The Sims 3 Ambitions Review

‘Ambitions’, released June 2010, is the second expansion pack for The Sims 3. And for the first time since The Sims 3 came out a year ago, it finally adds some worthwhile content to the game. I found the base game incredibly boring, with very little for the sims to do and nowhere for them to go aside from a few parks, libraries, gyms and other such uninteresting locations – there were few hobby items, and most of the community lots were ‘rabbit holes’, ie fake buildings that your sim disappears into and you are simply left sitting there blankly watching a progress bar showing the progress of whatever it is that your sims are meant to be doing in there.

The first expansion pack, ‘World Adventures’, was a disappointment – basically all it delivered was the ability to send your sims on holiday, and while that added a small amount of interest, it soon became repetitive and the pack just didn’t add enough to the gameplay or the content to be very worthwhile. As I mentioned in my review of it here, it was worth getting just for at least SOMEthing more for your sims to do, but a far cry from what gamers wanted.

But now, with Ambitions, the developers have finally got back on track and given players some substantial content, both in gameplay and in new objects. I was not expecting much from this pack, as everything else released for The Sims 3 so far had been very disappointing, but was really pleasantly surprised when I installed this pack last weekend and for the first time since I bought The Sims 3, I’ve actually been playing the game and enjoying it! Prior to that, I mainly just created custom content (to upload on the Mod The Sims website) in order to try to alleviate my own boredom and that of other players by creating quirky content to try to make the game a bit more fun, but I didn’t play much. But, finally, now there are things for your sims to actually DO, and most of the time you can now watch them do them as well, rather than disappearing into rabbit holes.

This pack adds some good new content:

• PROFESSIONS

Your sim can now follow a ‘profession’ as opposed to just to having a job. There are some good ones to choose from – my self-sim is just starting out as an Inventor, and has to go to a new community site, the Junkyard, to rummage through piles of scrap to find useful raw materials. So far, she’s made a rather Steampunk-looking decorative object called a ‘Rotational... Read more>>