Inside look on New Sims 3 Expansion

BY KELLY DILDINE
Photography Editor

The Sims 3 just added another expansion pack that will force you to mindlessly play for hours and hours on end. It’s a wonder that the people at EA Games are able to keep coming up with new and interesting things to keep all of us playing incessantly.

The new expansion pack, Sims 3 Supernatural, came out earlier this month on September 4. This expansion adds many new and exciting things to the game and also includes some new updates that add some annoying additions.

Supernatural brings the ability of creating different types of Sims. Now, not only can users create humans, users can also create witches, zombies, vampires, werewolves, and fairies–but the new fun does not just stop there.

With each of these new types of Sims, there are new powers and abilities that they will be able to use on various people and objects in their world.

Witches are able to buy wands and, through practicing their magic ability, learn new spells to perform. With the witch’s power of changing objects into other objects, users gain the power to create additional seeds for his or her garden, fish, or metals.
They are also able to perform various spells on themselves and actual Sims within the world.

Some of the spells include giving full bladder, hunger, hygiene, and good luck moodlets. Upon higher levels, users will be able to cure Sims of various curses that have been placed upon them.

As a witch, users can curse Sims, turning them into a toad, haunting them, and giving them negative moodlets in bladder, hunger, and hygiene.

Fairies add their own special abilities and powers as well. They emit various auras, which not only give themselves a positive moodlet but all the Sims around them. They are also great at gardening and have the ability to make plants bloom and produce fruit without any waiting time.

Another ability of Fairies is to play tricks on other Sims, which is pretty funny and entertaining, like causing Sims to become really hot and blow steam out their ears and also charm chairs for Sims to sit in.

Zombies in the Sims typically come out at night and stalk the world looking to change others into zombies. Other than that, they do not really add much to the game but just take over all of the other Sims and convert them into Zombies too.

Eventually, if you do not go around curing the infected Sims, they will be the only type of Sims really left in the world, which is not ideal really.

Vampires, which were first introduced in the Late Night expansion of the Sims 3, have been developed further in Supernatural. With the ability to hypnotize other Sims and intimidate them into doing things that they normally would not, Vampires gain some serious cool points.

They also gain immortality and will no longer die from getting too much sunlight. Huzzah!

Werewolves, the final new type of Sims, look like regular, human Sims most of the time but transform whenever mad or just randomly into hairy beasts.

During the full moon, they automatically transform, forced into Werewolve shape until the end of the full moon. Being Werewolves, they also damage various objects by tearing them up, which they get positive moodlets from.

Interestingly, they work in a pack mentality in which they hunt in groups in order to find food, metals, and gems that are scattered across the world. Like Zombies, they are able to infect other Sims, biting them and turning them into new Werewolves; although, the likelihood of that happening depends on how high of a skill the werewolf has.

In Supernatural, all Sims gain a new ability: Alchemy. Alchemy is the art of creating potions, which is an extremely useful skill to learn and perfect in this game.

Users gain the ability to make numerous potions after each level that they get to in alchemy skill. Users make potions that are cures, curse, and even make a potion that will boost the Sims skill level. Users also create potions that have the ability to change Sims into different types, which is really awesome.

In addition, a few more plants, gems, and metals were added to the world that are really useful to help with creating various potions.

With the new game update that is required to play this expansion pack, new programs are added that tend to be quite bothersome. Users’ Sims are now able to have memories, which means that you get a notification every time something new happens to a Sims. It disrupts the game and it’s quite annoying after a few new things happen to a Sims.
Also, the game tends to freeze up more often once the update is applied, which also is a very annoying bug that they will hopefully fix.

Overall, it is a pretty entertaining expansion pack that adds numerous new additions to the game.

There are some bad parts that take away from the fun and functionality of the game and a few bugs in the original game, but updates should soon mend those issues.

All in all, it carries on the addictive legacy of Sims and makes it even more super—supernautral that is.

Email Kelly at:
kdildine@live.esu.edu