The Sims 3: Ambitions

Hello, my name is Sim 1138 and it's been six months since my last expansion... Yes, we already have another expansion pack from the desperately busy gnomes at The Sim Studio but this time you can do your laundry and try out whole new careers that stop you from fainting with boredom while your sims are at work. Welcome to the second of soon-to-be many Sims 3 expansion packs, and one that doesn't do much for EA's reputation for churning out these very packs in order to sgueeze their fans out of every last drop of their money.

The premise is simple: you control your sim during work hours as long as you choose one of the new Professions -Firefighter, Ghost Hunter, Stylist, Private Investigator, and Architectural Designer. Alternatively they can become self-employed by registering at the City Hall and selling their crap to naive Sims.

As with every expansion, some of the basic interactions within the game have undergone a measure of surgery. Communicating a desire to play chess with an attractive sim no longer requires you to stomp over to the chess board, sit down and the attempt to invite the other sim. Now it is a one-click affair. There are also new lifetime wishes, lifetime rewards and skills and activities. And they can do laundry. No, that didn't excite me either.

Some of the new activities and skills bring this expansion to life. You can now work from home and skill your sim up in a rather impressive variety of areas, including Tattooing and Inventing. They can also become a mad inventor by learning the Handiness skill and inventing an evil Simbot that can destroy the entire town. Frankly, considering what we endured reviewing this game we wouldn't mind creating one of these ourselves.

Money Burner

In the careers themselves EA have been clever in capitalising on two of the main fan passions - sim creation and house design - with careers like Stylist, Tattoo Artist and Architect. The cheesy humour that has always been part of The Sims is evident in careers like Ghost Hunter and Private Investigator, where the mood music, special effects and in-jokes are terrible, obvious, and, because of this, amusing. Yes, it's Ghostbusters with sims.

It's in the little details where this expansion fails. There are some flaws in the implementation that should have been ironed out prior to release. Controlling your Sims in the various professions can be frustrating and, in one case, a bug prevented a sim from ever returning to work. She just stood outside reading while her bar turned red and the gamer even redder.

These weaknesses are what change Ambitions from an exciting addition to The Sims stable and into a money sucking expansion whore.