A combination of changes make the difference here, including the more simple character management page, with less needs to take care of, powerful Lifetime Rewards, and of course, a whole "living, breathing" city to explore.

Yes, that is indeed the biggest addition: the city isn't just a mysterious place your Sims goes into or gets home from, with no control whatsoever. Pressing you map button will zoom the camera out, and you will be able to see what's around you, visit your neighbors, go to the market, spa, see a movie or a concert, visit a museum, buy books from shops and so on.

Even going to work is an interactive experience now, because various work related activities can be picked from a drop-down list: socializing with colleagues, working harder than usual to finally get that promotion you've been waiting for, being lazier than usual, researching stuff to help level your skills, and the list goes on.

Another smart new thing is bonus cash - you receive it even after you reach the peak of your job career, and of course all this happens a lot faster than in previous games.

While a lot of effort was put into expanding the Sims universe without losing too much of any of the game ideas, including tools to ease design of homes, customizable objects, textures and all of that other stuff... and while Sims customization and looks are better than never... I find that the worst aspect of Sims 3 despite all of these is the graphics.

Indeed, I don't know how much work has been done on the game engine, but out of too much worry not to alienate fans probably, the game... just looks the same as Sims 2. When I heard the game will migrate everything to 3D, I started to imagine cool stuff and how everything will turn out to be.

Instead, the same old, boring look was given to the game. A little revision here would go a long way, but I guess I'll have to wait for Sims 4. There's a moderation in everything, limiting creation too much in my opinion. If I want to make my character look really ugly, I should be allowed to; it's a thing hard to explain - you see it the first time you experience the game, but you get used to it as you play along I guess. Even with plenty to choose from and plenty of stuff to do, you feel somehow very limited.

And this is my opinion - that everything could be solved with a more appealing, fresh new graphics.

Another big problem is that the game slows down really bad on higher than normal speeds, especially in town view. This problem is so bad that it sort of forced the programmers to slow down even the fast forward mode.

As a direct consequence, getting passed time consuming things like sleeping or the time your Sim works takes forever. Even worse, fast forward is interrupted by any minor change in the environment, like thoughts or desires your Sim has, moodlets changes, newspaper boy passing by, etc. Gameplay switches to "very fast" mode then - too fast for you to react to anything really, but slower than max speed.

Keys 1-4 control game speeds, and ~ is pause. So I found myself spamming 4 while sleeping, not the most smart idea of an interactive gameplay.

While most bugs from Sims 2 have been fixed somehow, I still noticed my Sim losing its train of thoughts and just standing there, or deciding to do anything other than what I asked her to do. Like "have lunch", resulting in my Sim preparing the food, but not eating. Or cleaning up 5 old newspapers - takes forever, because she picks every one of them, drops it in the basket, closes the basket, and repeats the thing with the next one. It's a little sad when gathering newspapers to trash consumes as much time as going to the toilet, washing your hands, brushing your teeth and having a bubble bath all at once.

A pleasant surprise was to see various achievement-style objectives for each maxed skill a Sim knows. For example, painting 10 masterpieces gives you more money for your paintings; or learning all the songs available helps you more in the singer career.