Ladies and gents, I give you one of my personal favorite sims. Tyrique was originally hand crafted in Bodyshop by myself last year, and since being put into my hood, he's probably my most played as male sim to date.





And I share him with you. Enjoy.

Kudos to you for having the courage to speak your opinion. However, I feel the need to say that people such as myself, roerzman and other are not outright panning the game as being awful. We're panning it for being a paltry excuse for a Sims sequel. Had they had labeled it something else, or as Tenshii said made it a stand alone game, it would have done marginally better then it has. The mistake EA made was trying to pass it off as a Sims game, whereas it's a Sims game pretty much by name alone. TS2 was all about us, the community, being able to tailor the game to our individual tastes. Do we need a crap load of mods to do it? Yes. But at least with TS2 we have that option. With TS3, you have to play the game how EA wants you to play it, "nice". The lore and appeal of TS2 is being able to add CC and mods to make the game your own. The lore and appeal of TS3 is beautiful scenery and a traits system that they could have verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry easily translated into a new EP for TS2. In fact, all of the new features of TS3 could have been implemented into TS2 via an EP. And there in lies the main reason why the majority isn't buying in as you have. The game offers very, if any real innovation for it's price tag, and that price tag includes the game itself AND updating ones GFX and Sound cards to be able to run it if they have a PC older then 3 years. You're not wrong at all for enjoying the game. But for users like myself who don't at ALL enjoy the vanilla Sims experience, there's simply no appeal the game has for us.

Paden's always entertaining post pretty much answers your question, Nonni. Trying to make the game any bit as appealing (and in some cases playable) compared to it's predecessors would pretty much mean they'd have to strip it down so much to rebuild it, they may as well make a new game altogether. So I totally understand EA and Visceral Games decision to just fix what they can, and market the game to those who actually find joy in it rather then trying to mass advertise to the whole of the Sims community.

It's a tragic case of a major game developer focusing more on a brand name then the meaning of the brand itself. I personally think it was doomed from the start when they handed one of their most recognizable and profitable franchises to a development house that up until TS3 made nothing but shooters and action games. Seriously, this is all of the games that Visceral Games have made since it's inception:

007: Everything or Nothing - 2003/PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube
The Godfather: The Game - 2006/PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
The Godfather: Mob Wars - 2006/PlayStation Portable
The Godfather: Blackhand Edition - 2006/Wii
The Godfather: The Don's Edition - 2006/PlayStation 3
The Simpsons Game - 2007/PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Dead Space - 2008/PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
The Godfather II - 2009/PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
Dead Space: Extraction - 2009/Wii
Dante's Inferno -   2010/PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation Portable

As you can clearly see, Visceral in no way should have been tasked with making a Sims Game, PERIOD. Hell, the only actual GOOD game they've made was Dante's Inferno, and that's only because it's a God Of War clone. It's like asking Pizza Hut to take over making Twinkies for Hostess. Pizza Hut does Pizza, Pasta and Wings, not Twinkies. All you're asking for is people to start hating something they've loved for years. Same scenario here. When you ask a development house that makes action based titles to make a life simulator, you take the risk of the game not exactly living up to expectations. It's taken EA close to a year to finally eat crow and realize this. Will it translate to TS3 being something the die hard sims player will actually get into? Not a chance. But it will serve as a lesson to EA about choosing developers for projects better. Hell, even if they have to suck it up and pull some of the original Maxis team back together into another development house SPECIFICALLY for the purpose of making a Sims game (The Sims 4 preferably), that'd be a better solution. But as far as innovation for TS3, baring they blow it up and start from the ground up, or open up the code so that modders and meshers and tear it apart themselves and turn it into something spectacular as they did with TS2, I wouldn't hold my breath about it. There's no questions asked that the concept of TS3 is awesome. The execution of the concept is where it falls flat.

I think this thread can officially be called "The Sims 3: One Year Later", lol.

Gazania harks on some epic points in her post. The main one being EA's holding the keys to the castle, yet doing little to nothing with them when The Sims franchise is concerned. Let's bare in mind that TS3 doesn't even have the signature of The Sims creator Will Wright on it. It is in no way the true successor to TS2. It's EA vision, not the vision of the original folks behind the original game and it's sequel. I whole heartily think TS3 would be a completely different experience had Maxis been the developers of it. But they weren't, and what we have of the game now is what we have of the game, for better or worse.

Taking into another thing Ganzania said, the fact of the matter is that to the vast majority of TRUE sim players, that being those of us who have played the game from TS1, TS3 doesn't appeal to what we want. And even with whatever improvements they make to it, it probably still won't. I'm on the exact same boat. I see potential in the game, yes. But no where near enough for me to add it to my library. Even with the upcoming expansion pack in June for TS3, Ambitions...it's still lacks in the key areas that made most of us get into the series in the 1st place. Almost a year and soon to be 2 expansion packs later, and game still hasn't captured the core Sims audience yet. Whereas with the 1st two EPs of TS2 University and Night Life, they sold more copies of the base game then the following EPs up to Apartment Life did. Big difference between the 1st two EPs of each respective game. I'll say this much, if by the 3rd EPs release I still feel the same about TS3 as I do right now, I'm officially writing it off completely.

So I've now added Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and MLB 2010: The Show to my console gaming library. Both awesome games that suck up even more of my at home time...lol. But in 2 weeks that all changes. God Of War III will be the ONLY game I play, until I beat it of course. So it'll be a steady diet of quality console and PC gaming for me over the Spring.

CPU = Classic Pin Up. One of the bodyshapes created by the now retired creator Warlokk, which you can find right here on insim.

Thanks. Took me more then an hour on her face structure alone. Then came finding the right make up to bring out the features even more. And yes, I will be sharing both of them for all to enjoy.

I'm absolutely loving Christina's simple, yet sexy look. is high time I contributed something new to this thread, and I do so with two of my latest Bodyshop creations...a pair of sultry Latina siblings.


Carmen Suarez


Marisol Suarez

Have I mentioned how much I love the CPU bodyshape? Think I might have in the past a few times.

10.9GB, but only after a recent purge of unused/unwanted stuff. It was over 15GB at one point in 2009.

I totally agree with the points made following my post. I also believe like Carlwashere that TS3 does have potential. But as it's own game, not a follow up to TS2. That it isn't. It's only a sims game to me personally by name alone. And I'm also on the same boat as Nonni and MaryH in that I, even though I see potential with it, and am impressed by the mods such people as Pescado and Delphy have made to improve it, still am not convinced to add it to my library. When TS2 came out, I had to have it. When TS3 came out, It didn't even register on my "game to get radar". When you take a step back like that in a franchise, it hurts. And suffice to say, while Maxis weren't exactly patron saints, they at least had a beat on what the community at large wanted.

It's a classic scenario of "you never know what you have until it's gone." For as badly as we (especially myself over the years) trashed Maxis, they would have done a far better job making TS3 then Visceral Games, the developers responsible for it. But now that the hooplah over the game's basic failure has seemed to subside, it makes sense for them to go back and completely fix everything from the axles up. It benefits those who stuck with the game despite what it lacked, which is a whole lot when you compare it to it's predecessor. 

To further DreamWizard's post as far as EA's fiscal earnings for 2009, seeing as I work in the gaming industry myself and generally like to stay on top of the business end of the industry, I can confirm that EA games took a heavy, HEAVY blow with the loses regarding TS3. They tried to trump it up with their failed PR campaign over the summer, but the fact of the matter is that TS3 and the subsequent EP World Adventures did abysmally as far as sales compared to the last TS2 Ep, Apartment Life. Add to that the fact that them initially stating the game being able to be run on older rigs being total horse poop, during a recession no less when NO ONE is trying to plunk out an extra $200+ for a new GFX card just to play one game...and that hurt the sales as well. And how many actual TS3 commercials or advertisement have you seen lately, if at all? Yes, they ran TV spots when the base game and WA came out, but have you seen the spots on networks since? Nope. Why is that? Because it costs them money, and it makes no sense to make an ad blitz for a product that's not selling.

Thankfully for EA they have tons more IPs (Intellectual Properties) that did do well over 2009, such as the EA Sports line up of games and Need For Speed: Shift that the hit they took for TS3 pretty much goes unnoticed to the untrained eye. I'm not one of those untrained eyes though. So from what DreamWizard says, it makes perfect sense that EA plans on doing damage control in house, and has plans to improve the game without the media explosion they tried when the base game came out. Cuz we see how well that worked for them. It's bad enough most of the stuff that actually makes TS3 playable (and enjoyable) is user generated content, modifications and add ons. In a nutshell, the community made EA look really...reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally bad. Because the community took it upon themselves to fix what EA either didn't or couldn't fix. And rightly so seeing as the people who actually made TS3 weren't Maxis, but another development house that were handed the keys to one of EA's most lucrative IPs and damn near ran it into the ground. It wouldn't surprise me if they have former Maxis developers on the books now spearheading the potential re-up of TS3. But sadly I believe the damage is done. Much like the game Bayonetta for the PS3 and 360. The 360 version was flawless, the PS3 version was glitchy and buggy beyond playability. Sega has recently addressed the PS3 bugs with a patch, but people have already moved on. Same case with TS3 and EA. So many people got put off from it that they've returned back to TS2 or moved on to something else completely. Any chances of EA getting those people back are slim to nil. Best case scenario for them is to fix what they can and market to the people who stuck to TS3 even with it's short comings. Trying to attracted new users as they did initially is a recipe for disaster.

They have a chance to salvage the game in 2010 at the least to cover the 2009 losses. But EA needs to tread lightly, otherwise they may as well cancel any plans for a Sims 4. I've been a gamer long enough to know and see good game series die slow, agonizing deaths because the developers and publishers get greedy and lose sight of who really matters, the users. (Anyone remember Duke Nukem, Gex and Sly Cooper? Need I say more.)

I know what you mean about the sword from MTS. Here I was thinking "sweet!!! Now I've got something to use to make cool pics for stories." Then the jump bugs started happening and my thoughts switched to "WTF!!!" Removed it in a frakkin' heartbeat.

The incendiary bomb is actually one of my fave hacks. *Evil grin* Many unwanted sim families have  been casualties of freak military accidents in my hoods...lol. Or course I ended up have to build way more graveyards as result, but it's all in the name of population control.

But if there is one hack that caused me the biggest grief, it was Bloom's sexy feet default replacement hack. An AWESOME hack mind you. Problem is all of the meshes it annihilated in my game that were made off of nude meshes, hence...the "shoes" were now replaced with sexy feet covered in shoe textures. And seeing as I have a crapload of CC that was made pre-sexy feet, it made more sense just to delete the mod rather then trying to fix everything. Besides, most new bodyshapes and nude/barefoot meshes come with sexy feet anyway, so it wasn't a total loss getting rid of the default replacement.

If I'm not playing TS2, I'm usually on my PS3 for my console gaming needs. Right now the game getting the most playtime is MAG, followed by Tekken 6, Dynasty Warriors 6: Empires and Need For Speed:Shift. This is of course until God Of War III comes out next week, of which I'll probably cut down playing the other PS3 games AND TS2 to get into it. Yes, GOWIII is so EPIC a game it's actually going to cut into my simming...lol.

You Are Very Popular



You are extremely popular. You are likely the most popular person you know.
You have many friends from many walks of life. And they all enjoy your company.

You understand that to have good friends you need to be a good friend first.
Your friends know that they can trust you to be honest, loyal, and fun.

Are You Popular?

Happy to have added to the romantic lives of your virtual ladies.