Describing myself in TS3 traits, I would say that I am easily impressed but also that I am a perfectionist. I would also say that I am a great kisser but that is not relevant when it comes to critical commentary about the game. The Sims 3 is a truly remarkable game and it did not take long at all for me to be hooked but as the time has gone by, I have seen things that I believe could be improved or added.

Story Mode Progression needs to be tweaked so that inventories are not wiped. I am reluctant to jump from family to family as I have found when I return to my starting families that the contents of their inventories have been wiped. As these have sometimes included valuable lifetime rewards, a lot of hard work has been in vain. If it could be tweaked so this does not happen again, I would be a happier player.

Relationships are something that I am still having trouble with. I have had couples who have been together for weeks and having a full relationship meter never get the option to get engaged or married. It has happened a few times when a non-playable sim has joined a playable family. One of my sims moved in with his girlfriend Holly Alto and they were never able to marry. Unknown to either of them and especially unknown to Holly, she was already in a relationship to Mortimer Goth. Nothing showed up on her profile. Mortimer wasn't even an acquaintance. I would just like things to be a bit easier to understand or some help given explaining why such options are not available.

Screenshots & Movies are still an important part of The Sims 3, but I am disappointed to find that the offline storytelling mode has gone. Although there is a new tool on the official site that allows us to mash things up with our movies and write stories, I feel uncomfortable working on my own personal stories online. I suppose it is the Perfectionist in me coming out again but I would rather still have an offline tool to collate my stories before I consider whether or not to upload it. Can we have it back, please?

Chimneystacks, Stairs, Fences & Gates are the main things that cannot be customised. I could also mention trees, shrubs and flowers as these cannot be customised either. As one of the promises of the game was "Customize everything", these are four examples of where it is not the case. The CAST is brilliant and is one part of TS3 that I cannot do without, but I am very disappointed in that it cannot be applied to help with matching in this way. A lot of beautiful looking buildings are marred just because of not being able to recolour one of these things. In this illustration, we see a normal cottage in Riverview and how out of place the red chimneystack. Don't you agree? I would appreciate "Customise everything" to mean everything.

Collections were a feature of The Sims 2 that allowed us to organise things into different themes and be able to find what we are looking for with little effort. Over the months, a lot of different sets of furniture and other items have been created, either for The Sims Store or uploaded to other fansites. For those players who go on download frenzies and/or must have everything, their downloads will be mounting up and the catalogs would be quite full and disorganised. Collections would allow us to find what we are looking for better and find what we need without pulling our hair out.

The Sims 3 is an incredible game and I am still finding new things with it despite having played it now for five months. From my comments above, you know that I do not think that it is perfect and because of being spoilt from the expansions for the previous incarnations of this game, there are a lot of things that I would like to see added to The Sims 3 as the months and years go by.

The first expansion is due to get to store shelves, mailboxes and doormats this week. We already know that with "The Sims 3: World Adventures", our sims will be going abroad and once I have finished this report, I will be looking at travel arrangements to get some of my sims away from Sunset Valley or Riverview.

In a few weeks time, I will be giving you our concise report about what we think about this new expansion pack before commencing a series of indepth reports about how the game has been changed.

Thankyou for staying with us through these indepth reports. All comments have been gratefully appreciated. See you soon.

Dag dag!