The principle is simple, you create a sim (person) and guide them through their lives, letting them gain lifetime rewards and achievements or not (depending on how nice you are feeling). They have a set of basic needs (food, bladder, fun, energy, social and hygene) that must be kept high if you are going to have a happy sim, gain promotions and get on with everyone else too! They can get jobs, girl friends, get married etc in the process.
The biggest difference between this game and the previous versions is that your whole town is accessible without massive load times and other sims have a 'progressive story mode' that enables them to all carry on their lives (including getting older and dieing) whilst you are playing your character. The free world means you can now search for precious items, visit people more effectively and jog to anywhere on the map; it has expanded the world beyond the four walls of your house much more effectively than the Sims 2 expansion packs. It makes the game much more realistic and interesting.
The game play otherwise is very similar save their needs are quicker to satisfy - no longer must they eat 4 dinners to become full (yay!).
The final interesting point is they have built the game on 'micro payments'. You can purchase things from their online store and install them direcly on your computer. This means their line of clothes, furniture etc in the basic game is limited but you can download add-on's for a very low cost (until they all start adding up!). I assume this is the way they will introduce University Buildings, Holidays and new neighbourhoods. As part of this community anyone can create and upload patterns and clothes and share them will everyone. Nice idea and it means that some of the upgrades are free!
All in all my first impressions are
. It will be interesting to see if the differences make for a long term gaming fun. Nothing is more frustraiting when a game is good for a week and then gets relegated to the bottom of the pile!
