The Sims 3: Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides)
Selected Book Details
- Paperback
- Edition: Pap/Pstr
- Author: Catherine Browne
- Publisher: Prima Games
- Release Date: June 2009
- ISBN-10: 0761561374
- ISBN-13: 9780761561378
- List Price: $19.99
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Summaries and Customer Reviews provided by Amazon
SummaryPoster: Pullout map poster identifying all shops, parks, services, and hidden collectable locations. |
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Both Good and Bad Aspects
Rating:
I ordered this guide before "The Sims 3" came out, because I heard it was so different from the previous "The Sims" releases. I thought it would be a good tool to learn some tips to playing the game.
There are some good factors about the book. There are detailed listings of the community lots and what you can find in them, along with details about the personality traits, aspirations, ingredients for recipes, etc. There are also in-depth looks at each of the careers, along with the available Career Opportunities for each.
However, I rated this 3 stars for several reasons:
1. As many people have commented, the guide is poorly indexed. It's difficult to find the information you're searching for unless you flip through the whole thing. I resorted to putting Post-It flags on the pages I used the most often.
2. There were A LOT of inaccurate personality traits and cheats (I could probably count the number of correct cheats on one hand). It seems like the guide was written off of an earlier beta version of the game.
3. The writing style of Catherine Browne is REALLY annoying at times - personally, I don't care what she thinks about the game. I just want the facts and ACCURATE tips.
All in all, I don't really regret buying this guide. I wouldn't pay full price for it, though (I got it on sale) - if you can get it used, it would be worth it.
I would give it Zero stars - if I could
Rating:
I play the Sims. I have all of the Prima Guides for Sims 1 and Sims 2. I enjoy the guides and learn alot from them. In fact, sometimes I prefer the guide to the actual expansion pack. I detest the Prima Sims 3 guide. They (I assume it is the publisher) decided to reduce the physical size making the poorly written text unreadable. Forget about looking at the pictures - just a blur of color! There appears to be no order to the topics, no table of contents and no index.
There was always a vein of humor in the Sims 1 and Sims 2 Guides making the text fun and readable. This guide is boring and dry. It is a complete disappointment.
Sims 3- different, but great!
Rating:
Some may be disappointed by the lack of certain features found in the Sims 2 game, but what Sims 3 gives you in exchange is far more valuable.
For example, in Sims 3 you don't have a large furniture selection (they want you to buy them online), but when it comes to decorating with them (changing the patterns and textures of the items you buy), your options are infinite.
Creating new characters is half the fun of the game, now that it's such a detailed process. Decorating the grounds of your Sims lot is also a game in itself. It takes a long time to get familiar with all the details, but it's great to play once you figure everything out.
If you have Sims 2 with a lot of expansion packs, you could continue to enjoy your game until the expansion packs for Sims 3 come out (since these expansion packs contain features and game play that 3 does not have yet), but you're going to have a lot of catching up to do, learning how to play Sims 3 if you wait.
Good Enough
Rating:
I got this (along with Sims 3) for my wife (a long-time fan of the game) and she seems well enough pleased with it.
Just covers the basics
Rating:
The only two complaints I have about this guide is the number of typos and the lack of details. I don't know if the writer had an editor or a proof reader. If she did, then she should fire them. I found at least one or two typos on every single page. Most of the time it was just irritating, but in the sections about jobs and skills, some of the info was just wrong. I did learn a lot from this guide, but I was left with a lot of unanswered questions too. I had to just play the game to figure some things out by myself. One positive note though: the author has a great style of writing and sense of humor. Her personality came through, which I really enjoyed. I hope the next time she writes a guide, she takes a little more time on the details and hires a better proof reader.
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