a monster as a sort of crowning.
One new lifetime wish we discovered, related to this profession: ‘Monster Maker’, which can be fulfilled by creating 3 monsters.
Ghost hunter
For this profession we found a new lifetime wish as well: ‘Paranormal proficere’, to be fulfilled by reaching level 10 in the Ghost hunter profession. A nice and spooky profession: hunting down and driving out ghosts and spirits.
There are different types of spirits to be expelled or leaden back to their grave. What kinds of ghosts and spirits we did see we would like to keep for ourselves a little longer. We think it to be a lot nicer to discover this yourself, when you become the proud owner of ‘The Sims 3 Ambitions’ yourself.
About new ways to die and colors of new ghosts the people of EA were quite mysterious. They think this to be something to be discovered by the players themselves as well.
Sculptor
You will be able to create nice things by choosing this profession. The higher your experience level and skill, the more materials you will be able to use. Each material has its own specific way to work with it. We managed to create sculptures out of a large chunk of clay, depicting two different chairs..
We didn’t have the time to progress beyond this level, but seeing how much fun working with clay was, we are sure working with the other materials will be great as well.
Stylist
1 word: MAR-VE-LOUS!!!
I will try and tell you all something more about this profession then a simple MAR-VE-LOUS.
First of all, this profession is another nice way to see your influence all around town.
You are able to give your townies a complete makeover by changing their hair, makeup and clothing all at the same time. To do this you will need the special stylist-podium (to be found in the categorie study/hobbies and skills). Of course there is always that risk that you spoil the make-over.
By the way, by using the ‘UnlockOutfits’ cheat you can apply failed makeup to your Sim anyway, which leads to a hilarious look. Besides that, by using this cheat you will be able to find more clothing for professions.
Personally I am very pleased by the splendid, new hairstyles coming with this expansion (some of which are only available through the stylists and their makeovers). Some other new hairstyles are already available when creating a new Sim, or when using the ‘change looks’ option of a mirror.
Another great new thing to mention is a slight change in the User interface.
With the release of ‘Ambitions’ you will be able to filter the symbols in the map overview using the following categories:
– Alles
– All;
– Home and work;
– Homes of friends;
– Community lots;
– Jobs;
– Real estate;
– None.
Tasks for your Sims, related to their professions will be depicted by a golden circle instead of the usual blue one and will have a star shaped border. In this way you can recognize in a very easy way, which Sim has a task for you, like a ‘Stylist task’ or an ‘Architectural task’.
Using the ‘DiscoTags on/off’ cheat is, well, how shall we put it, hmm, quite special.
We hope we have given you all a good impression in this review of what to expect with the release of ‘The Sims 3 Ambitions’. We enjoyed every moment of this sneak preview and with every new thing we discovered we got a big grin from ear to ear on our face.
We would like to thank Anita, the Community Manager of EA Netherlands, again for this nice and productive day.
Our conclusion: ‘The Sims 3 Ambitions’ is a real must-have and we highly recommend it. Now that we were able to play this beautiful expansion we are sure, the next two weeks will be kind of dull for us in any case, only being able to play The Sims 3 without it.
(TenerifeTerreur – Sims 3 Nieuws)