An Improper Review of The Sims 3

[Viltris]

So I recently installed the expansion, World Adventures. And while it certainly added a new aspect to the gameplay (it's a lot like RPG's and questing, except with Sims instead of actual RPG characters and combat). But one thing has always bothered me.

Before I got World Adventures, for some reason I was getting the vibe that these tombs were dangerous and full of death traps.

Then, I got the game and started exploring the Egyptian Pyramids. I told myself that I would see just how dangerous these death traps were.

The first issue became clear to me fairly quickly. After running 4 tombs, I found that two of them didn't have any traps at all. In the other 2 tombs, the traps were immediately obvious, so I literally had to tell my sim to walk into the trap in order to set it off. (There was exactly one hidden trap in those 4 tombs.) So basically, these tombs are as dangerous as an electrical outlet. Sure, if you stick your finger into one, you'll get shocked, but if you stick your finger into an electrical outlet (and aren't a toddler who simply has no concept of electrical outlets), you pretty much deserved what you get.

The second issue is that after I decided to intentionally walk into the traps to test their deadliness, I found they weren't very deadly at all. Half of the time, I walk right over the trap without setting it off. And when I do finally set off a trap, its effects aren't very impressive. I walked a sim into an electrical trap. She got singed, but survived and get stuck with a 60 min timer before she could run the trap again. So I run the trap again, she gets shocked again, and she SURVIVES again.

Yeah, um, I dunno how many times you have to run your sim over a shock trap before the sim dies, but it seems like you really have to try in order to kill your sim. Traps just don't seem to kill sims accidentally.

I guess it makes sense, though. The Sims is supposed to be a family friendly game, and you're not supposed to go around killing off your sims. (People still do it anyway.) If they made World Adventures suddenly deadlier than all the other sims games, there would probably be some upset parents or something.

But as it stands, the traps don't do a very good job at providing me with a sense of danger. They feel more like a minor nuisance. They are about as deadly as "oh crap, my sim is hungry, I need to make him eat something".