Still in Build Mode

Sims 3 was the first Sims game I ever played. I was 6 and it was either late 2009 or very early 2010. My older sister showed it to me and we made ourselves. Eventually I got my own copy of the game and the rest was history. It might be because I grew up with it, but I am an avid defender of this game and its graphics. Sure, I have to run the game with minimal custom content so it doesn't take an entire lifetime to load, but it's fun and that's all that matters.

Best Moodlets

Moodlets are icons Sims 3 uses to show how your Sims are feeling. Here are some moodlets that I think have the best icons. Roll over with the mouse to see their names.

Worst Moodlets

Some moodlet icons can be a little... strange.

Glitches!

Every Sims game is full of glitches, and Sims 3 is no exception.

Girl Doll Dressed was a piece of broken CC that somehow attached itself to stuff from The Exchange. She reportedly caused players to lose entire saves! I was safe from her because I was deemed too young to use the social features of TS3.

Here's where things start to delve into body horror. The centaur outfit was CC set for all categories including "naked". Because of that, many players were surprised when their sims morphed into centaurs while showering or bathing.

Not even babies were safe... Bad CC was probably the culprit for most of these. Why did badly made CC cause such horrifying results in this? Bad CC in Sims 2 usually just made the game crash.

Now that I've covered some of the most well known bugs, it's time to share some of my own glitch stories! Most of these happened on an old computer so I have no photographic evidence :( Also, these happened in an unmodded game, but it was probably fried from excessive use of testingcheatsenabled true. I can probably type that cheat with my eyes closed.

  • Sims would sometimes not age after blowing out candles on a birthday cake.
  • Pets would mail wedding gifts.
  • Sims took a REALLY long time to change outfits. Pausing sometimes helped.
  • The cane from Generations made elders shrink down to the size of children.
  • Sims would get stuck in the Seasons photo and face painting booths.
  • A teenager randomly turned invisible.
  • Blank notifications sometimes popped up.

Best Features

Enough negativity and poking fun, let's say something nice about this game!

I love how detailed the skills are in TS3. Every single one unlocks new things for your Sims to do as they reach higher levels, and traits can affect them too! For example, if a Sim has the Evil trait, the painting will have a red tint. See some examples on The Sims Wiki.

The expansion packs all add tons of new features. My favorite EP is Generations, which focused on life stages and family play. It added wedding arches and wedding cake, which made planning wedding parties a lot more fun than when they were just standing around throwing confetti. Teens got a ton of new things to do, like pranking the neighbors, learning to drive, and going to prom. As a kid I really liked having teens go around town doorbell ditching the neighbors and leaving flaming bags of poop on the doorstep. Eventually they would get arrested and grounded by their parents. Prom may have been a rabbit hole (location you can't see), but it worked a lot better than the one in Sims 4. For some reason my Sims always become prom king or queen even if they don't have many friends at school. Main character syndrome, I guess.

Kids also got some new stuff. They can play dress-up with a costume chest, pretend to drive in a chair, "preside over the royal court" at the dining table, and pretend the bathtub is a submarine. They can also have an imaginary friend, pictured above. Some people find them creepy, but I never really minded them. They are invisible to everyone but their friend, and they can be turned real with a potion. When they become real they turn into a human with colorful hair and special clothes.

My other favorite TS3 packs are Ambitions, Pets, Supernatural, Seasons, Late Night, and University Life.