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| The Sims 3: Hidden Springs |
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Graphics & Sound:It has been over 6 months since I reviewed the The Sims 3: Generations and now there are two new towns, Hidden Springs and Lunar Lakes (which is another review) available to play, and upcoming soon The Sims 3: Showtime, so we have a lot of new Sims features to play.
Since this is just a new town instead of a new game, the character options are basically the same as in the previous games that you have installed. You can still customize your Sims exactly as before or you can choose one of the new households to play as. Personally, I really liked all of the new, large houses as I just like to pretend I live in a huge mansion with a swimming pool. I love the look of the Day Spa in town. It is an absolutely gorgeous place that I would love to visit in real life. As always, you can design and customize your own house exactly as you want, down to the tiniest details. You could still use The Sims 3 to design your dream house.
Nothing has changed with the music or the voices. The background music is still the same as what we are used to and the Sims still speak the same unintelligible language. |
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Gameplay:The Sims 3: Hidden Springs is a completely new town with new homes, new families, and more new things for you to become addicted to. The town of Hidden Springs is situated on a very nice lake with some very expensive houses. This is a true luxury. The town is quite large and sports the normal businesses that you are used to, like a book store, grocery, science facility, but this town even has a night club and a tattoo parlor! On the far outskirts of town is a military base and on the other side of town is a junkyard that you can find scrap for inventing with. There is even the Fountain of Youth hidden somewhere, but I am not going to spoil that one for you.
With a military base in town, I found that some of the Opportunities for certain careers incorporated that base. I liked having different opportunities as it makes everything feel new, but then given how many jobs there are to choose from and then the specialties within each job, it'll take you a long time to go through them all and all their bonus opportunities. |
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Difficulty:When you start The Sims 3, you will need to do a new game to play in your new town. After you click New Game, select Hidden Springs from the drop down box under Select a Town. You are given the option to create your own Sims (Create Sims), choose one of their starting households (Choose Household), or pick an already established family in town to start with (Move In Household), the same as the other games. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. When you start your own with your custom Sims, you can make them whoever you want, but you will find yourself struggling to make ends meet until you get a bit better at your careers. The same is true with the starting households they provide, but they do tell you based on the number of stars how difficult that household will be.
You might find it easier to start with a pre-made family that has plenty of money. The households in Hidden Springs have more money than I have seen on pre-made families yet, which is really nice. Granted, you don't get to customize the families that way, but you can spend as much as you want! Of course, bigger houses mean that it takes longer to get from room to room and it's hard to watch the whole thing at the same time, so it is a trade-off. Don't forget as well that the more house you have, the more your bills will be. Personally though, I find it easiest if you don't want that starving struggle to choose a nice, big house and play with that family. It's not as much of a challenge to get them going, but that provides you the extra time you need to go hunting for the Fountain of Youth! |
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Game Mechanics:You might think that once your Sim dies that you're done with them, but that's quite a bit far from the truth. You can take their ashes to the science facility and try to bring their ghost back. It's not guaranteed to work, but even with just the ghost, you can use it to explore. Unfortunately, they will still need to eat, sleep, and stay hygienic as if they were still alive, but since they lose their job when they die and you don't want to start over at the beginning, they are great to use to find things like the Fountain of Youth. If you don't like controlling a ghost though, you can do the same thing with a live character, but they just don't have as much time when they have a job. Alternatively, you can have your character be a writer or painter so that they won't have set hours where they have to be somewhere.
The Sims 3 is one of those games that once you start playing, you can't seem to stop. I love that new content like Hidden Springs is continually being added to provide new places to roam around in. It makes it feel like a completely new game with a much smaller price tag. If you're a fan of The Sims, I recommend that you pick up The Sims 3: Hidden Springs and go on your own quest for the Fountain of Youth today! |
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-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl |
Minimum System Requirements:
XP SP2/Vista SP1/Windows 7, CPU: For XP 2.0 GHx P4 or equivalent/For Vista and 7 2.4 GHz P4 or equivalent, RAM: For XP 1 GB/For Vista and 7 1.5 GB RAM, 2.5 GB with 1 GB additional space for saves, Graphics: 128 MB Video Card with Pixel Shader 2.0 Support |
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Test System:
Windows XP Service Pack 3, Processor: 2.4 GHx, Memory: 3 GB, Hard Drive: 15 GB free, Graphics: 128 MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, Sound: DirectX 9.0c (Failed Test System is the same other than 4 GB RAM and running Windows 7 64-bit)
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