In the previous section, we were introduced to Julian & Tamara Harper, who have chosen to move to Desiderata Valley. We have also looked at the Lifetime Aspirations Score, what it means and what some of the benefits are of getting it up. In this part of the review, we look at how things that we may take for granted have now changed and see how they develop their lives in this new place.

Tamara Harper's primary goal was to have a baby. For many simweeks, they spent a lot of their time trying for a baby but all to no avail. They were both quite successful with their new careers but when it came to children, they were on the verges of calling the Adoption Agency when they noticed there was something else that they could study from the bookcase. As well as studying how to fix things and how to cook things, they could now study up on being parents. It seemed when nobody was looking, every bookcase also carried the simlish version of Dr. Spock's "The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care".

Once both Tamara and Julian had studied it, their next try for baby was instantly successful. Several days later, Tamara gave birth to a baby girl who they called Siobhan.

While Siobhan was a baby, from what she had learnt from her parenting studies, Tamara was able to check on what Siobhan needed and deal with her appropriately. The days seemed to flash past and Siobhan quickly aged into a toddler. As well as being able to teach her to walk, talk and use the potty, Tamara had the option to teach her a nursery rhyme and then they could sing it together. Awwww.

By this point, Tamara also had two lifetime aspiration benefits and applied them both to slower motive decay. The option to begin using this benefits on the work tree was available also but I did not see the relevance.

Siobhan grew up very well and started going to school. It was then I found out that there was some relevance to the work tree being available as there are now chance cards for school children.

Siobhan's choices were not the best ones and she did in fact lose some acquired skill points as a result. I have noticed other ones affect hobby scores either positively or negatively.

Sims now have the option to frame their own artwork. Whether it is a custom painting, a portrait, a still life or one of those practice efforts that your sims churn out before they can do their own thing, these pictures can now be framed and at no cost. There are six choices of frame colour and if you don't like it after a while, you can even remove the frame.

Your sims can now watch movies on TV. There are five different genres - Spooky, Action, Comedy, Drama, Children - and in each genre there are two movies. Naturally, different personality types will prefer different movies. My grouchy sims tend to enjoy watching horror movies. Siobhan Harper has lost count of the amount of times she has watched "Cat Woman", which is a film noir reminiscent of Hitchcock's "The Birds".

Yes, every home can have one! In a manner not dissimilar to the Mystery Man from "Making Magic" who delivered magic equipment, a mysterious Mr. Humble will drop a package off at your house. Whoever gets to the package first will have a new model of PC in their inventory. Yes, a free computer and all without having to subscribe to an internet and cellphone service provider for 99 years.

This is a very smart computer, although I've found the other computers have been adapted accordingly. There are now two games to play. As well as SSX, your sims can now play "The Sims 3", which does include some teasing looks of how the successor will develop, including choosing your own shoes and what looks like a more integrated neighborhood existance.

Computers also allows your sims to look up information on their hobbies and if they have enough hobby interest, they can blog about it. This is a good thing and indeed makes computers just that bit more realistic and how they are in the 21st century.

There are ten different hobbies and interest in these hobbies can be acquired sometimes without even trying. If a sim stargazes, then he is acquiring hobby interest in science. If a sim plays chess in order to improve his logic skill, he is acquiring hobby interest in games. If a sim composts some rubbish, he is acquiring hobby interest in nature. If a sim even eats some food that someone else prepared, he is acquiring hobby interest in cuisine. You see the new and different icons over their heads. I am going to be looking at hobbies in detail in the next part, but at this point, I have one complaint that sims who are going about their business and not paying attention to hobbies are constantly being hounded.

Big Brother must see everything as once a sim does one of these activities to any degree, the telephone starts ringing with calls from the different hobby club leaders and I find this very annoying! A sim has to break off his activity to answer the telephone, only to be told "Hello! I hear that you are learning about Science/Games/Nature etc." and informing them that there is a club they can join if their interest improves. Hobby interest doesn't remain fixed and can deteriorate in time. Therefore, a sim who is not actively pursuing a hobby can get their mealtime or skill acquisition attempts interrupted quite regularly.

Sims Division, couldn't you have given our sims a voice mail machine to handle these nuisance calls? I used to think calls from Brittany Parker and Chloe Gonzaga were bad but these hobby club leaders are incredibly annoying.

Apart from those annoying telephone calls, I am quite impressed with these "under the hood" changes. I will be looking at more of them later but we are going to next look at what is at the core of this expansion pack. In the next part, we will be taking our first detailed look at hobbies and we will find out whether following up those nuisance calls are worth it