The Sims 3 Seasons Reviews

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The Sims 3 Seasons is the expansion pack so many have been waiting for, and it's everything I hoped it would be, and more! Every season is packed with new objects, clothing, interactions and community lots to visit. The changing seasons and the weather give the Sims 3 world a whole new life, and bring back that same magic from years ago, the first time we saw it snow in the Sims 2.

After installing this pack, the first thing you'll notice is all the new community lots. A new Festival Grounds will be placed in your town, with many more lots also available to add. There are new homes in addition to the community lots ( several parks and different festival grounds). These new community lots are designed with all the new fun activities for your Sims to try out, for each of the seasons. There are over 100 new items, including things like kissing booths, dance floors, concession stands, eating competitions, photo booths, snowboards half-pipe, snow-cone machines, new grills, face painting and tons of new decorative items like Christmas lights and new building items.

With your new seasons, you can also change their length and frequency in the "options" menu. There are 4 seasons and you can set them to be as short as 3 days or as long as 28 days. Each season can be set accordingly. You can also uncheck the box for a particular season, and completely skip that season all together. You now have a temperature and season icon on your Sims main panel, that lets you know the current temperature and how many days until the change in the season. You can chose to have this displayed in either Celsius or Fahrenheit.

As the seasons change so do the activities your Sims will be able to participate in. Playing soccer, ice skating, roller skating and yes....even making snowmen are all options for your Sims to partake in. When your Sims are outside and the temperature is cold, you can even see their breath in the air. And to go along with the new seasons, there's new clothing. The new outfits in this pack are about the only thing there is just a moderate amount of. There is a new tab in the clothing screen where you choose your Sims outfits, for outerwear. All of the sweaters, vests and coats that were already in the clothing options have been moved to this tab, with the addition of a few new coats. There are also new snow pants, a few new bathing suites, gloves, goggles (summer and winter), boots, water shoes, face masks and some new long-johns for sleep ware. While there is a handful of new clothing items, there's not as much as other expansion packs in the past have had, like The Sims 3 Supernatural, which was overflowing with new clothing and accessories.

However what this pack is lacking in new clothing, it makes up for in so many other ways. The seasons and weather are beautiful. While this pack has all the most well loved aspects from the Sims 2 Seasons pack, there is also a ton of other new and fun content as well. There's so much to do and new surprises around every corner, it will take weeks to explore everything. Whether you want to bob for apples, ice skate in a blizzard or go tanning in a Sims tanning booth to get that perfect summertime glow, you can do it now, with the Sims 3 Seasons.

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I don't usually write reviews complaining about games or software, but sometimes you have to just to warn others about potential problems.

My teenage daughter LOVES the Sims. She has been excited about Sims 3 Seasons for months. She saved up her own money to buy a copy on the first day of release. After installing it, the game ran fine for the first hour or so. Then it crashed. Now it crashes on startup. An internet search for Sims 3 Seasons crashes produces a huge number of complaints, on both PC and Mac (we have a Mac). Many of these complaints are due to the exact same error we have been experiencing, but all of them are basically complaints about installation of Sims Seasons rendering the whole game unplayable. I am trying to figure out how to uninstall Seasons so that my daughter can go back to playing with the families that she has spent hours and hours developing (in non-Seasons mode), but so far no dice.

EA continues to release additions to the Sims which either break the original game and even wipe out all saved data, or which just seem not to have been finished or well tested. Here it is a week after launch and there's been no response from EA about the game problems at all. So in addition to this poorly made software, their customer service is almost nonexistent. (I've had similar problems with EA customer service with their other games.)

Anyway, if you're a Sims fan, or you're thinking about buying Seasons, I would suggest you hold off until EA issues at least one patch, if not more. Otherwise, you may find yourself taking on an ordeal rather than more Sims fun.

(I know, some people aren't having problems. Good for them! Be warned, however; if you install Seasons, you're taking a risk).

If it makes any differnence, we installed the game off a CD because in the past some SIms 3 downloads have produced problems for some people.

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As an avid simmer, I have all the expansion packs and while I was waiting patiently for pets, and supernatural to reoccur this is the expansion I wanted most. Part of what makes the game feel real is the world around the sims. Rain, hail, sleet, snow they are all here. And yes the poor mail person delivers through all of it. The rain so far is my favorite. I love seeing everyone pull out their umbrellas and watching my sim kids play in puddles. The Snow is cool, but I haven't had a real big snow yet. As seasons change you see it happen in the foliage around town and in the lighting. Fall looks warmer, spring cooler, ect.ect. There are more outdoor activities like soccer and suntanning along with more stuff to do out at the park. Trick or treating and costume parties are fun to take part in. Beware of lightning I was zapped not 15 minutes into playing. My Sim didn't die but I can see that as one of the new deaths, not sure yet. I'll try to update this review once I have had more time with the game but so far I am impressed with this expansion and look forward to wasting many more hours playing it.

*edit*

Now that I've had the game for almost a week I have had more time to play it and my original rating still stands. I love this expansion. My game started with Summer but I was to busy looking at everything that was new in the game that I didn't get to take full advantage of it the first go round. Now after getting through all the seasons a few times my favorite is the Fall.

At the fall fest a large pumpkin patch appears along with a haunted house, apple bobbing bins ect. This is the perfect time to throw a costume party. Although you can throw one at anytime. Sims can bring home a pumpkin or several from the fest then carve them into several different patterns. Don't do it too soon before you want to use them because sims will smash them for fun and all your left with is pumpkin chunks ready to be disposed. Once spooky day is near, kids and teens can go trick or treating. Parents can take them or the kids can venture out alone. If the neighbors aren't home when a kid goes trick or treating a message pops up expressing the kids feelings about the situation. Once done trick or treating the kids can scarf down their loot and get a sugar buzz. You can preset costumes by going into the dressers and setting an outfit or you can let the game randomly pick one for your costume parties.

In winter another festival rolls into town. Ice skating and snow boarding become available along with igloos, mistletoe, snowmen, and gift giving. Gift giving parties work best if you have a large mostly empty room with spots for sims to sit down either on the floor or in a chair. Once most all the guest have arrived you can click on the pile and request everyone to start opening them. Each sim will take a turn until all the gifts are gone but if the gift task bubble disappears while this is going on your sim loses out and cannot rejoin. I hope there is a fix for this in a patch. Gifts range in price. I've received easels,lamps, and that time old naughty gift, Coal.

Spring brings kissing booths and egg hunting at the park along with regular skating. Most all eggs contain tickets, some nicer prizes like gnomes, and fancy eggs. I am having a problem with the girl kissing booth, when my sim takes over it to be the "kisser" no one seems to be able to get to her. They stomp their feet and throw their arms in the air. If something is blocking them I am not seeing it. Maybe just my game, maybe not. The Male booth works fine. So this is an issue in which I will have to look into. Wild flowers show up in spring along with hay fever when they are picked. Not always but sometimes.

Back to summer. In summer the heat climbs, sims can lounge at the pool or the beach. We can float on mats in swimming pools, suntan until golden brown or over bake and turn really red. At the festival soccer arrives and you can have a shootout with the ball. To me summer fest is the most boring one, but to each his own. Daredevil loving sims can buy fireworks and have a blast on leisure day.

Each season comes with a holiday that can fall anytime in the week, which is great because now kids can get an extra day off from school, parents from work and spend the day doing something fun. Sims can now get sick when exposed to different things in the game like elements, flowers, or other sick sims. Tickets are given for doing different activities at the festivals and then can be redeemed for different prizes. Some prizes are exclusive to the different season. i.e. Witch gnome at fall fest, rabbit gnome at spring fest.

There are new objects in the game, skate rinks, soccer nets, love testers, mostly things you find at the park during the festivals. I've discovered 3 new gnomes I think there are 4 not sure maybe more, not sure. Most of the new clothes that's been added to the game is costume or winter related. Except for a rain coat which can be worn almost all year long. Seriously it rains a lot. The new hairs for the girls is awful. I really don't like them and have found much nicer stuff at the exchange though you have to be careful what you download.

All in all it's a great new addition. Weather to me has been the missing link and now that it's here everything feels more realistic and complete. I don't know if there will be more expansions to come but if this is the note the sims 3 ends on, it's a sweet one. The graphics are really good. Very Happy with it.

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I have played every expansion pack and stuff pack in the Sims 3 series, and this is the first expansion pack that has made gameplay impossible. I am one of many Mac users that have found this expansion pack to be unstable to the point of unplayable.

Electronic Arts provides miserably bad customer service and has been silent on this issue since Seasons was released. If you contact their technical support, you will leave frustrated. They have almost no English reading comprehension, they are unfamiliar with EA's software and even more unfamiliar with Mac OS X. They will provide no solutions and in the end tell you to visit the Sims 3 forums for help. Unfortunately, there's no EA staff available to help you there, only other players. All that the EA staff does there is delete critical posts from the forums.

In spite of the inherent instability, sluggishness and overal craptastic nature of the code and how it requires emulation (the Mac version is actually just the PC version running in an emulator called Cider), I was able to play the game with enough success to satisfy me. Of course, I had to save ridiculously frequently and none of my gaming sessions ever ended without the game crashing, but I was able to have multiple-hour play sessions.

Since Seasons, I have not.

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As promised, I am re-reviewing Seasons :) I LOVE IT! Beautiful! S3 still crashes so I suggest saving regularly. Would have 5 stars if the game were fully stable!

I had JUST gotten a fix for my errors that worked and now, once more, I cannot save. Error 12 is ruining my experience!! Oh and when I CAN save, which I do every half hour now (despite that taking 5 minutes a go) I have to worry about the game randomly closing and losing all progress.

I've been playing sims since the original and I do love how beautiful this makes my worlds and I LOVE the new holiday celebrations ... so my only problem is the game is nearly unplayabley unstable.