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Loyal Sims 3 fans who aren’t interested in professions can still expect a lot of changes to their game, as EA is planning a huge free update to go along with the expansion’s release. The first of the major new pieces of content is the ability for players to give their Sims tattoos. Without Ambitions players will only have access to a limited set of Tattoos, but they can still apply them to their characters and other Sims. Even with Ambitions the art seems fairly limited at first, but the range of what you can do with the images is impressive. Through resizing and layering players can create some fairly realistic and genuinely good-looking body art.

Other new features free to all players with the release of Ambitions are self-employment, more options with customizing a neighborhood, and increased build/buy features. Sims who have the proper skills like photography or painting can register as self employed, making it so players who are aspiring to a life goal that links to the skill will no longer have to live with that pesky “unemployed” title. The other neighborhood and build/buy features are pretty specific sounding to the uninitiated Sims player, but trust me when I say that players who love to customize the minutia of their town and buildings have a lot to look forward to with Ambitions whether they buy it or not.

The biggest part of the free update, though, is the Create a Pattern tool. This tool will allow players to import pictures or other graphics and modify them in order to make textures for walls or other items (though this will not make tattoos). Using what seems like a very basic version of Photoshop, players can change things like the color, brightness, or size of their pictures, with the ability to layer up to five images on top of one another. It’s a fairly simple sounding tool, but it’s just another way EA’s allowing Sims 3 players to manipulate their surroundings to their liking.

Keep reading the article at IGN for more information about Ambitions, but the above is the main highlights for me.  For those not picking up Ambitions, tattoos will still be possible – but limited.  That’s kind of nice for EA to do – props for that.  Also, we’re finally getting the ability to import our own textures…yes!  I’ve been wanting this for some time – I don’t have the talent to create my own with the various custom content tools available…so I’m looking forward to that.  Ambitions is shaping up to be one of the best packs yet (even though I say that to all of them…so ignore that comment 😉 )

Still waiting on details about the Ghostbusting career…Shame EA didn’t allow IGN to try it out…

full article at IGN