Sims 3 – World Adventures

Being a big Sims fan, I knew it wouldn’t be long before I picked up their latest expansion – World Adventures. I had heard a lot of negative comments about this expansion, mostly about bugs. Basically it allows your families to plan vacations to three locations (for a cost of course). Once you start playing with it, it’s a lot more involved. You can invite foreigners to visit and learn about their country. You can learn songs and foods from them. You can choose the length of your stay in these locations but you’ll need visa points if you want to stay for any length of time. You can eventually also purchase a vacation home in one of these posh locations.

My first trip was to China (pictured above) and not only can you visit, but there are adventures for your sim to take part in. You stay at what is known as “home base” which is basically a hostel, it includes beds, food and bathrooms as well as lots of other visitors to get to know.

You can pick up an adventure from a huge sign outside, and then you’ll want to stock up. You’ll want to take some rations with you as well as a tent and maybe a few other odds and ends. My first adventure sent me to an ancient tomb, the vacation was only three days long and cost my one sim (he left the family at home) $1600 or so.

Unlike previous versions of the sims, the adventures are like little mini quests – and I had a LOT of fun doing them. It was like playing EQ2, but sims version. My little sim had to find keys to unlock doors, wander through a tomb and complete puzzles to move onto the next stage. He had to explore tunnels, get rid of rubble, dive under water and swim through caves, all to find fame and treasures. You can earn ancient coins which are used in special markets to pick up relics for your home, and there’s a LOT to do. I did experience one bug when I first loaded up the zone, but once I restarted the game it ran just fine.

I haven’t figured out how to work the whole visa points / upgrade system yet, nor could I figure out where to purchase a tent for the adventure (my sim ended up sleeping on a bench outside the tomb for the night, he was just that tired) but I had an absolute blast playing. Of course now that the vacation is over he’s got to get back to his regular job so that he can afford the next one. I’m going to try to bring the family along next and we’ll see how that goes. Maybe Egypt.

My sim family has grown by leaps and bounds since I reinstalled windows 7. I started from scratch, with one little sim woman who eventually got married and had twins. Oy. Don’t pick the fertility goal just as a heads up.

The twins (Jessica and Emily) are growing up and are in elementary school now, since both my parent sims work and the children have school a lot of time is spent sleeping, and working on homework. Why on earth I would be amused with a video game that replicates real life I have no idea, but I’ve been playing it fairly steady the last few days. I guess it’s a nice representation of a “dream world” where you can make $1000 an hour and work three days a week.

Oh yeah, and the graphics are absolutely amazing. Every time I play I’m astounded and amused by some little tiny detail that I didn’t notice before. Like when the twins were growing up, they frequently picked their nose and squealed in delight as they flung it some where in their cribs.

Ha.