Small Town Geeks

Update 11/14/10: Added fixes, more bugs, Plus/negatives to being a vampire, changed title

The Sims 3 Late Night expansion pack was released last Tuesday at 12:00am at some stores and 12:00 pm central time on digital download. I have been able to play a couple of hours and take a look at the new features.

Vampires

I might as well talk about this first, as this seems to be the most anticipated feature of the new expansion pack. Compared to the classic purple skinned vampires of the nightlife expanion pack in the sims two, these vampires are a lot cooler. Acutally, they have so many benifits and hardly any cons, I hardly see the point in not turning a sim at least at one point of their lifetime. First of all they learn (at least some skills) much much faster than normal sims. One of my teenage vampires (born by a female vampire) had the artistic trait and learned all the new instruments (4) to max in 1 day. I am not joking…and it was pretty ridiculous.. so much so that i’m wondering if this is a bug of some sort. Within one hour of sim time I’m pretty sure that sim had 4 skill points or more. On the other hand when I had that same sim learn cooking, it seemed to take as long as a normal sim would. The adult vampires also learned the instruments pretty fast, but not nearly as fast as the born vampire teenager…even when I made their traits virtuoso and artistic. The only cons are if you are outside for over 3 hours you recieve a negative moodlet for being in the sun too long, and you can’t eat normal food to fill yourselves. So in short:

Pluses of being a vampire

• Super-fast learning ability
• Super-speed at night
• +15 moodlet at night
• New Gravestone when your vampire dies
• Ability to read minds
• Ability to make a sim think of them (increases relationship)
• Drinking from a sim makes the vampire well-fed

Downside to being a vampire

• You won’t die from being out in the sun (atleast not quickly) but you can get too much sun giving you a -50 moodlet for 2 days.
• If you are out longer for 3 hours in the sun you get a negative moodlet.
• You cannot satisfy your “thirst” by eating normal food. You are however able to satisfy it when going out to eat.

Bands

Not much to say here, mostly because there is a bug keeping my sims from receiving any gigs. Whats supposed to happen is when your sims form a band (simply by having one sim create a band with another) you are supposed to get a phone call getting you a gig at a local bar. Then your sims play their music, and the higher their skill level the better tips your get…I suppose. I have googled this problem and although it doesn’t look like I am the only one who has this problem, there are some other people who are able to get gigs. I have tried creating two different bands, and neither of them have gotten any gig calls in a full week.

Mixology

This is pretty much bartending, and they even made the drinks look like alcoholic drinks instead of just ‘juice’ this time. This is a pretty good skill to learn, and you can max it in about a day or two with a vampire sim. Once you get to a certain level, you can make drinks that help you gain skills faster, or make you more romantically inclined, make you ‘crazy’, or make you into a party animal. I have yet to explore these drinks to any extent, but they seem pretty cool. Supposedly once your mixology skill is high enough, your sim can go to a bar and moonlight and earn some money. Unfortunately there is another bug that prohibits me from receiving any money I make with mixology, so as of right now there is really no point to having a max mixology skill level except for making skill drinks. Also you do need to practice making the individual drinks you want to be good at. Having a level 10 mixology skill will still have your sim making ‘bad’ drinks.

Nightlife

So now after 11am there is always something to do downtown…atleast in the new neighborhood they provide with the expansion pack. Every night there is atleast one “hot” place to go where most of the sims and celebrities are going. There are lower ‘class’ bars and pubs that just about anyone can get in, and then there are higher class lounges where you need to have a certain celebrity star number or bribe the bouncers to get in. Its pretty cool, but what tends to happen at the higher class places is that most of the sims attending won’t be able to get past the bouncers themselves, so they all go home leaving the place pretty desolate and boring.

Celebrity

I have a problem with the celebrity part of the Sims 3…mostly because it is way too easy to become a celebrity….and its like a disease spreading to everyone. Being friends with a celebrity increases your sims celebrity stars whether you want it to or not. Your sims spouse and kids will also become a celebrity just for being related to you (depending on how many celebrity stars you have…0-5). Suddenly it seems everyone in the neighborhood is a celebrity….This is annoying when you’re playing a sim who is not a celebrity or at a lower celebrity star than the person you want to converse with. You have to first “impress” this celebrity before you are allowed to make conversation with them. Also, teens aren’t allowed to impress an adult celebrity (in some situations), and thus makes it annoying and impossible to converse with a celebrity if you’re playing a teen sim. Being a Celebrity gets you into every bar, and will also get you free stuff and let you get paid to go to certain events. The downside is that paparazzi  will wait outside your door creating the “embarrassed due to invasion or privacy” moodlet. Every now and then there will be a rumor spread about you that is always bad creating another negative moodlet and also decreasing the social bar of every sim that knows you. The positive of that is you have a chance of suing for slander, but there is only a chance that you will win and receive a monetary settlement. If you lose you still have to pay the court costs. lame but realistic.

Bugs

Although not as bad as the ambition bugs (yet) this game has enough to make me want to stop playing until the next patch comes out. Here is a list of them I have so far.

• When you have a butler in one house and you switch active families, once a week the butler notice will come up saying they’re taking their 1,200 payment. Luckily i don’t think money is actually removed from the active family without a butler, but this is still annoying
• Random money. Whenever I move into a new household, for some reason I receive money without any notice and any reason. Not sure why this is happening.
• Whenever I form a band I do not receive any gig calls
• When my sim moonlights at a bar, I don’t receive any money for my services
• When a sim performs a job in the acting career, they don’t get any bonus to their work performance besides the monetary sum
• You cannot put premade community lots in your neighborhood. You cannot place premade building community lots (such as the acting work building, a bookstore etc)
• The sims 3 launcher crashes after closing or starting the game
• Sims that were born vampires learn certain skills at an impossibly fast rate. (this may or may not be a bug)
• When visiting a private lot, you cannot click on it from the map screen.
• Sometimes when you’re a vampire, once you are starving it says you have 24 hours of this moodlet, but the 24 hours counts down as if it were 24 minutes…making it very easy to lose a vampire to starvation.
• I have a butler and the most expensive washing/drying machines. The clothes will automatically be taken from my washer to my dryer…and no one will be there…And it isn’t as if my butler is doing it, because he’s asleep in bed. Weird…

****Fixes****

• If you are experiences crashes of your Sims 3 Game Launcher, or are unable to open it, download CCleaner and install it. Click the Registry button and Scan for issues. Then fix all the issues (you shouldn’t have to make a backup of your registry). Keep pressing scan for issues and fix issues until there are no more registry items. This should allow you to open the Sims 3 Game Launcher and keep it from crashing.