Careers
This expansion pack is all about following and being in control of your sim while he or she is working. This is the biggest difference between the ‘old’ careers and the new ones. You can follow your sim in five new jobs; I will explain these further below. The careers differ a lot from each other. Because of this everyone will have a job which he or she will like.
Just like you are used to, you find new jobs in de newspaper and you can find them online. For some jobs you can go to the workplace to see if they have any jobs available. Every job has its own starting time.
Architect
The career of architect is one of those professions, whereby your sim will get the chance to, gradually, change the looks of your neighborhood. In the beginning you will get assignments to change the interior of a house. But after a short while you even can create an extra room. You can do anything you want, as long as you stay within the budget and the wishes of your clients. Your sim will get a basic salary every week and will receive money for every assignment. If your client is really pleased, you will get a bonus. To get this bonus you need to do more than what the client asked you to do. You can give the house an extra painting for example. At higher levels you are able to offer a make-over instead of waiting for a request.
This career is great fun and especially the builders among us will like it; you are never done building! Although the assignments look similar after a while, the wishes of your clients differ from each other. The fun thing about this job is that the requests are realistic; if a household gets a baby, they want a room for this baby. Personally, I really like this career, it is one of my favorites.
Firefighter
When you are a firefighter nothing is predictable or regular. Your sim stays at the fire station maintaining the equipment, works out, eats, sleeps or develops skills. These quiet moments will be interrupted by an alarm and from then on it is up to you. Your sim needs to be at the emergency as soon as possible. The quicker you resolve the emergency, the higher your bonus will be. With emergency situations I mean small fires inside, houses which are completely on fire, fires outside, an earthquake or a gas leak. Sometimes your sim needs to free someone from a house which is on fire. When there is an emergency outside the working hours you still need to show up. A firefighter’s life is never boring.
This career is easily combined with developing your creative skills or inventing, this because of the many hours you have to wait for a fire. Being a firefighter can be really boring after a while if you do not want to develop those skills, though. You have to do the same things all over again.
Private investigator
The players who liked The Sims 3: World Adventures will definitely like the career private investigator. A private investigator needs to solve cases, which are presented with funny short story lines and contains between the three and the ten steps. The game has over forty different cases. In order to solve cases your sim needs to gather information, break into houses, look through mail from others and go through their junk. But a private investigator does more than solving cases, he has to conduct stakeouts as well and write reports on them. The reports he writes are sent to the police. But he can also try to blackmail the sim he figured something out about.
Like I already said, this career is really fun because of the storylines of the assignments. And of course it is really funny to see the different funny animations and facial expressions of your sim. If you are a private investigator you can choose to be a good or a bad one, which gives you the option to replay this career in a different way. Because of this being a private investigator is never boring.
Ghost hunting
When you are a ghost buster you need to exorcist poltergeists, ghosts and spirits. First you will get a few assignments but later on you will get the change to scan public lots for ghosts and collect them. Collecting ghost will get harder each time your level rises. At higher levels you can talk to them and try to convince them to leave.
This career looks really nice with all the gadgets, the interactions with the ghost and the reaction of other sims on ghosts. It all looks funny. But in a way this job gets boring quite soon. This job lets you repeat the same actions over and over again. At least adding stories could have made it a bit more interesting, but no. This job is the least, according to my taste.
Stylist
The career stylist is basically the same as being an architect: you change the way your town looks. But as a stylist you change the looks of the sims from your town. You will give them complete make-overs: you change their hairstyles, clothing and make-up. Just like the architect, you do have a wish list to look at. Again, you can do more than the wish list and this will probably make you earn more money. Your sim starts out with assignments in the salon but when you reach level three you will get assignments outside of this public building as well.
As the architect career is for builders, the stylist career is for the players who like to create sims. It is really nice and funny to see the sims in town which you gave a make-over. And just like with the architect career, with this one you will be never finished as well: Sims will always come back for another make-over and if you download clothing and hairstyles from the store it will never be boring. This job gives a lot of new elements.
Careers
We talked about the new careers, but there are also the older ones. With old ones we mean the ones where your sim will go to his or her job and vanish into a rabbit hole. Now the last rabbit hole, the school, has a career to. you are now able to be a teacher! I have not played this one yet, but it is already known that your sim will go to the school and go into a rabbit hole.
Last but not least, the medical career is changed into a so called hybrid-career. Your sim will start his or her career the old fashion way, vanishing into a rabbit hole. But when your sim reaches level 4, he or she will get a pager and his or her life will change.
From that moment on, this is the busiest career. You can get called back to work. This can happen any time; even when your sim just finished his shift and got home exhausted. Sometimes your sim needs to vaccinate sims in town. There are several different, optional emergencies. It is really hard work to keep your sim happy with a work schedule like this. This career is not easy, but if you are up for a challenge, you should become a doctor.
Other sources of income
There are also other ways for your sim to earn money. The Sims 3: Ambitions gives the opportunity to buy public lots in town. You could buy a park or a store. If you do so your sim will get money from this investment every week. You can make some improvements to raise the level of the lot. When you do so you will earn more money. This source of income is really easy, it does not matter what kind of career you have. You will get money and you can influence the way your town looks. Just a nice feature.
Last but not least, your sim can go to the town hall to register as a self employed Sim. If your sim can paint, write, garden, fish, invent, photograph or make nectar he or she can have some kind of career. You could just sell your items at the consignment store, but if you are a self employed you earn nice bonuses.
New skills
We have mentioned them a couple of times, the new skills Ambitions gave us. Lets first talk about the sculpting your sim can do.
The higher your level, the more materials you can use. The amount of different sculptures will grow as well. Players who only have The Sims 3 are able to create 75 sculptures, the ones with World Adventures too will even have over 20 more. A lot of items can be created with all the different materials, but some can only be made out of one.
The second new skill is inventing. With this skill your sim can create small gadgets and toys, but as the skill level grows the inventions will become more interesting.
You could just sell the items you created, but other sims also really want these. If your sim is an architect than you might consider to develop this skill, together with the painting skill. My sim got really high bonuses, because I placed some of my creations in other Sims houses, when they wanted a make-over for their home.
The Sims 3: Ambitions also has five hidden skills: Styling, tattooing, the consignment shop, trampoline and gnubb. These will be registered in the background, are hidden and give you small bonuses: you are better or quicker, you win more often or you earn more money.
The Consignment Store
If you want to sell items you created, like paintings, sculptures and inventions, you may want to sell them at the consignment store.
If you sell your items at this shop, you will definitely have a chance to see them again in someone else’s house. It is really strange you cannot sell everything at the shop; old furniture and appliances cannot be sold here. This is a real pity, especially since the store is called a shop specialized in recycling goods. You would think you can recycle anything there. Some players will definitely miss the option to open their own shop. Although you can be a self employed Sim, it is not the same. Let’s hope EA will come with this option in the future. It will definitely be good for the game.
Page 1: Introduction and Twinbrook
Page 2: Create a Sim, Build mode and change neighborhood
Page 3: Jobs, Skills en shop specialized in recycled goods (The page you are right now)
Page 4: New items, time travelling and SimBot
Page 5: Bugs, pros and cons and conclusion