The Sims 3 World Adventures for iPhone and iPad. Game Review

Sims 3 World Adventures iPhone iPad

The Sims 3 World Adventures [rating: 3/5]

If you are a huge Sims fan or you just throughly enjoyed The Sims 3, then no doubt you were very excited to hear of the new Sims 3 World Adventures game by EA Mobile. With the promise of new goals, new options to change your Sim and exotic destinations to travel the game offered great potential to be another winner in the app store.

If you have played The Sims 3 the game is very similar to that and infact it doesn’t matter if you have never played it you can still play this edition with no problems. At the beginning you first customize and create your virtual character by choosing all the different styles or simply transfer one from The Sims 3 if you had played it previously. The game play is exactly the same, you have to keep your sim happy. You need to feed it, groom it, sort all its biological needs and get it to meet other people to keep it perfectly content.

You can do all this by wandering around your town, visiting your friends and getting yourself a well paid job. To sort your hunger pangs you can go to the local supermarket to buy your food requirements and then pop back home to rustle up something tasty. When you do cook a meal there is a small mini-game to help you cook the food. Although its not that hard to do and not really a game at all. If your pan gets hot you give your device a little shake, it cools down and you carry on, theres nothing fun in it really.

Now so far before I had really done anything with the game I found I was constantly servicing the needs of my sim. If she wasn’t eating she needed the toilet, if she wasn’t showering she needed some fun. My sim never seemed to be happy for a good amount of time this causing me to never actual get anything done. I found I was sleeping, eating, working on one big loop over and over.

Where this game differs from Sims 3 is that in the World Adventures edition you get the chance to travel to three different destinations. There is ‘Al Simhara’ in Egypt, ‘Champs Les Sims’ in France and ‘Shang SimLa’ in China. Now you can travel for different lengths of time all depending on how much you can afford. You might want to note as well that if you have a job you need to make sure you are back in time to go to work. So when you start out more or less it will be just quick weekend visits to the different destinations.

Sims 3 World Adventures iPhone iPad excavation_mini_games

If you have been told a wish from your sim, for example to make someone laugh in China then you might want to make your first visit there to try and do just that. You purchase your plane ticket and off you go. On the way there you play an air sickness mini-game. You look out of the window and you have to keep the picture in focus to try and stop your sim turning green. Its very easy to make them feel unwell though so no doubt as soon as you get to your new destination you will need a shower, sleep, food and the toilet. All wasting your precious day or two you have there. When you have finally sorted your Sim out to being just about happy you can start wondering and exploring. Take a tour of the Eiffel Tower or Sphinx or simply talk to the locals, each destination has its own different activities to do.

When you visit each country there are popular buildings you can tour. For example the Eiffel Tower. When you are in tour mode you are shown a few clips of the site along with a few snippets of information about it. Whilst these were very interesting it was ruined by the strange poses your sim made flashing before you on the screen. As much as I tried it couldn’t be stopped either so you just had to sit and watch it and remember not to do it again in a hurry! I think at this point they could have done a lot more. They could have put more factual information in with more images, something to keep the audience interested instead of seeing half of an image of your sim floating around pulling wierd facial expressions.

Each time I visited a destination I struggled to fit everything in in the short space of time I had. My sim was still needing a lot of attention before we could even get going on our travels. Infact a few times I was deported back home as I had out stayed my welcome and I hadn’t even achieved what I had gone there for. So once I was home I had to go back in my daily routine and earn some more money at work until I had enough to go visit for the weekend again.

Sims 3 World Adventures iPhone iPad_1

Another thing I did notice was my appliances were always breaking down and required fixing. I couldn’t seem to get out of the cycle of fixing things up and keeping my sim happy. The offer of travelling afar seemed exciting at first but having to do so much to actually get there and then to do nothing was really off putting.

The game had great potential to offer a unique game play by going in to more details within each destination. The little snippets of information they offered on the different tours was actually interesting and good. If they could have expanded on that and filled the game with interesting facts and pictures I think it would keep people a lot more interested and wanting it to explore more. Maybe more sights to see and the chance to visit for longer without the mundane tasks. I think the basics of the game are there it just needs tweaking to offer a great replay value because at the moment I feel it hasn’t any.

The Good

  • The game offers great 3D graphics.
  • Destinations

The Not So Good

  • The Sim is far too demanding
  • The mini-games are too easy and not that great either
  • The tours need to be more entertaining.

Price: $6.99 (iTunes Store Preview)
Released: Apr 02, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.0.0
1.0.0 (iPhone OS 3.0 Tested)
Size: 97.8 MB
Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish
Seller: Electronic Arts
© 2009 Electronic Arts Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Rated 12+ for the following:
Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity
Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor
Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later.

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