The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack

See larger image The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack (DVD-ROM) List Price: $39.99 USD New From: $30.00 In Stock Used from: $22.98 In Stock Release date November 17, 2009.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Product Description
The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack* is the first expansion pack for the The Sims 3. Playable both on PCs and Macs, it focuses on a range of travel opportunities available to your sims, which allow for everything from pleasant family vacations, all the way to an adventure-filled, possibly even dangerous Indiana Jones like adventures. Along the way your sims can accumulate unique skills and abilities, learn about new cultures, enjoy a unique soundtrack of real songs recorded in Simlish and get $10 worth of free SimPoints for use at The Sims 3 Store.

Explore realistic environments set in France, Egypt and China. View larger.

Enjoy Indiana Jones like adventure. View larger.

Develop new skills and abilities. View larger.

Meet and create unexpected new sims. View larger.

Put your new abilities to use. View larger.

Story and Gameplay
Like every The Sims game, the story behind the World Adventures Expansion is whatever you want to make of it, but in this case within the realm of international travel. And why not, since what sim doesn’t need a vacation. Players choose from environments set Egypt, France or China, with the possibility of others via download. Similarly, gameplay follows the same well-worn path familiar to veteranThe Sims players, and easy to pick up for those coming to the franchise for the first time. Players create their sims as they like, customizing everything from physical characteristics, all the way down to personality traits, habits, etc. They can mix with other sims, build relationships, start families and even die. Because this expansion is based around travel, your sims can also discover rich, new cultures, develop brand-new skills and abilities and explore and adventure through realistic environments. New skills related to these destinations include photography, martial arts, and nectar making (a sim beverage) among others. As part of of the exotic locales available, sims can get adventurous and explore the caves and tombs of Egypt and China. Here they will put their new adventure related abilities to work as they participate in Indiana Jones like adventures full of excitement and even danger, including some not-so friendly mummies and the Grim Reaper.

Unique Simlish Soundtrack
Just as with travel, every sim has his/her particular musical tastes. With that in mind the World Adventures Expansion Pack features an all-star soundtrack of real songs, recorded by the original artists in the sims native tongue of Simlish. These tracks include:

Key Features

• Accept challenges, find treasures, discover what’s lurking in hidden caves and more.
• Explore famous landmarks in China, Egypt, and France.
• Learn new skills like photography and pursue new opportunities.
• Meet new Sims from exotic locations and share their cultures.
• Get $10 worth of free SimPoints for The Sims 3 Store.
• Enjoy a unique all-star soundtrack of songs, especially recorded in Simlish for the expansion.

System Requirements:

* Requires a copy The Sims 3, or The Sims 3 Collector’s Edition for play.

Customer Reviews

Not 100% what I had hoped for; but pretty dang close.
I own every single Sims game, and had owned all of the Sim City series as well. With that said, let’s move on to the review of EA’s latest product, The Sims 3: World Adventures. I had high anticipation because I am used to the massive amounts of new things we got with the Sims 1 & Sims 2 expansions, which were offered at much lower costs. However, do not let this deter you. While you may not get a ton of new items, you do get adventure as promised. The pros:
1. You do get to travel, and there are goals when you do so. I didn’t care for the way the Sims 2: Bon Voyage, didn’t really give you a goal. It was go to a new place, relax, stay for a huge amount of time and leave. World Adventures gives you goals, while allowing you to visit various places if you would like. And in time you can buy a vacation home and spend more time there. You have to build up your “visa” to have stays longer than 3 days in each location, and you do this by completing adventures. I had a great time wandering around the maze like tombs, and avoiding torching myself.
2. There are indeed a few more items, and they have country themes. In the past few games we have really only had Asian oriented items; I love decorating the house with flaming chandeliers like the ones seen in the tombs.
3. I have not found all of the new social interactions, but so far there have been about three.
4. Basements! Yes you heard right, you can actually have basements to your house now; not only that but you can build “tombs” under your home.
5. A few new traits and music tastes.
6. Your sim, when they learn a new song, may come home singing- which I find very cute.

Cons:
1. As with any EA game that just came out, there are glitches. The first time I started up, my sim was no where to be found. The plumbob was deformed and I couldn’t preform any actions. I uninstalled it, the problem still remained. So I uninstalled the base game; that fixed that problem. Then I couldn’t get skills or buy skill books. This was apparently a conflict between the new patch (that is required it seems.) and game mods and some custom content. I removed by mods and custom content; now the game runs like a charm.
2. The loading time is much longer than with The Sims 3 base game. I have plenty of memory, a new graphics card and plenty of RAM. I am above the required specs with everything, but only slightly. If you are working with the bare minimums or just a little above, it may run a little slower.
3. I have noticed (it may be my computer) that some of the graphics are not as clear, such as a blurry pixelation of my sims eye sockets.
4. Still no memories.
5. Some of the new features have been hard for me to find, such as the collection for photographs (which is a nice new bonus).
6. Toddlers & pregnant women cannot travel. I assume this is because it would be unsafe for them to be caught on fire, but it still stinks leaving them home.
7. Some people have been having a lot more problems, such as the game not loading, codes not working and games not saving. I have personally not had any of these problems.

I will update this as I continue to play; but so far the adventures have made getting the game worth it. I really enjoy having the goals and feeling like I’m achieving something for my sim.

Okay
I’ve been playing for a day now, and while the adventures do offer a change from the normal everyday life of eat/shower/sleep for Sims, if you like to build houses there is not a lot of stuff added. Mostly decoration items, and doors and wallpapers for building tombs. There were no new buildings in the town that I could find. There are a few new hairstyles and a few new outfits for adults, I haven’t checked with teen or toddler clothes yet. There are are also a few new personality traits and skills to learn as well.

The adventures themselves are okay. You start out with a very short amount of time at first, and you can’t really accomplish much in that short time. You still have to keep up the needs of your Sim which can take awhile. When your vacation is up you return home and cannot take another vacation for two day. If you play your Sims on anything less than normal, you won’t get to see very much of the adventure area’s because there won’t be enough time.

In my game I’ve only a couple of bugs, one which was kinda major was that I could not save a pre-existing family before install the world adventures pack. The second was that it slowed down game play waiting for everything to appear in the next room of the dungeon.

Not bad..
The game is pretty much what you would expect.. There is not a lot of new objects, the new places you can travel to are fairly limited, however the “adventures” are kind of cool if you are looking for something new to do instead of the mundane household and skill stuff. The new skills are photography, nectar-making, and martial arts, and also you can get all new kinds of fruits and vegetables to grow and different insects, fish, and gems, etc, not to mention a bunch of different books if you want to harm your Sim the next time they re-read Where’s Bella. And you can now make basements for your Sims houses, which is neat. Overall, I don’t personally think its worth $35 but I’ve played Sims since it began and couldn’t pass it up.

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Explore realistic environments set in France, Egypt and China. View larger.

Enjoy Indiana Jones like adventure. View larger.

Develop new skills and abilities. View larger.

Meet and create unexpected new sims. View larger.

Put your new abilities to use. View larger.

Story and Gameplay
Like every The Sims game, the story behind the World Adventures Expansion is whatever you want to make of it, but in this case within the realm of international travel. And why not, since what sim doesn’t need a vacation. Players choose from environments set Egypt, France or China, with the possibility of others via download. Similarly, gameplay follows the same well-worn path familiar to veteranThe Sims players, and easy to pick up for those coming to the franchise for the first time. Players create their sims as they like, customizing everything from physical characteristics, all the way down to personality traits, habits, etc. They can mix with other sims, build relationships, start families and even die. Because this expansion is based around travel, your sims can also discover rich, new cultures, develop brand-new skills and abilities and explore and adventure through realistic environments. New skills related to these destinations include photography, martial arts, and nectar making (a sim beverage) among others. As part of of the exotic locales available, sims can get adventurous and explore the caves and tombs of Egypt and China. Here they will put their new adventure related abilities to work as they participate in Indiana Jones like adventures full of excitement and even danger, including some not-so friendly mummies and the Grim Reaper.

Unique Simlish Soundtrack
Just as with travel, every sim has his/her particular musical tastes. With that in mind the World Adventures Expansion Pack features an all-star soundtrack of real songs, recorded by the original artists in the sims native tongue of Simlish. These tracks include:

Key Features

• Accept challenges, find treasures, discover what’s lurking in hidden caves and more.
• Explore famous landmarks in China, Egypt, and France.
• Learn new skills like photography and pursue new opportunities.
• Meet new Sims from exotic locations and share their cultures.
• Get $10 worth of free SimPoints for The Sims 3 Store.
• Enjoy a unique all-star soundtrack of songs, especially recorded in Simlish for the expansion.

System Requirements:

* Requires a copy The Sims 3, or The Sims 3 Collector’s Edition for play.

Customer Reviews

Not 100% what I had hoped for; but pretty dang close.
I own every single Sims game, and had owned all of the Sim City series as well. With that said, let’s move on to the review of EA’s latest product, The Sims 3: World Adventures. I had high anticipation because I am used to the massive amounts of new things we got with the Sims 1 & Sims 2 expansions, which were offered at much lower costs. However, do not let this deter you. While you may not get a ton of new items, you do get adventure as promised. The pros:
1. You do get to travel, and there are goals when you do so. I didn’t care for the way the Sims 2: Bon Voyage, didn’t really give you a goal. It was go to a new place, relax, stay for a huge amount of time and leave. World Adventures gives you goals, while allowing you to visit various places if you would like. And in time you can buy a vacation home and spend more time there. You have to build up your “visa” to have stays longer than 3 days in each location, and you do this by completing adventures. I had a great time wandering around the maze like tombs, and avoiding torching myself.
2. There are indeed a few more items, and they have country themes. In the past few games we have really only had Asian oriented items; I love decorating the house with flaming chandeliers like the ones seen in the tombs.
3. I have not found all of the new social interactions, but so far there have been about three.
4. Basements! Yes you heard right, you can actually have basements to your house now; not only that but you can build “tombs” under your home.
5. A few new traits and music tastes.
6. Your sim, when they learn a new song, may come home singing- which I find very cute.

Cons:
1. As with any EA game that just came out, there are glitches. The first time I started up, my sim was no where to be found. The plumbob was deformed and I couldn’t preform any actions. I uninstalled it, the problem still remained. So I uninstalled the base game; that fixed that problem. Then I couldn’t get skills or buy skill books. This was apparently a conflict between the new patch (that is required it seems.) and game mods and some custom content. I removed by mods and custom content; now the game runs like a charm.
2. The loading time is much longer than with The Sims 3 base game. I have plenty of memory, a new graphics card and plenty of RAM. I am above the required specs with everything, but only slightly. If you are working with the bare minimums or just a little above, it may run a little slower.
3. I have noticed (it may be my computer) that some of the graphics are not as clear, such as a blurry pixelation of my sims eye sockets.
4. Still no memories.
5. Some of the new features have been hard for me to find, such as the collection for photographs (which is a nice new bonus).
6. Toddlers & pregnant women cannot travel. I assume this is because it would be unsafe for them to be caught on fire, but it still stinks leaving them home.
7. Some people have been having a lot more problems, such as the game not loading, codes not working and games not saving. I have personally not had any of these problems.

I will update this as I continue to play; but so far the adventures have made getting the game worth it. I really enjoy having the goals and feeling like I’m achieving something for my sim.

Okay
I’ve been playing for a day now, and while the adventures do offer a change from the normal everyday life of eat/shower/sleep for Sims, if you like to build houses there is not a lot of stuff added. Mostly decoration items, and doors and wallpapers for building tombs. There were no new buildings in the town that I could find. There are a few new hairstyles and a few new outfits for adults, I haven’t checked with teen or toddler clothes yet. There are are also a few new personality traits and skills to learn as well.

The adventures themselves are okay. You start out with a very short amount of time at first, and you can’t really accomplish much in that short time. You still have to keep up the needs of your Sim which can take awhile. When your vacation is up you return home and cannot take another vacation for two day. If you play your Sims on anything less than normal, you won’t get to see very much of the adventure area’s because there won’t be enough time.

In my game I’ve only a couple of bugs, one which was kinda major was that I could not save a pre-existing family before install the world adventures pack. The second was that it slowed down game play waiting for everything to appear in the next room of the dungeon.

Not bad..
The game is pretty much what you would expect.. There is not a lot of new objects, the new places you can travel to are fairly limited, however the “adventures” are kind of cool if you are looking for something new to do instead of the mundane household and skill stuff. The new skills are photography, nectar-making, and martial arts, and also you can get all new kinds of fruits and vegetables to grow and different insects, fish, and gems, etc, not to mention a bunch of different books if you want to harm your Sim the next time they re-read Where’s Bella. And you can now make basements for your Sims houses, which is neat. Overall, I don’t personally think its worth $35 but I’ve played Sims since it began and couldn’t pass it up.

The Sims 3: World Adventures Expansion Pack is posted by Suroboy.