Sims 3 is headed to console for the first time, and will be available on PS3, Xbox 360 and the DS from 29 October. Sims 3 is also winging its way to Wii, but there’ll be a bit of a wait on that, and it’s likely to be arriving around mid November.
Sam Player, executive producer for Sims 3 on console and handheld, said “We’ve had to build a new engine for Sims 3 on the Wii, starting from scratch again. The controls will be quite different on the Wii, we’ve tried to make it more kinetic in every way.”
But, aside from the Wii hold up, what else did we learn about Sims 3 for console yesterday? By far our favourite addition to Sims 3 on the console is the karma powers, which give more control over your game play. If you haven’t seen karma powers before, they’re a set of positive or negative spells and curses, to put your love rival in a funk or speed yourself to success.
You buy the karma power, and it costs you karma points, which you can rack up in challenge mode. The most expensive is divine intervention, which brings any dead Sim back to life. Others include get lucky, which lasts for four Sim hours, and makes everything go well for you, whether you’re fishing, seducing, or learning to play the double bass.
The negative karma powers for Sims 3 on console are what are really fun though. These include poltergeists, whereby you can inflict a horde of roving ghosts on noisy neighbours, and watch them go all Yvette Fielding in Most Haunted (unless the Sim is an evil Sim, in which case they don’t care about ghosts). We watched a poltergeist steal a laptop from a teenage Sim, and sit down at the kitchen table playing peek a boo with it, while teenage Sim completely freaked out.
Another negative karma power for Sims 3 on console is the epic fail, which puts a hex on whomever you so choose, meaning they say the wrong thing, annoy everyone, romances fall apart, and they’ll also lose control of their bowels.
This new edition of Sims 3 for console brings extra controls over game play, which the PC game has, to the console for the first time, and adds creative features like the karma and challenges. It’s also going connected for the first time, and you’ll be able to hook Sims 3 on your console to the online exchange, Xbox Live or other console equivalent.
Will you be getting Sims 3 next month? What’s the most exciting new feature? Drop us a line in the comments!
