Yes, this is incredibly late and if I was to list all of the reasons for the delays, you would likely fall asleep from boredom before you get to the review itself. To summarise, too much has been happening lately both offline and online and this has been postponed, revised, restarted and put back more times than I can remember.

Finally, here it is. With a new expansion about a week away, most of you will have already made your mind up about "Late Night" but if you want to find out our take on it, this is it.

When the third expansion for The Sims came out in late 2001, it radically changed the way the game was played. The previous expansions had added some minor changes to the gameplay but for about eighteen months, you never got to see your sims anywhere but their home lot. That third expansion allowed our sims to leave home, go somewhere else and generally do and use things not found at home. In so doing, it set the benchmark of adding new neighbourhoods and districts that we saw throughout the remaining four expansions of that series and also in many of the expansions for The Sims 2 series. It was my favourite expansion of that series and its name was "Hot Date".

The third expansion for The Sims 3 is out and at stake is not whether we can see our sims go out but if our sims can do so with the feel that they are in the spiritual successor to the expansion pack that made such big changes to it all. If "Nightlife" for The Sims 2 can be considered the son of "Hot Date", this latest expansion for The Sims 3 must be its grandson. At this time, the issue of The Sims 3 being set 25 years before The Sims is not being considered. This review aims to look at the new features, the new characters and the new neighborhood that we have been given. We will compare it to the radical changes that its ancestors made to their respective series and see the new spin it has made.

In having a lot of previous expansions to follow with The Sims 2 and to a slightly lesser extent with The Sims, I have been quite impressed with the previous two expansions for The Sims 3 that have mainly followed a new theme. However, this is the first time that The Sims has clearly taken on something that we have had before.

We have a completely new and vibrant neighbourhood with clubs and other venues that only come alive on a night, a subway system and high-rise buildings for the sims to live in, play in, work in and work out in.

There is a new system of celebrity which reintroduces something that we last saw with the "Superstar" expansion pack for The Sims back in about 2003. Celebrities do not have to be restricted to the new active Film Career track. They can be famous even for just knowing famous people, although it can equally be advantageous to know people who are not celebrities.

Vampires are back. They now look slick, suave and sexy, at home in the latest of the popular vamp-craze movies and programs out there and not like they are rejects from a 1970s Spanner House of Horror Movie. They can travel and learn skills at an incredibly fast rate, they can hunt for new donors or even be vegetarians and live on a diet of plasma fruit, available from any supermarket. I must have a look for some the next time I go to "Tesco". Here we see Cyrus Stransky, a smalltown simlebrity, who has noticed he is being hunted by the vampire on the right.

There are a lot more musical instruments now and sims can even form their own band, go out doing gigs and become the biggest thing in town. Also, sims can become bartenders and learn the new skill of mixology. Skilled mixologists can even make certain cocktails that have special bonuses. This one we see here, though, has a way to go before he's skilled, however.

On top of this, there are the usual additions to the traits system, new hair, outfits, makeup, objects to buy, objects and textures to build with and other additions to the gameplay. Also, with the new objects, there is a lot more scope with how we can edit the neighbourhoods. Late Night has a bit for all of us but let us first look at the new town we have been given.