[Intro music]
There's a new sims expansion out, who would have guessed they would come out with another one?
The Sims 3 Ambitions
This is the second expansion pack for the game, and of course you'll need the Sims 3 to play it
Ambitions it says, but what kind of ambitions?
Well, how about being an entrepeneur inventor, firefighter, doctor, private investigator, or chainsaw ice sculpturist
And getting inked – ambitions makes this and lots more possible!
If you remember Sims2 expansions like Open for Business and Free Time you may be getting a similar vibe,
but seriously, this is very different, so let's go ahead,
and get right into the goodies that EA has so benevolently blessed us with
and tempts us to spend our hard-earned cash on.
You can either continue a previous save game or you can start a new game
If you start a new one,
you may as well check out the new neighborhood for Ambitions: Twinbrook
It's another quaint little town,
but with all sorts of new additions
in the form of occupational and recreational lots.
You know, the idea behing Ambitions is to have an openended set of tools
to work towards ambitions for your sims
so that you have new areas to vist and explore these opportunities
Some of these are workplaces, and others are just places to visit
but each of them you can actually enter.
What I mean is:
If you remember from the Sims 3: There were certain buildings,
where you could enter, but you couldn't see inside.
like the grocery store, for instance. These were known as "rabbit holes"
and thankfully, these new buildings are not like that.
You can actually follow your Sims inside these places, like a bar for instance
The old buildings, however, still remain "rabbit holes"
Which sucks, but hey, what can you do.
Each of the new skills or jobs has a lot or two associated with them
so we will get to those as we go along
The main additions here are the new careers and skills
The new jobs are:
[onscreen text]
Private Investigator
And the new skills are:
[onscreen text]
The architect is one of the paths that uses the new drafting board item.
This is a multi-purpose tool for several jobs,
and it's where you gain skills while away from work
The architect is more of an interior designer, i suppose
mainly going around and redesigning rooms and lots
to accomodate a certain requested set of features.
For instance, maybe a Sim will call you up
requesting that a new room be designed for their new child who just has aged up
This enters you into build/buy-mode
And here you can spend and rearrange to your heart's content within a certain budged
All jobs and opportunities will appear on your map,
but also now on the edge of your screen
reminding you that there's something to do.
And you can just choose to do them, or not to do them.
There is also a new message center,
which takes care of all the little messages you see in the game
and just makes it a whole lot easier to not clutter up the screen
The doctor is an expansion of the medical career,
while you're a good bit more involved than you were
You are not completely as involved as some of these other ones,
like going into buildings and such
Usually you make decisions outside of the hospital
like going and vaccinating people or making housecalls
and with this starting to getting into some of the more interesting aspects of ambitions
choices between good and evil
With each career you have options to do good or bad
For instance with the doctor you can choose to help patients
by giving them their correct medication,
or take the evil route and test bizzare experimental drugs on them
[moaning of Sim]
[onscreen text]
The firefighter is pretty straight forward
you work at the firestation
fighting fires. When a fire happens,
which is rather often considering Sims inability to stand up right without causing a raging inferno
There are also wilder desasters to t'k [take care] of like meteor strikes and earthquakes
but I'd yet to experience them.
While at the scene, you play a minigame of sorts,
dousing the flames and rescuing any trapped Sims before they burn to a crisp
You can also take the evil route: Stealing items,
or just busting things to bits with your axe.
There is also the ghosthunter, in which you .. hunt ghosts
If you played the Sims 3 for very long it's pretty obvious how this could be a very profitable career:
Ghosts are everywhere.
And these are not the same old ghosts, no, these are evil!
From cementeries to haunted mansions you prance around
in your ghostbusters cosplay and deal with spirits
either befriending them or collecting their souls
which can be sold for cash at the science building
The Private Investigator is somewhat similar to the police career, i suppose
just a lot more involved:
You can use bushes and such to hide and sneek around
investigating things.. privately.
I really like this one: You'll get clues and search people and places to get the answers you need
or you can just jump a Sim and beat the answers out of 'em [him/them]
Jack Bauer style.
Or even break into houses and steal everything in sight
like.. cars. Just stick it into your pocket and it'll fit!
The stylist career is similar to the architect career,
but instead of giving houses a makeover you give sims a makeover
either at home or in the saloon
using hair, makeup and clothing you can rejuvenate a sim
making them awesome-looking, or just completely ruin their look,
making them hate you.
Shaving people's heads and using tiger-makeup never has been so much fun
Surprisingly, there aren't too many new clothing, makeup or hair additions to the game, but there are a few.
Sculpting is pretty much what you'd expect:
You have a giant pottery-wheel thing to take materials like clay, wood, ice and metal
and sculp them into various objects
Eventually making sculptures of Sims, once you're skilled enough
Inventing is also what you would expect:
You invent things, and crazy stuff happens
[explosion]
[screams of sim on fire]
[sim showers off fire]
Everything from useless-thing in mybobs [furniture shop reference] to the return of the servo
now called the sim-bot, this guy ist just crazy
he acts just like a normal sim, except he eats scraps instead of food and stuff like that
you can have romantic relations with them, he can get a job, it's just crazy
I love this guy
There is even a freakin' time machine to use, which is pretty similar to the mausoleum
Just go in there and watch stuff happen.. outside
You can invent things by using scraps
and you can visit scrapyards to scrounge around for scrap, or salvage other items
to fix up and sell at the consignment shop, for instance
or you can do, what is probably my favourite new thing, detonation
[explosions and cheers]
Yes.. just attach a bomb to any item and blow it to pieces!
Even if the item isn't yours
[explosion]
Finally.. acts of terror in The Sims.
The last skill is tatooing:
Kind of like giving the sims a makover, giving tattoos is pretty straight forward
Choosing a specific body area to ink and then choosing from different colors,
scales, layers and opacity, but with no options for moving them around or using wrap-around tatt's [tattoos]
It's pretty fun just inviting in random passers-by and giving them a tattoo or a makeover
especially early on, when your sims have no idea what they're doing
I'ts complete disaster and it's hillarious
There is also an option for tattoo removal, which is strange
I'd have thought them being permanent would be a little more fun, but whatever.
And finally, the self-employment carreer is sort of a catch-all
This applies to skill-based jobs, such as writing and inventing
as well as photography and nectar-collecting, if you have world-adventures installed
all you need to do is to register with the local city hall that you are self-employed
and then you are officially your own boss
It doesn't seem to have much of a point other than to give you some specific goals to achive, i suppose
Another thing i don't totally get is the addition of laundry:
Your sims never had to worry about washing clothes
but now after every set of dirty clothes you change out of you need to pick them up
and either use your own washer and dryer or go to the local laundromat
I'ts kind of odd for the Sims 3 to have something added that is unusually mundane and
honestly, I don't understand why.
It could tie into the new traits, I suppose, and there are several of them
Many of them pertaining to jobs, like Bom Salesman and Eccentric
but an interesting one is eco-friendly
There are a whole plethora of objects for this one
like wind turbines, solar panels, recycling bins and clothes-lines
all of which consume less energy and provide lower bills
You even eat organic foot and brag about how low your carbon footprint is
increasing the smug over simnation, no doubt
I like forcing my eco-friendly sim to drive an energy-wasting SUV
Until they vomit in disgust
[vomit noises]
Aaaah, you should have bought a Prius!
And there are also plenty of new items to buy
in almost every category
and not all of them pertain to jobs or skills either, so that's nice.
Especially things like the unnecessary, but awesome trampoline
and the chopper motorcycle
the latter which is no doubt there to compliment your bad boy /bad girl persona
with your tattoos and leather, like the "power glove" [see Nintendo commercial], you are so bad.
So.. is it worth buying?
The EA suggested price is $40, and really, I feel it's worth that!
There is no $10 in sim-points this time, but you get a dozen or so free items to download
once you register online
The Sims 3 Ambitions expansion pack is one pack to the brim expansion,
and it's exactly what I think of, when I think of an expansion pack.
There are so many new items, lots of new things to do
and there's really a lot more I didn't have time to touch on
If you run out of things to occupy yourself with in the main game
then ambitions is a superb extension to the Sims3 universe
and is sure to provide plenty of fun