Review: The Sims 3 Ambitions - Unlimit Your Ambition

Overview

Ever wondered what it's like to live the life of a rock star, pro athlete, firefighter, or one of many other interesting professions? EA's newest installment to The Sims series lets you take control of your character's career, relationships, hobbies, and dreams in an addicting virtual world experience.

Features

The Sims 3 Ambitions adds babies, a long-awaited feature that will dramatically change the lives of your Sims. Also included is a greatly improved build mode that lets you add rooms and various types of furniture to certain buildings. Each game has missions based on the career choices and personality of your character, and you can improve attributes by performing certain tasks. The entire game takes place in a world full of interactive locations and other Sims to converse with.

The Good

The game has many appealing and improved features that are better than those in both The Sims 3 and The Sims 3 World Adventures. Babies are definitely an awesome addition that produce a completely different type of gameplay once you encounter them. The new build mode makes it easy to renovate any building, whether it be your Sim's home or a music studio in the city. You can buy and sell rooms and furniture, effectively redesigning your character's world. You choose the traits and interests of your character at the start of the game, and most missions are based on the selected career. Although several occupation-based outfits are already set up for you, you have the power to choose exactly how you want your Sim to look. This changes throughout the course of the game and can be edited at any time. The Sims 3 Ambitions is incredibly addicting because of the degree of freedom that the game provides. You can do whatever you want at anytime, whether it's watching TV at home or running around the city street giving hugs and using cheesy pick-up lines on every stranger you happen to meet. The game allows you to import Sims from previous games so you can pursue their dreams as well. In order to have a successful life, your character needs quite a bit of money. You can earn money by showing up on time to work, catching fish in the local pond, gardening, and doing some odd jobs here and there. Using your money, you can learn new recipes, go on dates, buy soccer balls, build a new kitchen counter, and do so much more.

The Bad

Even though you have the option to pause or fast forward time, the game still gets slow at times. In the city, it's difficult to spot another Sim to strike a conversation with, especially when the camera is zoomed out all the way. When you go to work for 8 hours, not much happens, so you end up staring at the screen for 30 seconds or more. It would be nice to be able to completely skip a certain action instead of having to wait for time to pass on the screen. Your character is also really hard to keep satisfied, and people who are new to the series may have some difficulty getting used to it. There are several icons on the bottom left of the screen that how the status of your Sim and how they're doing on health, energy, and other things. It seems that EA times everything out perfectly so that just after you've finished cooking a meal at your house and left, another icon turns red and you have to stop whatever you're doing in the game just to go back and take a shower.

The Verdict

The Sims 3 Ambitions is by far the most detailed and genuine Sims game available for the iPhone. Other than a few things that keep it from being on par with the PC version, the game feels more real than ever and will keep you hooked. If you don't already own another Sims game, then this is definitely the one to pick up. The Sims 3 Ambitions is a should buy for $4.99 and is one of the best virtual world reality games to date.

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