So I finally freed up some time earlier this evening to try out The Sims 3 on my iPhone (actually had to take my mom out to her bingo game and was dragged along in the process…can’t say I had a bad time, spent 4 dollars and won $50 😉 )

Anyhow, I booted up the game and started creating my personalized avatar to wreck havoc on the town.  Normally in Sim games I create a miniaturized version of myself but I wanted to do something completely different.  Let’s see what CAS has to offer, shall we?

  • 2 genders – male and female
  • 4 skin tones – late 90’s Michael Jackson white, tan, light brown and early 80’s Michael Jackson black.
  • 5 eye colors – brown, light green, dark green, light blue and dark blue
  • hair – about 5 styles with 5 colors to choose from:  blonde, black, brown, gray and reddish orange
  • 14 shirts female; 10 shirts male and at least 3 colors or more for each design
  • 9 pants/shorts for males; 12 skirts/pants/shorts for females
  • 9 shoes for male; 8 for females
  • And of course, the randomizer button

When all was done, I can haz my Sim!  After giving them the looks that I preferred it was time to give them her personality!  There are 6 personalities you can choose:  Maniac (crazy as a nut!), Sleaze (loves to woohoo – the devs must of known my sister), Power Seeker (loves money and power – oh look, they also know my other sister…great), Jerk (annoys surrounding Sims), Nice (maintains friends with many) and Jack of All Trades (well rounded, good at everything but master of nothing).  The persona I selected for my Sim was Sleazy!  Clicking next, it’s now time to give them her traits.  Piece of cake as there were only 17 to pick from.  My 5:  Neat, Active, friendly, modest and easily impressed.  Bingo! (referring to the fact that I’m done, not that I won).

Hmmmmm…Name time, any ideas?  After a few minutes of some deep thinking, I typed in “Halle Berry”.  Eh, why not?  What guy wouldn’t want to have her in their pants?  😛

*Drumroll please*  Let the game begin!  Or not…as soon as I saw the tutorial box pop up, my iPhone crashed on me.  What?  Okay…I’ll restart it and try again – it happens.  So now I restart and jump back in the tutorial.  We’re introduced to the controls when you start a new game:  tap to walk, select objects to interact, slide your finger across the screen to pan and use two fingers to rotate.  Not only that, but there is a slider on the side of the screen for zooming.  Controls are a piece of cake…Speaking of cake, Halle notified me that she was starving.  Clicked on the fridge to give her a quick snack.  After munching her food, the Goals and Wishlist popped up, letting me know that my Sim’s first wish was to grow corn…ummmm…okay?  Why the hell not, if she wants to grow corn I’m not going to stop her.  Bad mistake, obviously the game didn’t want me to grow anything as it crashed again.    The hell?  This is getting a bit irritating.  Third time is the charm they always say…Let me try once more…

After returning to the game, I dropped the idea of doing the tutorial in hopes that the game won’t crash on me.  Halle took a trip outside to the end of the sidewalk.  She seemed to be interested in venturing out, but where?  Panning out to view the town, you can select from a wide range of places – shopping districts, other houses, job sites.  The visualization of the town reminded me of SimCity 3000 mixed with the PC version of The Sims 3.  Nice job with the design.  Ah, I see a place I’m interested in:  the lake.  So Halle strolls along to the lake, crossing the bridge to find a spot to fish.  Before I could even make my way over to the glowing icon to perform the action, my freakin’ game crashes the 3rd time!

Arrgghhhh!  Now I’m frustrated.  Screw this crap.  I had intentions to write a proper review but it appears I’m not even able to do that.  Browsing around the EA Mobile forums, the Apple Itunes store and google, I’m not left in the dirt.  MANY people are having problems with the game.

I love EA Mobile, they seem like a great group of people but they failed to deliver a working game on time.  More than likely they were pressured to meet the deadline by EA…but something tells me they should of tested this on more iPhones with the amount of people complaining about it!    I don’t understand why…I hear that it may have to do with the phone being jailbroken.  I don’t think that matters though, as I have 3 other EA games and they perform perfectly fine…Looks like I’ll be waiting for a patch before I can get my $10 worth.

I’ll keep you updated when a patch is released and I can successful play through the game. but until then, there is nothing I can do other than to give this game a score of a big fat red

F