Grumpy is not a good trait to have, obviously. While Sims no longer have an Environment bar, a new system in The Sims 3 gives MMO-like “buffs.” If they eat their favourite food, then they're happier for a few hours. If the room they're in is a mess, then they're unhappy for the next ten minutes. The longer they stay in there, the longer the debuff will apply. On the other hand, if they're fortunate enough to love the outdoors, then heading outdoors will remove it a lot faster, because they're both environment types of buff.

Tim was hungry, tired, and sat in a practically flooded room, trying to fix the shower. Andy was next on his mind to be fixed. Tim marched out to where Andy was dancing with a young lady, and unleashed verbal hell, going so far as to imply that Andy's mother was a llama (no, seriously). Andy suffered a serious mood setback from this – he was Humiliated, and that stuck around for awhile. On the other hand, it made Tim feel better, because he's the sort of person who gets a bit of malicious glee from making other people feel worse. I've caught him using the computers to “Troll on forums” with any responses elicited by this making him feel oh-so-happy for a few days. Andy later did similar, sneaking up on and scaring the maid, but sadly he's just not that much of a sadist. This is where we leave the IncGamers team, for now: filled with anger and hatred. (For those who care: Tamer's fundraiser went surprisingly well, netting him around 20,000 Simoleons.)

The Sims 3 is a massive, massive upgrade on previous iterations. The sheer amount of households that you can create, and the variety within (thanks to the Sims personalities) keeps the game feeling fresh for a very, very long time. I've spent time playing with a single mother with a career-based dream, but with a lot of wishes relying on getting her child to grow up well, and little money for a babysitter. I created an evil super-genius who wanted to be in ten relationships – and the Evil trait really changes things up. Mundane actions gain evil adjectives, such as “Take an evil bath,” but the wishes frequently involve, say, seeing the burning ghost of a Sim they recently met. Evil Sims want to murder others. I also took the town environment to the limits, creating a Sim whose home lot was essentially a park, forcing them to basically be homeless, although this has been done so much more effectively by better people than I. I pity you if you take a Sim with the insane personality trait, although it's certainly amusing. Or what about trying to become rich and famous with a clumsy, unlucky loser?

The issue that The Sims 3 has, barring an occasional lack of content (see hairstyles) which a cynic might claim is to make money out of DLC, is that for everything added, things that aren't there become painfully obvious. There's a big town, but you can't enter every building – generally only households. Considering that when The Sims 2 added  outdoor lots you could wander around in shops, it's a weird omission. You have more options at work, and they have a much bigger impact on gameplay, but you still can't actually see your Sim working. If they're a star athlete, you can't see them win a game. Compared to the personalities, the job options, the open world, the ridiculous amount of things that can be done (Tim, the technical computer whiz with a love of writing, can using a computer to write articles or a novel, hack to gain money, troll on forums, play games, chat online; he can overclock it, tinker with it, upgrade it, join a book club...) it's small fry. But it still leaves nagging doubts. There are also a few niggles, like how long it takes in real-time to get from night to day when your Sims are asleep, or the crashes I encountered every four or five hours.

But for me, the triumph of the Sims has never been about creating an ideal life, getting Sims to the top of a career tree and making them happy. It's never been about finding new and creative ways to murder my creations, either. It's about setting up situations and letting things run loose – seeing what happens, what bizarre occurrences arise, and more importantly, what stories come out of it. With the higher autonomy afforded here, and less time spent babysitting them, there's never been a better way to experience this.

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