The various expansions have brought much needed improvement, but not quite enough.
The graphics have improved as well. The buildings are sharper, the furniture has more detail, and the cities look all around nicer.
That said, there's still a lot of negative aspects. It continues to have way too many rabbit holes (buildings you disappear inside of). You still can't really go inside grocery stores, bookstores, restaurants, etc. There's not nearly enough community lots, and the sims themselves are still very creepy looking. Look closely and you'll notice how the heads are attached to the bodies at the wrong place. It's most obvious in the create-a-sim--just look at the right side of where the jaw-line and neck connect. It ain't right.
An odd flaw I didn't mention before is the lack of self-preservation of the town's sims. They always walk around screaming that they are starving to death, even though there's food next to them. They dance around saying they have to pee, or wet the floor, even though a toilet is down the hall. Or they'll be falling over from exhaustion instead of going to bed. They constantly holler about these things, making interactions with them hard because they keep stopping to complain about their needs. I saw a sim actually die of starvation at a party next to a buffet. I don't know if this is a glitch isolated to my game or what, but it's so annoying.
The load times are annoying as well, and it gets hung up regularly, even on a fast computer. But if they keep expanding the game, I have faith that it will be as great as its predessor in the near future.
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
If you've never played The Sims 2, you might be able to play The Sims 3 without it being a series of disappointments one after another. But if you're a fan of the franchise, be prepared to be very very letdown. The first and most obvious flaw in this game is the blobby undefined people. I'll admit that the Sims have never been a good-looking bunch of computer animatons--they've always looked kind of dopey and not super-realistic, which was fine with me. Now however, they are these creepy doughy mannequins with a permanent slight blurriness over there rarely expressionable faces. The houses and furniture are equally undefined and blobby, and the selection is downright pitiful compared to the Sims 2 and it's expansion packs. But hey, I could live with that if it meant great gameplay. No such luck. The second big disappoint in the game is the town. Sure you can walk around it, and drive around it, something they aggressively advertised in the commercials. But exploring the town ain't much fun since YOU CAN'T GO INSIDE THE RESTAURANTS AND STORES! Forgive my shouting, but this is a big big letdown. Unlike in the Sims 2 where you go inside a cafe, chat with the hostess, decide what you want to eat, get up and dance with your date a little bit, etc., all under your command, in the Sims 3 your sim goes in the buildings while you wait outside for them to get done with what they are doing (which you don't control at all), What is the deal?? The third giant disappointment is the lack of interactions available with other sims. You are given about a third of the options you had in the Sims 2, with most options being a choice of tone of conversation you want to use, like 'funny', 'romantic', etc, and you can run out of actions to perform pretty quickly. It also strangely has a low level of free will during these social interactions. If you don't choose what to say to them, they simply stand there staring at each other. It actually gives you that uncomfortable feeling you get in real life when you see someone you don't know well, and you aren't quite sure what to do with them, so you end up staring at each other awkwardly. Not fun.
The insanely stellar reviews this latest installment has been receiving are baffling to me, and I can only surmise that people are getting caught up in the hype. I suspect some reviewers were so excited about the game finally coming out that they reviewed it based mostly on the game's commercials and press-releases, and not there actual experience playing it. Others were simply so excited about walking around the stupid town instead of the previous games' 'teleport here and there' method that they didn't notice the revolting people, third-rate graphics, or the fact that you can't go inside any of the stores. To sum it up, here's a quick list of the game's biggest drawbacks when compared to it's predecessors:
1. You can no longer go inside restaurants or stores of any kind. No more going on dream-dates to the nightclub, ordering dinner and drinks, and then dancing all night. No more browsing around the stores and chatting with store clerks. Instead you wait outside while your sim does who knows what inside for five minutes.
2. No pets! You can't create your own dog or cat, or go to a pet store and pick out a special little critter to enliven your household. After caring for a dog from puppyhood to death in Sims 2, teaching it tricks, watching it tear up your furniture, and even get a job in the movie industry, you will feel the empty hole left by their absence in the Sims 3.
3. You can no longer create your own businesses, like a clothing store, a pet store, a hotel, an ice skating rink, etc. Running a store and hiring and managing employees, and trying to please customers is a load of fun, and what I spent most of my time doing in Sims 2. Without that, the fun factor decreases exponentially.
4. This one might not apply to all fans, but the Sims 3 has a whole lot fewer cheat codes. I'm a big cheater in the Sims 2, and I expect the same cheats to carry over to the new game--and some do. Control+shift+c still brings up the cheat console, and typing 'motherlode' into it still gives your sim 50, 000 simoleans, and typing 'testingcheatsenabled true' into it enables the mailbox cheat console, where holding down the shift key and clicking on the mailbox allows you to edit your sims career and put the need meters of all household members at a near permanent max. But no more is the famous Sim Modder cheat that allows you to make any sim fall in love with you, or hate you, or spawn a child with any sim you choose, and many other fun cheats. For those who don't use cheats, the lack of cheats in Sims 3 doesn't affect you, but to those of us who've become accustom to them, it's sucks not to have them!
To be fair, there are some features of the Sims 3 that I really love. For instance, the ability to pick out very specific personality traits for your sim that directly affect the gameplay is fantastic. And I love being able to choose their favorite food and color and type of music. But seriously, these tiny little bones they've thrown to us just don't make up for the severe lack of progress, and outright back-peddling, they've made in this sequel. The Sims 2 and it's numerous expansion packs are still king, and it's gonna take a lot of improvement to come close to living up to the franchise's previous standards.