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This is the first part of our Island Paradise Preview. We’ll be uploading more content regularly (with more previews today) so you can find out more about the expansion! Firstly we’ll be looking at building a resort, later today you’ll be able to see how you can manage your own resort in Island Paradise and why I think it’s a fabulous addition to the game.

Resorts within Island Paradise
One of the features which most interested me about Island Paradise was the ability to create our own resorts. This is because my favourite expansion pack for The Sims 2 was Open for Business, and this expansion promised similar features through resort management. I can happily say that resorts successfully fill the gap for an Open for Business themed expansion in The Sims 3 experience. You can purchase your own resort after a few seconds on the phone, providing you have the money, or you can build your own from the ground up – and that’s exactly what I did.

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There is a large variety of blueprints to make building a resort easy and quick, allowing anyone to focus managing a resort – this was great for me as I’m not a great builder! As you’ll be able to see in the video below, I used blueprints to create the result and it’s an effortless experience. You can create them without blueprints and plop everything into your new resort community lot, and you’ll be ready for business. One of the things I noticed while building was the return of the pool slide and it looks better than ever before! Along with pool slides, there are many new items of furniture to allow you to host certain activities and make your guests feel comfortable in their guest rooms.

Managing Your Own Resort
We never said that resorts were easy! Once you’ve built your resorts, you can get down to the fun part and manage them. This was one of the first things I looked at in the expansion pack and there are so many things you can do. Resorts do have rabbit holes, which are areas you can’t see into. While I originally thought this would be a downside, there is enough management around the resort which makes up for them.

One of the features is that you can view reviews of your resort from various people. These are completely made up and gives you feedback on whether your resort is good or bad, and how you can improve it. Luckily, I had a decent resort, so I received a decent star rating. You’ll want to try and reach a 5 star rating with your resorts, so make sure you listen to what Sims are saying about your resort, or it could cost you.

Speaking of costs, you can manage how much you spend on things in the resort. You can decide how much you spend on maintaining the resort, you can decide how much you’re going to charge for the food, and so on. It’s incredibly detailed and gives the player so much control over their resort, which I really wasn’t expecting from the game. You can probably imagine how goofy I was previewing the game at EA. I was there smiling away at the screen and thinking how great it is to myself because I can finally get down and do business with my Sims again! (Thank you Island Paradise).

Along with controlling the costs and reading reviews, you can also set the uniforms of staff members! You’ll be able to see in the video below this section that I made a wacky uniform for one of my Sims, and it’s just so easy and accessible to any Sims player.

Verdict Of Resorts
Resorts add something new to The Sims 3 and gives something to those who want to run a business. They’re exciting, something different that the team has tried out, and it successfully works within games. While I mentioned that rabbit holes aren’t too bad, in my perfect world they wouldn’t be in resorts. But this isn’t a complaint, more of a note of improvement for future Sims games. I firmly believe that many users, especially people who like Open for Business, will love resorts in-game. You can build them up, manage them, or if anything get a free nights sleep in your own resort! Not many Sims can say they own their own resort empire!