“Ambitions” does provide a bit more content than just the new professions, but it doesn’t make up for the $40 price tag. The two new skills are sculpting and inventing. Both initially work like painting in the original game in that you don’t get to decide what your creations become. However as your sim invents or sculpts certain items they are added to a list and you can rebuild them whenever you’d like. Inventors need scrap metal and can either buy it or scrounge for it over at the junkyard. Sculptors have to buy their materials, but they to can go scrounging for metal if they want to start welding.

Most inventions are items that just sit there and do nothing, but a few are actually useful. The floor hygienator sprays sims with perfume when they pass by it, cleaning them a little, while the miner drills away at your lawn and pulls up precious gems and metals. My favorite part of the skill was the detonate ability. Inventors can basically blow stuff up in order to make more scrap metal, and the items don’t have to belong to your sim. The city threatened to fine the heck out of me for it, but that didn’t stop me from blowing up half of my neighbor’s house (adulterous creep). My only regret is that the ability powers up slowly and sims have time to run away before items explode.

The rest of what “Ambitions” adds feels like content that should have been free with a patch. Sims now need to do laundry and every time they change clothes (to go to sleep or to the bathroom) they leave a pile of dirty laundry. To solve this problem you can buy your sims a washer and dryer or they can go to a laundromat to do the cleaning. The new real estate option gives you a bit more control over the venues you can buy. In “Sims 3” you could buy the local bookstore and it would provide you with some cash every now and then. Now you can fire workers, buy all sorts of properties like parks and book stores and upgrade what you own. For example, by adding new chairs to the community pool you just bought, you increase its value and its popularity. However, you can only upgrade buildings you can normally interact with (parks can be upgraded while hospitals cannot).

full review here