Perhaps the biggest new tool in The Sims 3 is Create a Style. No matter where you are, build, buy or create a sim, you'll be confronted with this. It's a tool in which you can put a texture and some colors, and a style will come out. You can apply this style to almost anything in the game: walls, floors, objects and even clothes - but not stairs of fences. You can also quickly copy styles and move them around the world, applying them to other objects. This is a simple drag-and-drop process: select the style from its icon in the panel, pick it up with your cursor, move the cursor to the object to change, and release the button. You're asked which current materials of the object you want to replace. One more click and you're done - you've changed the color of your table, chair, bed or whatever.
Every style (material) consists of a base pattern, to which you can apply one or more colors. A checker pattern, for example, can have two different colors. A simple color picker in Create a Style allows you to change these colors to any other color you like.
An object may have multiple styles attached to it, for the various parts it has. Combined these styles form the object's preset. A handle in the interface can be picked up and dropped on any other item. Again, just dragging and dropping is enough: this will apply the preset to anything in the home. The preset may not look very well on every object, but such problems are easily resolved. You can drag and drop the different materials in the panel to immediately change the style of another part of the object.
Next you can take the object you just changed, save it, and upload it to the exchange with your modifications. When sharing you name the item, give it a description, and within a few clicks it's shared. Files can also be packed to Sims3Pack files on your computer, which you can share by email or your fansite.
There are many types of textures, all categorized in categories like Fabrics, Abstract, Geometric, Paint, Rock & Stone and Masonry. In November Ben mentioned a tool is supposed to allow fans to create new patterns, though as of yet no information about this has been revealed. For floors and wallpapers, you first place the base pattern. This may have some areas which can be repainted using create a style again. It didn't seem possible to restyle the sidings of the deck, though the normal foundation had the possibility to apply wallpapers as any wall.
Create a Sim is where many Sims will come from - at least at some point their ancestors will be. The workflow is quite similar to CAS in The Sims 2: first you enter some general details, followed by some cosmetic surgery and dressing up your Sim, and finally your Sim's personality. But that's also pretty much where you can stop comparing the two: CAS in The Sims 3 will be much more flexible. To start off with the basics: you can pick pretty much any skin tone you like (well, limit to some basic colors and then a slider from light to dark - no complete freedom here, unfortunately), or change their physique by sliding the muscle size and body weight around. These are flexible sliders allowing you to make really thin sims, really fat ones, or anything in between. Unfortunately the height of your sims are still fixed. You can of course also just let the game generate any random sim for you. This will also generate a random personality for your brand new sim. Finally, the other way to quickly get a sim without having to do much work, is just taking a premade sim and use that.
After setting the basics, you can change the hair of the sim. Within that section you can pick hair style (or hat) on the head as well as eyebrows and eyelashes. For hair colors, you can pick a preset color. Better yet: you can change it in even more detail. When you want to go more advanced, you get a panel in which you can select four parts (roots, base, highlights and tips) of the hair "texture." Each of these can get a different color, allowing you to easily create more variation in your Sim's hair. Things get even better: attributes (like a hair band or flower) in a Sim's hair can be styled using the other CAS: Create a Style. You get the same textures, colors and UI as before, and can use it to give your Sims a unique look. It is also possible to give eyebrows a separate color, but you can also just make it match the hair color if you like.
In the next step, the looks, you can change what your sim's head looks like. The basics are similar to The Sims 2's Create a Sim. However, for things like eye color, you can simply use a color wheel and pick any color you like. The wheel also lets you enter the Red/Green/Blue values manually. Moreover, changing the shape of eyes or noses can be done in much more detail than ever before. You can fine tune it any way you like. You can always pick a basic shape and be happy with it, as well. You can even fine tune the details of an eye corner and so on. This is also possible for the mouth and perhaps even nose (although that was not shown).
As for makeup: it's still there. Unlike before though, freckles and beauty marks no longer have to be applied through make up: you can make them an actual part of your Sim's skin. You can also change eye liner, blush, lipstick and more. Similar to the rest, you can edit almost any detail you like with just a few clicks. Especially choosing a color gives you much freedom, as you can choose a preset color, or just use the color wheel again. Some types of makeup allow you to pick only one color, while others (lip stick) give you up to three or four places to give different colors. Full face paint is also available, though not in large quantities.
In the clothing interface you can dress up your sim. As before there are every day clothes, formal, night, and athletic categories to select - no more underwear though. Clothes have, as you may expect, also changed in functionality. This time, the game doesn't copy a single outfit into tens of outfits just to change the color. Instead, every base outfit is placed on one row. Next to it, appear several available variations of it, in different colors and textures. The game will ship with several styles for each outfit. If that doesn't please you though, it's really time to get familiar with that Create a Style thing. Yes: you can again change the style of an outfit almost entirely to your liking. Pictures and prints may stay the same, but otherwise you again get the same textures and color options as anywhere else. Another silght improvement is that besides a top and pants, you can now also separately change the shoes of your sim. Moreover, every category now has separate top and bottom, as well as full outfits (allowing you to mix and match swimming wear, for example) And again, you can drag and drop presets to apply them to other clothing parts.
The final step is the personality of your sim. You can pick traits, which are categorized (Mental, Physical, Social and Lifestyle). As explained before, you can pick up to five traits for your sim. Traits can give your Sim almost any personality, from technophobic hot-head to a clumsy kleptomaniac with commitment issues. Each trait you assign gets equal weight, so there's no way to make one trait more important than another. Of course, if you give just one trait, that one will show up in your sim's behavior a lot.
Once you've chosen the traits, the game suggests five lifetime wishes from which you can choose one. You can also choose your sim's favourite music, food and color. It's a bit unclear how these favourites influence the gameplay, but they probably influence the mood gains when they listen/eat/see these favorites. New for the PC is that you can also change the voice of a Sim by choosing a base voice and pitching it.
As if all of that is not enough, the UI of Create a Sim is more streamlined too. Rather than having to go through the menus, you can now also click the sim to edit the part you click on. This may be their clothes, but click on the face and you go back to the looks panel. All in all there is a lot to customize and modify, in much more detail than ever before. We did notice a quirk or two (non-clickable buttons because another dialog was open, and not being able to expand the outfit chooser so it shows more than just three or so outfits at a time), but otherwise Create a Sim gives you a lot of power within a few clicks.
That's all we can currently say about the game itself. Naturally there is a lot more to see, discover and find out about it, which was not shown during the demo. However, there is a little more to discuss: the new Sims 3 website that will launch with the release. First of all: any creation you make in the game, can be shared. This means you can share your presets for specific objects or clothes with the world through the Sims 3 exchange. When it comes to sharing homes and sims, things will be pretty much the same: you can share those too.
Brand new is the video editing tool that you can use through the new website. The Sims 2 allowed you to record clips of the game and you'd have to manually edit them. With the Sims 3 this is taken a step further: you can upload clips to the website, and cut and paste them together by dragging uploaded shots to the timeline. You can also limit each shot by choosing the beginning and end of the clip, so you don't need to use each clip completely. You can add effects and filters such as texts, fade-ins, a wiping effect, a black and white filter, zoom effects and all that. It's a lot like the Sims on Stage, for those familiar with that. You can also add stills instead of videos to the tool, so basically anything is possible.
The central place for your profile is your player page ("My Page"), where you can show some information and place your creations. Others can subscribe to a user's feed so they get the newest creations all the time. Of course you can post your videos to the webpage, or you can download it, put it on your blog or anywhere else. And yes, you can maintain a blog at the Sims 3 website.
As with the Sims 2, as of Bon Voyage, the game will have a launcher. This too has improved though, as this is the tool through which you manage your downloads or upload your creations, videos. It's not a requirement to use all of this though, so the game itself won't require an internet connection to play. Also, to download items you don't need to use the tool: the website in your browser can still be used. You can even just email the files if that's your preferred way. Furthermore the website will feature a forum, featured content, and much more.
It's mentioned earlier already: the Sims 3 will have a worldwide store. With PayPal or a credit card you'll be able to purchase objects for build or buy mode, or hairdos for CAS, and more. Many items were originally in Sims 2 expansion packs before. Hairdos seemed to be shared between several ages. Riverview will also be offered through this store, as well as a few free (Lord Sponge) objects. The biggest downside of this store is that it seems to mean there's less content in the game itself: there aren't that many objects, nor that many hairdos. You'll find many more glasses and jewelry in the game than hairdos. The store is a major way for EA to get more money from you, and it doesn't look too good for the amount of content in the game - and possibly expansions or stuff packs in the future. The game will come with a coupon worth $10 (1000 SimPoints) for the Store, which allows you to buy somewhere around 10 objects (prices range from 50-150 per item, or maybe even more SimPoints. Sets easily go over 1000 points). Other than that, for me personally, it may be better to hope the community will figure out how to create new objects within a few months after the release.
All in all The Sims 3 has shaped up nicely. There's less loading, one big open world with much more varying characters than in The Sims 2. It will take a little to get used to, as the interface has changed here and there. There are also some problems that can make building for example very hard. In other areas, The Sims 3 is just a little from perfect: no color wheel for skin colors, despite some very odd colors being available. Stairs and fences can't be styled, and the amount of objects available right in the game seems a little small. The Sims 3 Store is being pushed for more money, and although a few objects will be free, trying to get everything means you could as well just directly give EA's CFO a nice bonus. Still, there will be very much to explore and discover in Sunset Valley and Riverview (even cardboard cows), and many small changes from the Sims 2 means the game has a fresh touch to it.
It is unfortunate that the Sims 2 has become so complete with features, many of which will be missing again in the Sims 3. So while the game definitely seems to be a step forward, it is also a step or two back again. As for now, it seems like a nice, fresh new game. A must-have for Sims fans, but the transition from the Sims 1 to the Sims 2 was probably bigger and better. I guess it'll need a few expansions for some polish and getting those little details fixed. Like Andy commented before, I too can wait.
A little while after the release in the first week of June, you can expect a full review of the game from us, in which we'll pay an in-depth visit to Sunset Valley and Riverview to give our final verdict. Until then, a little more patience is required before you can enter the open world of the Sims 3.
