G
GCMax
Guest
SO WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT THE SIMS 3?
It's an open world environment.
The loading times have significantly decreased.
The CAS studio sims look better than ever before.
The sims have more character traits that make them behave differently.
There are options to vary the characters voices so they don't all sound the same.
You can customise most decorations in and around the house to allow for personal taste and diversity.
AND WHAT'S BAD ABOUT THE SIMS 3?
The create your own style has limitations as build objects like stairs, roof tiles and chimneys cannot be altered.
No longer is there a cinematic moment whn you sim has first kiss, woo hoo, gets engaged, gets married or has a baby.
You can't start with a blank neighbourhood and place empty lots of varying size to create your own world like in the Sims 2.
The create your own style is limited with such things as making a door the colour you want it but not being able to change the knob.
There are buildings that sims disappear into while working that cannot be decorated/rebuilt and are unmovable, these buildings have no contents.
Bad UV mapping on town roads shows the yellow lines dont match up at the bends, it's quite obvious from a distance so it becomes annoying and unsightly.
You now have to pay for custom content as EA have made a ruling that sharing custom content for free is violating their rules and could lead to prosecution.
You can't send your sim shopping, go out to a restaurant or nightclub and actually see the sims, as above they just disappear for a while, nor can you design any of these places in any degree.
Transferred CAS sims lose all their looks in the actual game, texture sizes seem to have been reduced from a 1024x1024 body and 512x512 face to a 256x256 body and a 128x128 face making sims look like dolls with NO realism whatsoever.
A serious problem with pc's running windows vista makes the game freeze periodically and you have to reset or switch off your system which makes it very hard to feel any progression within the game and risks data loss of which some may be valuable.
The global lighting system in the Sims 3 is very poor, sim shadows are almost non existant, specular artifacts can be seen on objects and sims, due to this textures look too saturated which results in less blending and even more artifacts like colour banding.
One of the main reasons this franchise was so successful was the ability to create your own stuff, there are no options for custom content such as your own textures for floor tiles, walls, pictures or clothing let alone the possibility of an easy way to make new clothing like the TS2 body shop offered.
The patterns and materials that are available to create your own style are hideous and look as if they were made by amateurs or rushed out with no care taken, these "things" are mostly the only way of customising the game seeing as other previously open avenues have now been closed in order to provide this open world environment.
The available items to choose from in CAS, buy and build mode are pathetic compared to the Sims 2 base game, also the quality of meshes and textures has been dumbed down so much that objects look pixellated and blurry no matter the lod distance between camera and object. Basically the lod system has been overlooked and swept under the rug.
Missing animations like sims opening car doors and getting in, sims just slip in and out and not with grace either, the baby diapers and bottles now disappear and cannot be cleaned up, babies are not changed on a table anymore nor can they be washed in a sink, they magically get clean after a sim spins them in the air and the nappy falls off.
Very few of the textures supplied with the game are suitable for use in any context, it looks like EA games are buying their textures from DOSCH Textures and barely altering them, every decent cg artist knows these are not suitable for games and barely suitable for mental ray rendering. Spending some time on making nice textures would help overcome some major frustrations.
That's my view after being a avid fan of the sims franchise for years ever since the first game.
What do you think?
It's an open world environment.
The loading times have significantly decreased.
The CAS studio sims look better than ever before.
The sims have more character traits that make them behave differently.
There are options to vary the characters voices so they don't all sound the same.
You can customise most decorations in and around the house to allow for personal taste and diversity.
AND WHAT'S BAD ABOUT THE SIMS 3?
The create your own style has limitations as build objects like stairs, roof tiles and chimneys cannot be altered.
No longer is there a cinematic moment whn you sim has first kiss, woo hoo, gets engaged, gets married or has a baby.
You can't start with a blank neighbourhood and place empty lots of varying size to create your own world like in the Sims 2.
The create your own style is limited with such things as making a door the colour you want it but not being able to change the knob.
There are buildings that sims disappear into while working that cannot be decorated/rebuilt and are unmovable, these buildings have no contents.
Bad UV mapping on town roads shows the yellow lines dont match up at the bends, it's quite obvious from a distance so it becomes annoying and unsightly.
You now have to pay for custom content as EA have made a ruling that sharing custom content for free is violating their rules and could lead to prosecution.
You can't send your sim shopping, go out to a restaurant or nightclub and actually see the sims, as above they just disappear for a while, nor can you design any of these places in any degree.
Transferred CAS sims lose all their looks in the actual game, texture sizes seem to have been reduced from a 1024x1024 body and 512x512 face to a 256x256 body and a 128x128 face making sims look like dolls with NO realism whatsoever.
A serious problem with pc's running windows vista makes the game freeze periodically and you have to reset or switch off your system which makes it very hard to feel any progression within the game and risks data loss of which some may be valuable.
The global lighting system in the Sims 3 is very poor, sim shadows are almost non existant, specular artifacts can be seen on objects and sims, due to this textures look too saturated which results in less blending and even more artifacts like colour banding.
One of the main reasons this franchise was so successful was the ability to create your own stuff, there are no options for custom content such as your own textures for floor tiles, walls, pictures or clothing let alone the possibility of an easy way to make new clothing like the TS2 body shop offered.
The patterns and materials that are available to create your own style are hideous and look as if they were made by amateurs or rushed out with no care taken, these "things" are mostly the only way of customising the game seeing as other previously open avenues have now been closed in order to provide this open world environment.
The available items to choose from in CAS, buy and build mode are pathetic compared to the Sims 2 base game, also the quality of meshes and textures has been dumbed down so much that objects look pixellated and blurry no matter the lod distance between camera and object. Basically the lod system has been overlooked and swept under the rug.
Missing animations like sims opening car doors and getting in, sims just slip in and out and not with grace either, the baby diapers and bottles now disappear and cannot be cleaned up, babies are not changed on a table anymore nor can they be washed in a sink, they magically get clean after a sim spins them in the air and the nappy falls off.
Very few of the textures supplied with the game are suitable for use in any context, it looks like EA games are buying their textures from DOSCH Textures and barely altering them, every decent cg artist knows these are not suitable for games and barely suitable for mental ray rendering. Spending some time on making nice textures would help overcome some major frustrations.
That's my view after being a avid fan of the sims franchise for years ever since the first game.
What do you think?