Title: The Sims 3 Island Paradise
Developed By: Maxis / The Sims Studio
Published by: Electronic Arts
Based On: The tenth major expansion pack in The Sims 3 franchise
Sequel to: The Sims 3: University Life, The Sims 3: Seasons,et al.
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Console: PC / Mac
Genre: Simulation
Audio/Subtitles: Simlish
Review Conditions: Digital Download, Origin, PC
Special Thanks: Electronic Arts Australia for providing me with a copy of this game to review
While the development life-cycle for The Sims 3 has been longer than its predecessors by a couple of expansion packs, it is soon to end with the upcoming release of The Sims 4 next year. But you have to admit your Sims have been able to do some pretty awesome things – they have travelled through crypts in international locations, solved the mysteries of their neighborhoods as detectives, made a pet of a mythical unicorn and enjoyed the stereotypical University experience to name a few. But to date most of their fun has remained with their feet firmly flat on the ground.
Outside the boundaries of your neighborhood lies a vast ocean with much untapped potential. With Island Paradise your Sims are no longer confined to being just landlubbers and can become sea farin’ pirates as well as resort entrepreneurs and deep sea explorers. How does this games second “vacation” themed expansion pack fare? Read more to find out!
While a couple of the other expansion packs have featured new subworlds to explore, The Sims 3: Island Paradise features an entirely new world by the name of Isla Paradiso which represents your typical tropical island lifestyle with travel by boat almost compulsory to explore all the nooks and crannys within it. As this is the only official world currently on the market with a lot of water to explore, to fully appreciate everything this pack has to offer you will need to move your Sims to the new world. Fortunately moving your Sims to a new world is nothing more than a phone call away (With some limitations) or otherwise you still have the option of using the nRaas Traveller mod to go on vacation to this new world.
The world of Isla Paradiso however is very pretty and spread over several islands it comes with all the workplaces, hotspots, residential blocks and Sims to be able to jump in and just play. But the most notable new addition is the presence of houseboats which you can dock at a port of take off and set sail around the new world. The houseboats were one of the more interesting features of the game as while they are small they are literally homes on boats without the use of rabbitholes or stifling your creative abilities too heavily. The mechanics are pretty much the same for developing a house-boat as a normal house with a few new additions that allows your Sims to move the house anywhere on the open water. These houseboats can also be upgraded with extra goodies such as the foghorn and auto-drive.
If you are like me you would have been working with the same set of Sims since back in 2009 (Many of my Sims have however carried over since my days playing The Sims 1). You may have found that after putting all your creative processes in creating enough Sims to fill a medium-sized city that you have no more space for them. Houseboats are a nice feature for this as not only are the ports small, but once your Sims disembark you can dissociate the port with the boat and build another houseboat on it – meaning you could have more Sims on water than on land! While there are some limitations that come with actually visiting the Sims house, you are not cut off from the rest of the world as travelling by “Taxi Boat” or other marine crafts is possible.
In The Sims 2, running and owning businesses seemed to be more about the business side of things rather than all the fun stuff that comes along with it. In The Sims 3 with most businesses being rabbitholes they have laxed things a bit and generally allowed you to buy into businesses and have limited control over how things have been run or otherwise given you a purpose to hang out at one nightclub over another. They have improved this system a bit with the resort management system by allowing you not only to own a resort but have a bit more creative and logistical control over your employees, rooms and of course the all-mighty buffet tables. You can choose to go with the default resort that is pretty much dilapidated for free, buy into one of the couple already running on the islands or find a secret island and build your own.
What I really liked was that to embrace the “Island Paradise” nature of this expansion pack, you could build your resort out over the open ocean to produce some really nice rooms. For those less design savvy, they also throw in a handful of room blueprints for you to plonk down and use instead, or alternatively a number of different rabbit-hole rooms and resort towers. Unfortunately The Sims 3 still isn’t advanced enough to allow you to go into each individual hotel room and deck them out – but who knows with The Sims 4 around the corner.
Most of the items in this pack are designed for the tropical life-style, but in your other neighborhoods there is nothing much stopping you from building a Winter Retreat or other types of hotels making use of content from other expansion packs. To provide an augmented reality experience, they also post up mock reviews of your hotel which is a nice touch – although the Sims posting them seem indecisive at times about what they liked – disliking my food but at the same time liking the food from the room service for example. Overall it is a simple system that doesn’t pry too much into your Simming time, but like Sims 3: Late Night gives you the option to do something a bit different from your usual career-life.
The last major feature of the Island Paradise expansion pack was the ability to take your Sims (Teen and Older) scuba diving down into the depths of select spots around Isla Paradiso. While there were only a few pre-existing ones available, they were pretty well designed and leaves the door open for the true Sims creative base which is are the minds of each and every Simmer. These underwater area introduces a new supernatural type which are “Mermaids” (Unfortunately they are not available via the Supernatural CAS menu but can be easily created via Lifetime Rewards) and a few new threats including the octopus that hide in caves, sharks and your own oxygen requirements. Fortunately unlike certain events from The Sims 3: University Life you are less likely to see your Sims killed off randomly – but the risk still remains.
These rather beautiful areas not only hide secret treasure but the caves also hold a number of goodies including the potential to find brand new hidden unlockable islands which can be used to build new resorts, explore and/or build an “over the water” household if you so wish. While Child Sims are not old enough to brave the depths of the ocean, they can still snorkel or take advantage of a number of the other beach-side activities on offer in the game. When you combine this game with other expansions it leaves quite a lot of potential across the board.
The developers have put quite a lot of content into this pack and with all the custom content possibilities and new objects / clothing / hairstyle options in Island Paradise you can expect it to take many hours to see everything. Of course if you do choose to stay with your current neighborhood then it may not last you as long unless you opt to use a travel mod such as the aforementioned nRaas Traveller Mod. Fortunately however Island Paradise seems to be the least buggy of the expansion packs I have reviewed so far aside from the usual slowdown issues. While Supernatural had waves and waves of zombies attacking my Sims each night and University Life liked to trap or otherwise kill Sims on-campus…. nothing really negative has happened during my extensive playthrough of the game.
Once again I enjoyed my time play testing The Sims 3: Island Paradise and it was one of the more memorable expansion packs that didn’t attempt to limit its viability to any one group of Sims (Other than Toddler and Child Sims who really seem to miss out on everything in TS3). While my Sims are now comfortably in Isla Paradiso and I plan to keep them there in the future… we still have one last expansion pack to go until we witness the next generation of The Sims. See you again when my Sims hop into the future in The Sims 3: Into The Future!
Overall for The Sims 3: Island Paradise I give it the following grades:
Gameplay: B+
Replayability: B+
Personal Opinion: A-
Overall Score: B+
Therefore, I give it the overall score of B+
