One major change is that unless you've got the pause button pressed or you have been successful in disabling story progression, the world does not stand still. Previously, one household would not age while it is being played. In previous versions, if you left John Smith doing the gardening and went to play the Jones family, John Smith would wait for you to come back. You could play the Jones family and let Tom Jones grow from being an adult to an elder and come back to John Smith to find him still watering the garden. Not anymore. By now, John will have done the gardening countless times or may have even hired a gardener. He will have got older and quite possibly have become an elder, even got promoted or even retired from work.

This means that what I call the Randy London Effect does not happen anymore. In TS2, he became the first kiss for three generations of one family. That can no longer happen as Randy London would age with the first generation and quite probably have passed on or otherwise be a very old man by even the second generation came around.

If you wish to play a few families at a time, it might be hard work. Although I have had a few minor issues when bouncing from one family to another, which I will detail in "The Sims 3 - In Depth", I welcome this change as it makes the town have a greater air of realism and flexibility.

Before, I mentioned that your sims were not confined to the colours that were available. If you have a theme in mind, you can save it and apply it to everything you wish. If you want a Barbie house, you can make almost everything pink from the car in the driveway to the colour of your toilet to the colour of the siding on your house.

On the right in this picture is Diane Swain. Her shirt is in the same shade of blue as her highlights and tips, all of which is "SimsZone blue", the same colour as the background to this website.

Another plus on this is that all changes in colour are free. Following the change of wall covering and you wanted to change the colour of 10 windows in The Sims 2, it would cost you §150. With The Sims 3, it does not cost a thing.

A lot of the career titles are familiar. Police, Criminal, Medicine, Athletics and so forth. Now, a sim no longer has to wait for the career that they want to come up on the computer or be in the newspaper. Assuming a sim wants to be in the military, they can go to Fort Gnome and literally walk straight into a job. Everyone can walk into a job.

There are also some part-time jobs that should be ideal for teens as the hours do not conflict at school.

A sim gets various wishes come their way. Completing each of these wishes gives the sim Lifetime Happiness Points. These can be accepted or turned down and even turned down after they have been accepted if a better one turns up. A sim can only have four saved wishes at a time. Talking to someone might give them 150 points, going swimming might give them 225 points and getting a promotion might give them 1000 points. Completing one of these gives the sim a positive moodlet.

A sim's performance and mood is affected by moodlets. If they have had a really good night's sleep, that will affect them positively for 8 hours. If a friend or family member dies, the sim is negatively affected for days. This new and major change is easy to pick up and understand. The higher the mood, not dissimilar to aspiration levels in The Sims 2, affects how well a sim performs, improves skills, reads books and generally help raise Lifetime Happiness Points.

After a while, a sim can cash in some of those Lifetime Happiness Points for rewards. In all, there are 30 of them, ranging in price from 5,000 to 75,000 points. These include things such as Observant, which means you can get to know another sim's traits and details twice as quickly; Steel Bladder, which means sims do not need the toilet as often; Change Lifetime Wish, which does what it says on the tin; Moodlet Manager, which helps you neutralise any negative moodlets ... in theory anyway and up to Teleporter, which helps you get from A to B with a minimum margin of error.

Opportunities also arise from time to time. They are classed as Career, Skill and Special. Rewards are improvement in performance or even a financial bonus. These may include helping on a job in the Criminal Career Track or reading a book to further understand your career; making cookies for a School Bake Sale or fixing someone's TV, or contributing to a town barbecue.

When The Sims 2 came out, I was expecting more than was actually in the game. A lot of this was down to having had so many expansions for The Sims enhancing the game and building expectations. Nevertheless, there were enough changes in The Sims 2 to make up for this and in time, the game became richer, deeper and even more entertaining.

With the arrival of The Sims 3, again I am feeling the same way. There are some shortages and deficits, some things not been brought forward that I would have liked to see. I would have liked more hairstyles, a piano, a hottub and collections. Although there is a second neighborhood to download, I would have liked a tool to enable me to create my own.

However, I do believe that these expectations will be met in the inevitable expansions, stuffpacks and Store contents that will be coming our way in the coming years.

I thought that when The Sims 2 came out in September 2004 that it was an excellent game and a worthy successor. I really enjoyed what I was able to do in the game and what other people were doing. I did not think that it could be replaced easily and that my sims in my various towns in TS2 would still be played regularly. I regret to say that although I am not deleting TS2 and its EPs and SPs, I do not envisage playing with them for a while.

I have not covered everything in this summarised review, there are a few bugs in the game, but I do believe that The Sims 3 is the closest to the game being as it should be and recommend it to anyone, whether you be a new player or a seasoned veteran, to buy it and see for yourself.

The Sims 3 is definitely a game worth buying because firstly it is closer to being the game that The Sims was supposed to be. Although it is not perfect, it is well polished with enough new features to keep us enthralled.

For those who are used to my reviews that seem to last forever and those who would like to know more, the first part of "The Sims 3 - In Depth" will be here soon and will live up to its name, giving a detailed look at everything that this new game has to offer.

Dag dag!