I apologise for the delay in posting this part. Once again, playing the game became just that bit too time consuming.

In the previous two parts, we have looked at the original neighborhood created for this generation of the sims and have met the people who live there. However, it is now time to leave what is already created for us and see about creating our own sims to go in this world.

For the simmers who have been playing since The Sims (1), we have seen how things have changed visually from just being able to create a sim by choosing a body and a head through to the more advanced and superior techniques in The Sims 2.

With The Sims 3, that formula that we saw with The Sims 2 has been enhanced upon and dramatically improved.

Firstly, we need to get to creating a sim to go in the game. We start the game up and at the first screen once it has loaded, we click on "New Game". Then, we select which neighborhood to use. For those who have officially registered their game, the Riverview neighborhood is available for download and installation. By the way, later in this series, I will be covering Riverview indepth in the same way that I covered Sunset Valley.

As we are familiar with Sunset Valley, though, that is the one we choose although the Create-A-Sim procedure is still the same whatever town you use. Once the town is selected, click the tick and Create-A-Sim (CASim) will load up. You are immediately presented with a random sim that CASim has created. There is a row of icons down the upper left side of the screen. These are for Basics, Hair, Looks, Clothing and Personality. We will start at the top.

NAME - It asks for first and last name. Only in TS2 University were you previously allowed to have a household made up of people with different last names. I am glad to see it here as I was somewhat frustrated with families being forced to have the same last name.

GENDER - Somewhat self-explanatory. Female or male. Your choice.

AGE - This covers Toddler, Child, Teenager, Young Adult, Adult and Elder. Young Adult is the default age for new sims in The Sims 3.

SKIN TONE - Previously, we only had four choices of skin tone in The Sims 2. In The Sims 3, we now have six skin tones that include some offbeat ones such as red, green and blue. Although it looks like we may be losing a natural tone, we are in fact given countless options as all of them have a light-dark slider. This gives us a first major chance in how our sims appear and another thing that I approve of.

BODY MODIFIERS - Before in The Sims 2, our sims could be created as average or fat. Only through exercise could they become fit. Also, if their body became fat, their head did not flesh out. Now, a sim's body can be defined by two sliders. The upper one adjusts body weight and the lower one adjusts muscle size.

AI Quirkiness - Are all fat sims jolly sims? I noticed that when I slide the body weight up to the maximum and see the sim become as large as they can be, they give a deep belly laugh not dissimilar to Brian Blessed, Santa Claus or Jabba the Hutt. If I slide it to the other extreme, they don't seem to burst into tears, though. However, this is the sim world and being overweight is not a major problem and billion dollar business it is. If sims want to get thin, a few days of exercise at the gym work wonders for turning the supersized or undersized sims into sims with the perfect bod. If only real life was so easy.

The second button down the left side covers hair and eyebrows.

HAIR - Hair Styles come in two types. Hair, which is somewhat self-explanatory, and Hair With Accessories, which include include hats, headbands, bunches and so forth. One hairstyle can be applied to all modes of dress or a different style can be applied to each. This is something that we have been used to from the "Seasons" Expansion for TS2.

Although I would have liked to see more styles of hair in the basic category, I am very impressed with the customisation options.

There are eight basic colours of hair. However, if a player wants to more choice, they click on the brush icon and they are presented with 42 different colour choices or they can click on the colour wheel for whatever choices their imagination can come up with. On top of this, different colours can be applied to the roots, base, highlights and tips.

Accessorised hair can also be customised utilising the Create-A-Style tool. More about that later. In this image, I've gone to town with this woman's topper and her hair, just to illustrate the various extremes to which we can go.

EYEBROWS & EYELASHES - In TS2, we were only given the choice of about 4 different styles of eyebrow, one being having no eyebrows at all. Now, having eyebrows is mandatory but there are 17 different styles to try out now, including a unibrow. The colour of eyebrows can be selected to match the hair colour or could be completely different altogether. The same basic and advanced options for hair colour are available.