Spring4Sims – The Best Finds, Downloads & Hints for Your Sims

From SimGuruGraham:

Ever wondered why the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe were in World Adventures but didn’t actually appear in France? Take a rare peek at pictures of an early France prototype… We eventually decided having these huge landmarks in a town felt awkward, so we made Champs Les Sims a countryside village on the outskirts of Paris.

Honestly, looking at these pictures really makes me happy they didn’t make Paris but Champs Les Sims.

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I have a confession to make: I love the new expansion pack for The Sims 3. World Adventures is the best vacation expansion so far. At first I was very comparative regarding Bon Voyage for The Sims 2, which I really loved, but I’m starting to think World Adventures is even better.

For the first time in my Sims experience, I truly love the freedom of TS3 neighborhoods since there are no loading screens whatsoever. You can go basically anywhere by foot or by bicycle. I love this! No loading screens! I’m still amazed by this simple fact.

Another thing I truly love is the nature in Shang Simla. It’s really epic, picture-perfect. I took a few snaps so you can take a look (and make sure to enlarge them by clicking on them). Exploring catacombs is amazing and I love that you actually have some quests to do. This gives the player a whole new experience.

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If anyone noticed the same bugs, let me know.

Some sets or objects from the official store disappear from the game after World Adventures is installed (Bayside, Ultra Lounge Set). I tried to install them again but it doesn’t seem to work. It’s a huge miss since I love these sets. And I also bought them from the store (for my free points, of course, but still) so it sucks a lot!

Traits. In-game Sims ‘lose’ their traits, they’re simply not showing up. This also confuses Sims’ Wishes/Wants that are tied to traits–e.g. Sims who like the outdoors won’t ask you to go outdoors very often. However, newborns that you don’t play with get new traits correctly and you can also chose new traits for Sims in the Create-a-Sim. Using enabletestingcheats true cheat and then SHIFT-clicking the Sim to chose his traits works, though. You can simply chose new traits for your Sims this way.

Ceilings don’t appear correctly in some cases. Instead of showing in white color, they’re dark brown (and that can’t be changed with simply chosing white tile to ‘repaint’ the ceiling). Re-builing walls seems to help this. (I didn’t take a picture that would show just the ceiling, but notice the upper corner of the picture–it’s dark brown.)

Not sure if this is a bug, but could be–my Sim has fully explored a catacomb and grabbed all he could find there. Then he was supposed to give it to the woman that assigned him to find a relic there (and he did find it). The problem was I could not find the woman as she was not highlited on the map and after a lot of struggling I fould her, but could not give her the relic she wanted. There was no such option. Has anyone experienced this?

Some textures of furniture were changed after WA was installed. (See the first picture–not only the textures are wrong, but also the Bayside kitchen set was replaced by objects from the original game.)

World Adventures got me thinking about love triangles or actually, the game makes them much more complicated. My new Sim, Jason, has decided to date and soon marry his boss, Jamie, who is a super-cute and clever blondie.

Then he found out he’s totally into martial arts and so he went to Shang Simla. There he fell in love with a nice Chinese girl and who would’ve thought she could get pregant just like that?

The truth is that I didn’t want to leave out the pretty Chinese on her own with a kid, so I went back home and decided to make Jason and Jamie break up. Yeah, I broke her heart, but a heart of a women expecting baby must be crushed, not just broken.

And then the funny thing happened. I invited the Chinese girl to my place and wanted to marry her. But I couldn’t! I spent countless hours of socializing and waited for ‘Get Engaged’ option to show up, but nothing happened. They could try for babies but no serious steps like marriage. Damn it!

I’ve decided to step back. I wanted Jason to marry his ex-wife, Jamie. But guess what? After another countless hours of socializing, I still can’t. It just won’t let me to. I guess Sims have only one shot in their lives, how sad.

Now I’m going to Shang Simla again and I’ll use the cheats (testingcheatsenabled true and then Shift-click a non-household Sim to add him to family) to get my Chinese girl. You have to fight for love, don’t you? Hope this will work out, I really wanted Jason to eventually end up with his love from travles.

Yes, EA Games keeps on releasing new pictures even after the game has been released. But I’m not complaining since I still don’t have the game (at has just shipped from the USA, yay!) and I’m pretty excited about it.

Particularly this picture made me very excited–yes, wine production. I live in a region famous for its wine and champagne, we even produce wine in our house. In fact, we have quite a big vineyard, too. Self-production, that is. Well, I’m not really keen on the production to be honest, but wine… that’s another story. As long as you don’t get drunk. (Which I haven’t in my entire life, good for me!)

I wonder if Sims will look drunk if they drink too much of “grape sect”… ? It would be fun to see them like that!

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In my country, we say that patience brings roses (I don’t know what idiom uses English for this). And only after 4 days, Amazon has dropped the price of World Adventures from $39.99 to $28.99. To be honest, the price seems now much more reasonable to me.

I’m not buying it just yet, maybe in early December (hopefully). If you still haven’t bought your game, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this, too.

UPDATE: It looks like it’s only a Black Friday discount, but I can’t seem to find out exactly when the discount ends (probably on Saturday?). Damn it, I’d better order it fast!

So, World Adventures is out. Do you have it? Good for you! In case you do, please, let me know how you like it. I’m dying to know what you think. I haven’t bothered to get my copy yet since I still think that I might find some better use of my money right now, but I’m very tempted. The Sims games are a holiday game for me right now, very relaxing. So yeah–should I or should I not spend my last money on it? That’s a hard question.

And that’s why I’m asking whether you like it or not, whether it’s an alert must-have or it can wait. I will buy it anyway, no matter what others say, but comments usually either give me more or less enthusiasm…

And here’s another video. Oh yes, EA Games has decited to promote even Paris. Unbelievable, isn’t ok? Okay, okay, I’m late, it’s been out for 8 days and I found it only two days ago… but still better than never.

Behind the scene content including our favorite Nelly Furtado, Pixie Lott and other artists!

Simlish always makes me excited, no matter what. Yay! Wow! Woohoo!

I’m still so undecided whether to buy or not World Adventures. I mean — I will either buy the game or get it as a present sooner or later, but all of the sudden I’m so excited about the game. (Exams are coming, that’s a good sign for buying a new game…)

The problem is also that I spent all my money for Christmas already, but I will get some in December, which is kind of a relief. But I also need to save something for MIKA’s upcoming gig in Vienna, it’s a must-see, must-go. (Anyone I’m going to see there? )

But as undecided and exited as I am, I’m sharing these two new pictures with you and also make sure to read this new Melody’s letter that EA Game wrote to make promote the game a little. It made me excited, hope it will do you, too.

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This is so symbolic. If you know a little about history of central Europe, you might know that on November 17th 1989 people from Slovakia and Czech Republic protested against communism and USSR. Well, the democracy there is not really awesome now, but you sure know this helped to bring the USSR down. And uhm, seems like that Maxis is going to bring some sort of “iron curtain” down, too. (If it doesn’t make sense to you, just ignore the first two sentences, lol.)

On November 17th, new patch will be released and it will contain some new objects that you can download for free (you can select some of them). Is this the new Velvet Revolution in EA Games? I guess and let me tell you I really like this and I’m pretty sure this nice present will make you at least a tiny bit more happy each time you update your game.

More info here.