The eighth expansion pack for The Sims 3, The Sims 3 Seasons is my favorite of the add-ons released for the game so far. A reprise of the analogous fan-favorite add-on for The Sims 2, Seasons for The Sims 3 again introduces the refreshing variability of dramatic weather effects, cycling seasons, and seasonal activities and holidays to your Sims everyday lives—and it does so with the kind of humor and flair that we’ve come to expect from the Sims games.
More than that, though, it’s a welcome departure from several past expansions in that it updates the entire Sims 3 experience globally, across all towns, without requiring players to place new, gimmicky lots or move their families to new locations to fully enjoy the new content. Instead, each town’s central park is painlessly updated to feature seasonally rotating festivals that liven up a previously humdrum location. At these events, Sims can get their faces painted, bob for apples, try a kissing booth, join a spring dance, search for eggs, try the snowboard half-pipe, participate in eating contests, buy fair food, redeem festival tickets for prizes, or try other festive activities, depending on the time of year.
The seasons transition gradually and naturally, and weather effects like lightning storms, rain, and hail are all beautifully represented and accompanied by convincing sound effects that muffle nicely when the camera zooms indoors. Bodies of water freeze over, bare tree branches wave in the wind, and frost covers the windows in chilly weather. Additionally, weather patterns and the lengths of each season can be individually customized for each game, allowing you to create neighborhoods with different climates. The amount of thought that the developers put into imitating real-life weather conditions really shows, and fans are sure to appreciate all the quaint little details.
Each season has its own set of new interactions and opportunities, like swimming in the ocean, spray or sun tanning, ice and roller skating, water balloon and snowball fights, raking fallen leaves, building igloos and snowmen, hanging up holiday lights, trick-or-treating, and carving pumpkins, just to name a few examples. Sims can throw new types of parties, featuring costumes, feasts, or gift-giving, in celebration of several popular holidays.
On the flipside, Sims can suffer from allergies, sunburn, or catch colds. They can also be struck (and possibly killed) by lightning, spontaneously combust from extreme overheating, or freeze to death if they expose themselves to the elements too long, providing sadistic players with new ways to torment their Sims.
One of my favorite parts about the expansion, though, is the reintroduction of aliens to the game. Sims 2 veterans will remember the intergalactic scamps that occasionally abducted curious Sims who overused their telescopes, sometimes impregnating unfortunate Sim males. The aliens are back, and if lured to visit, interact like any other computer-controlled Sim—and can perhaps be convinced to move into your Sim’s household to become a playable character.
Alien Sims meditate to restore brain power instead of sleeping and have some interesting mental abilities that I won’t spoil, though it’s probably worth noting that if you own The Sims 3 Ambitions, they can summon meteors to devastate a location of their choosing. Another perk is their UFO vehicles that teleport instantly to locations and allow your Sims to abduct their hapless neighbors, attack community lots with laser cannons, and try some space travel (albeit rabbit-hole style).
This add-on may not include a new town as most previous expansions did, but the new content is substantial enough that I hardly noticed. Besides the features that I’ve already mentioned, Seasons also adds a new outerwear outfit slot and a collection of new items, including a handful of outfits and hairstyles, umbrellas and parasols (which, incidentally, also protect vampire Sims from burning in the sun), snow cone machines, firecrackers, pumpkin pie, snowboards, and skating rinks. If you manage to get the Limited Edition, you’ll snag an extra Ice Lounge lot with some snazzy ice-themed furniture. Players who also own the Supernatural expansion pack will have added to each city a Weather Stone, which can be used by supernatural Sims to summon unique unnatural weather effects.
On the downside, Seasons does load slowly, the growing item catalog can be unwieldy enough to make finding specific objects difficult, the game’s interface feels increasingly pushier about selling you DLC, and there are sadly still many unresolved bugs. As of the time of this writing, I noticed that seasonal actions are sometimes available during the wrong season (e.g., water balloon fights in winter), butlers (from Late Night) are still problematic, and the game still sometimes freezes up for seconds or minutes at a time, to name a few. These problems aren’t absolute deal breakers, but they can be frustrating, particularly as some of these bugs have been around for a while.
Still, this add-on undoubtedly infuses a three-year-old game with new life, and it’s, by far, the strongest of the eight. At a suggested retail price of $39.99, The Sims 3 Seasons is one of the pricier expansion packs, but it’s hard to imagine a Sims 3 fan missing out on this one, even with its foibles.
Players with get to play as all of the prominent Autobots from the show in a random order as you progress through the levels. You start with the mighty powerhouse Optimus, who fires powerful ranged blasts as well as painful blows in melee combat. You then get to take turns playing as the Bulkhead, Ratchet, Bumblebee and my personal favorite Arcee. While you might expect a title featuring giant robot warriors to be nothing but a giant slugfest with no real skill involved you’d only be right by a little.
While the graphics lack a bit the sound department certainly does not. The sound effects and transformation sounds are perfectly recreated from the show and that’s not all that’s been brought over from the source. All of the show’s original cast of voice actors lend their talents to make this game as authentic as possible. The music for this game including the theme song in the opening movie created by film composer Brian Tyler (The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) is absolutely perfect. While Brian didn’t do the music for the game several others have stepped in to deliver pieces for the score including Jesper Kyd. The overall result is one that is decidedly authentic to this reviewer’s ear.
The actual driving itself is as easy or difficult as you want it to be. When you start the game you are asked to drive a few laps and the game recommends help settings for your driving style. Everything from braking to anti-wheel lockup measures can be tweaked to your liking. In easy mode you will quickly be winning races even when you start at the back of the field. For the most realistic experience the Normal and Hard settings really push the bounds of my patience. But winning a race is its own reward complete with “burnout mode”.
F1 Race Stars offers 90 events, or rather 30 events in three classes (1000cc, 2000cc, 3000cc), and events can include anywhere from one to five individual races that score you based on your finishing position and all add up to that final podium total. You can play the career mode or just start up a quick game of casual racing or party play action, but the real treat is being able to work on your own private career while having up to three of your friends playing in split-screen.
There are some other fun power-ups like putting a safety car in front of another racer preventing them from passing, or triggering a rain storm that drenches the track where only you have wet tires equipped, or even singling out one racer and putting a storm cloud over their car. You can stock up on turbo boosts, turn into a rocket to take the lead, or even warp to a front position. Special KERS sections on the track allow you to build up boost on the turns then gain a moment of turbo when you hit the tarmac. Your car will also take damage that will reduce your top speed and force you to seek out any of several pit lanes on each circuit for a quick drive-through repair.
Tracks are fast, fun, and incredibly challenging with multiple paths, shortcuts, secrets, some of which change in real-time during the race. One track has this series of S-turns, but if you time it right bombers will fly over and blast a linear shortcut through the terrain giving you a substantial lead. There are insane high banked curves, loops, and even one track that puts you on a roller coaster. As with most games, it’s all about learning the tracks and the best way to get around them in a variety of circumstances. If car combat is heavy in the shortcut you may be better off taking the longer but safer section of track, as undamaged cars are always faster than sparking, smoking ones with wobbly wheels.
These events can be approached in solo Cup Play, or if you would like to gather a group of friends you can check them all out in Free Play or Party Play that will organize the players into a tournament bracket and randomly choose the events. There have been several enhancements to the interface and the game engine that no longer requires the constant recalibration of the Move controller. You simply stand in your video box and squeeze Move+Trigger to lock in your controller…no more up-down-belt buckle aerobics. This also means that any player can use any controller, so you don’t have to keep track of a certain device/colored orb if you are playing with fewer controllers than players.
Last up is the return of Archery, which seems to have been greatly enhanced since the first game; perhaps using new detection code from Medieval Moves. The aiming is a lot more refined, and you still get that great sense of immersion as you reach over your back to grab an arrow, notch it, then zoom in on your targets. Whether you are playing the cup challenges or in the timed multiplayer events, Archery is probably the second best game in the collection after bowling.
Sony hoped that ModNation Racers similar feature set would incite a similar response from gamers with its fantastically simple toolset allowing users to create their own OEM-quality characters (or Mods), carts, and tracks. And for those of us who stuck with ModNation over the past two years – it has. Over the years, gamers have enjoyed thousands of user-created mods, carts, and tracks covering countless characters from Mickey Mouse to Mario, from Sweet Tooth to Scooby Doo, and anything else you can think of. But while ModNation undoubtedly formed a vibrant community of home developers, the brand never seemed to achieve the massive amount of appeal that LittleBigPlanet has.
I was thoroughly amazed at the tracks that I could make, but even more astounded by the creations of my 10-year old son, who spent hours perfecting lines, banking curves, and modifying the landscape. Unlike ModNation, LittleBigPlanet’s editor lacks an “auto-populate” feature, so making a truly appealing visual appearance takes a lot of attention to build and place all of the objects. But like the previous LittleBigPlanet releases, Karting allows gamers to build, share, and implement logic items (virtual machines) into the gameplay. I have yet to come across a track in which I knowingly encountered one of the logic devices, but the fact that they are there is a good sign for the future of the game.
