The Sims 3: Into the Future - Limited Edition
Score: 95% ESRB: Teen Publisher: EA Games Developer: Maxis Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Simulation
Graphics & Sound: The Present: The last few Add-Ons I’ve reviewed for The Sims 3 haven’t been my favorites. They just seemed like they were lacking. I am quite pleased that The Sims 3: Into The Future breaks that streak and adds a whole new depth to The Sims universe. The future comes with some great technology and stuff that you can buy for the present day house. Stairs have been one of my greatest challenges when trying to build my own house. It just seems that I can never get them exactly where I want to. Now, that isn’t a problem at all. I just put an elevator pretty much anywhere I’ve got room on top and bottom (I usually use a corner) and my Sims can quickly get from one floor to the next. I highly recommend getting rid of your outdated stairs in favor of an elevator that doesn’t cost too much! The other big thing that I recommend is getting rid of all your beds in favor of a dream pod. Your Sims will want one anyway, so give it to them. Instead of just sleeping, you can now choose what your Sims will dream about. Be careful because dreams can be very powerful. If you dream of different personalities, for example, you might wake up with completely different traits than what you went to bed with. Dream can be good though, increasing your adeptness at learning skills or your good will towards family and friends. You can even have your Sims join in another Sim’s dreams. I must mention that there are quite a lot of new clothes and items that also look perfectly futuristic. You can create an entire house in the present that will make you feel like you’ve traveled to the future without actually going there. Your Sims can become the most fashion-forward people around.
Gameplay: The Future: Your actions in the present can now affect the future. The more kids you have, the more descendants that you will have to visit in the future. Your skills and traits can be passed on as well. Many things you do in the present will affect the future. The future can be normal, dystopian, or utopian. The normal future is quite cool on its own. You can just roam around the future, but there is a specific goal that you can accomplish as well. When you get to the future, find the Time Traveler that you first met. Talk to him and choose Assist with Research. He’ll give you tasks to do. These tasks will all be required to get you into the wrecked spaceship out in the wasteland. The spaceship is really cool inside, but I was hoping to find some cool item in there. Granted, I might have missed it, so if you find something cool, let me know! Future is like college. You travel to a new city (same for every town that you originally started in). The town that you visit is not based on your starting location, so don’t expect to find your house(s) that you have built still standing. There is a wasteland on the edge of town, so I am just assuming that your starting town has been lost in that wasteland. When you travel to the future, you will be in a communal living area that is quite large. You have full control of the common living area that you arrive in, just like you do in whatever dorm you live in while in college. This means that if you want to stock your house with future items, you can simply go to the future, move whatever you want into your family inventory, then go back to your time and deck out your home. You can also sell stuff in the future for money, but remember that whatever you take will be gone when you go back again, even if you change to a dystopian or utopian future. You can get a job in the future, completely separate from your normal job in the past. Basically when you time travel, anything that you left in the other time is put on hold. Your family and friends you left in the time that you are not in will not age, not even your household members. You will continue to age normally, so don’t leave a Sim there too long unless you want them to be a lot older than the rest of their family is used to when they get home.
Difficulty: Dystopia or Utopia?: As I mentioned before, there are different versions of the future that can be changed by your actions in the present. Change enough and you can make it Dystopian or Utopian. The easiest way to see those though is to use your lifetime rewards on the Time Remote Control. This way you can see all your futures without changing the present. The utopian future is interesting. Everyone bounces around (literally) because they are just so happy. The trees are all multi-colored and even the people appear in all the colors of the rainbow. The city has the same layout, but all the buildings are clean and sparkling. While this is all pretty and shiny and clean, I found it to be a bit boring after a while. Perfect isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The dystopian future is quite a bit more interesting. On first glance, it definitely looks worse. All the buildings are still in the same places, but they’re run down and rusted out. There are piles of trash everywhere you look and bugs all over the place. These trash piles can be very useful though. Send your Sim diving through them to see what they can find. The bugs can be caught for value as well. The dystopian future is apparently plagued by natural disasters also. Meteorites and electrical charges will strike the ground. The meterorites can be collected and the holes that the electrical charges make in the ground can be explored. Quite a lot of times, they will hurt your Sim but often you will find neat stuff. It just seems like there is a lot more to do when the world has gone to hell.
Game Mechanics: New Technology: Once in the future, you’ll find all sorts of neat technology that you can even take home to use. You’ll find hoverboards in the various rooms of your common living area that you can add to your inventory. You can then choose to use a hoverboard instead of walking. I would recommend this as it gets you there faster and it will increase your Advanced Technology skills. Plus, it’s just fun! You can find a jetpack up on the roof (and the Time Traveler will give you one when you first get there). The jetpack will let you fly all around town quickly, but it might take you some work to get used to it. Once you have gotten the hang of it, you can even woohoo while in the sky on jetpacks. Advanced Technology can definitely be fun! Everyone knows that there will be robots in the future and The Sims 3: Into the Future makes sure to provide that for you as well. There is a new Bot Building skill that will let your Sim learn how to make components for robots. Eventually, they will be able to build an entire robot. There are also status effects available that deal with robots and new traits as well. It’ll take you a while to explore all the new robot stuff. The Advanced Technology and robots can be used and built in the present as well. On the technical side, Windows 8.1 was released while I have been working on this review. I originally installed and was playing Into the Future on Windows 8 and then I ran the upgrade to Windows 8.1. The only thing that was even different was the fact that I had to reset my screen size in The Sims 3: Into the Future after the upgrade. Otherwise, I had no problems. As I said before, I wasn’t as thrilled with the previous few packages, but I really love The Sims 3: Into the Future. Even though we all know The Sims 4 is right around the corner, I would still recommend picking up Into the Future to play with now. It has so many new things that you simply must explore. If you’re a fan of The Sims 3, go pick up Into the Future today!
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
Minimum System Requirements: 2.4 GHz P4 processor or equivalent, 1.5 GB RAM, 128 MB Video Card with support for Pixel Shader 2.0, Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1, at least 6.1 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of additional space for custom content and saved games   Test System: OS: Windows 8.1, CPU: Intel Core i7-3630QM 2.4 GHz, RAM: 16 GB, Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 730M, Hard Drive: 400 GB free
Related Links: Game Vortex's Coverage of The Sims 3 Buy The Sims 3: Into the Future - Limited Edition on Amazon
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