The Sims 3

Developer: Maxis
Format: PC
Genre: Sim

Where would we be without Will Wright's little people?

In the beginning it was all about the house. Building the house, decorating the house and then filling the house with the latest gadgets. You could even landscape the gardens. Then it became more about emotions, the relationships that are formed with other Sims, love, ambition, grief and fun. Real life stuff.

For the third full-blown stand-alone outing for The Sims, Will Wright has quite literally taken the franchise to a whole new level. The new seamless neighbourhood architecture allows your Sims to roam freely around the neighbourhood and visit their loved one and friends-or foes. Discovering other Sims homes and families, travelling around to new locations like City Hall or the local park will create a whole new way of life for your Sims. Storytelling options will multiply as your Sims stroll downtown to meet new acquaintances, head across town for lunch, spy on their neighbours and bump into the boss when they least expect it. It is quite literally a living, breathing city.

In addition to a whole new world to explore, the game will also include a new Create-A-Sim mode, enabling players to create more varied characters, even building virtual avatars of themselves should they wish to. Every body shape is represented, multitudes of faces, skin tones, ages, complexions. Even hair colour. Fine-tuning is the number one objective, EA even hint that you'll be able to make your Sim resemble famous celebrities, should you have any desire to re-create a hollow Hollywood persona.

After looks comes personality. When designing your Sim you can attribute each character with five distinct personality traits, helping shape your Sims behaviour and how they interact with others and their surroundings. This new system is touted for allowing extremely complex and diverse in-game personalities. Design whatever personality fits your mood - an angry obnoxious teenager or a doting grandmother? Why not an angry, obnoxious granny? With a wide selection of personality traits to mix and match, more than 700 million combinations of Sims await a full release of the PC version in early 2009.

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