There's a sale on most all Origin games right now including Sims 3 and its expansions. They range from 9.99 to 14.99 I think.

I got the starter pack (came with Late Night and High Loft Stuff (I really couldn't care less about stuff packs)) and like 10 other games for a total of six bucks when EA did a humble bundle sale so I haven't invested much into Sims so far.

What expansions do you consider essential to the Sims experience? Which are the most fun?

Pets

Generations and Seasons are also very good.

I ARRRR'd the base + expansions. All the features of the expansions overlapping each other make it completely unplayable without the use of mods (Nrass is purty kul tho).

Had a couple of long-running games years ago but I don't have the energy to play it anymore.

I only have one ongoing game at the moment. I created an old man and his adult son. The son wanted to be famous and the old man wanted to be a master criminal. They are Glengarry and Jack Glenross.

Jack became an actor, and Glengarry became a criminal, yet he had a crazy obsession with fitness, as well as partying. He ended up being more famous around town than his son, which was hilarious. Glengarry is an asshole who works out at all hours of the night and goes skinny dipping at power plants. His son struggles to get by.

What happened is that a maid was hired, and Jack banged the maid, married her, and they had kids. Two super annoying kids. Glengarry eventually died, and now he shows up at 3 AM as a ghost, turns on the sound system and does a workout, every single night, while Jack and his wife get no sleep. I think if the game were darker, Jack would have ragequit by now. He also got turned into a vampire by this girl he was dating, who ended up leaving him for Glengarry. This was before he banged the maid.

Pets, Late Night, Ambitions, Seasons, and Supernatural are probably what I like the most. I have World Adventures, University Life, and Island Paradise too but I haven't sent my Sims places in a while.

Generations - Probably the best one. Adds a lot of shit that probably should have been in the base game. Makes playing with children a little more tolerable. The prom pictures and camcorder videos make a nice little archive of your families if you have long-running ones.

Ambitions - Good. The stylist is a decent remedy for fixing up the awful decisions the computer makes in dressing aging and random Sims. Professions all-in-all are pretty handy to have though. Being able to work from home makes it so you can have more time to do shit around the house. And it's more fun doing stuff on your own instead of watching your person go into a building for several hours. The new town added with it is decent. The hobbies it adds are top notch too, I had one guy in a long-running family who was a sculptor and he did an ice sculpture of every adult in the household. When they died, I stuffed in the graveyard behind their tombstone. It ended up looking really cool, but it lagged the game to an unbelievable degree after awhile.

Pets - I like having pets there for completion sake.

Late Night - Good, although they did a terrible job of making it so that it could work well with other neighborhoods. Celebrities are fine for that setting. Having celebrities in the default neighborhood, however, is fucking dumb. Vampires are also annoying as shit but I hate occults and always have.

University - I played a little bit of it and I really liked it. University was probably my favorite TS2 expansion. Loved making a dorm of 8 people and letting them loose.

World Adventures - Not really missing a whole lot. The Adventures are just point and click tombs which aren't overly fascinating. It also adds horrible tourist NPCs to the main neighborhood who sing in foreign languages. Also it always seems anytime a teen ages to an adult, they get that wonderful looking Egyptian robe as their new attire.

Showtime - Thought it was pretty medicore. But this is the expansion that finally put the game over the edge on how much my computer could handle so I didn't really fuck around with it too much.

Supernatural - Not my cup of tea.

I don't remember playing any others.

I've got Bustin' Out and Sims 3 for 360. Both are so fun. I get so addicted when I sit down to play these games

lol I forgot about Generations. I agree with KC on it.

World Adventures, Ambitions, Generations, Supernatural, Seasons. Those are my picks. With those you get basically the same gameplay experiences as TS2, without the broken and obnoxious shit.

World Adventures could be cut from that list if you don't like the vacation stuff, but most custom worlds use a lot of WA content which makes it pretty useful to have.

Ambitions opens a lot of job options and my favorite EA neighborhood, Twinbrook.

Generations fills in all the minor shit they forgot about for families. Only flaw is Imaginary Friends, which are the devil.

Supernatural has a lot of supernatural stuff (obviously) but also fills in a lot of gardening options, and has vampires so there's no need for Late Night and its broken neighborhood.

Seasons really adds to the game for the most part and varies the world. Few bugs and flaws and adds aliens.


Superstar is pointless. Pets is fun if you want to actually use pets but had a lot of bugs which probably aren't resolved yet because EA. University annoyed me with the cliques stuff. Island Paradise is okay but I got sick of every fucking sim wanting to go discover an island. I never bothered trying Into the Future because by the time it came out I found a non-buggy balance and I didn't want to destroy all I love.

And NRAAS mods are basically required if you want the game to not suck.

I recommend ARRRing first and test driving the sims before actually buying. Some computers won't handle it and its buggy as fuck.

Also for the love of god don't get all the packs. If you like your computer, do not do it.

Superstar?

Showtime. Whatever. That awful pack that caused every sim child in my town to grown up with aspirations of becoming acrobats and caused my sim to be attacked by a mime once

Dr. Derp @ 20/4/2014 18:37

World Adventures, Ambitions, Generations, Supernatural, Seasons. Those are my picks. With those you get basically the same gameplay experiences as TS2, without the broken and obnoxious shit. World Adventures could be cut from that list if you don't like the vacation stuff, but most custom worlds use a lot of WA content which makes it pretty useful to have. Ambitions opens a lot of job options and my favorite EA neighborhood, Twinbrook. Generations fills in all the minor shit they forgot about for families. Only flaw is Imaginary Friends, which are the devil. Supernatural has a lot of supernatural stuff (obviously) but also fills in a lot of gardening options, and has vampires so there's no need for Late Night and its broken neighborhood. Seasons really adds to the game for the most part and varies the world. Few bugs and flaws and adds aliens. Superstar is pointless. Pets is fun if you want to actually use pets but had a lot of bugs which probably aren't resolved yet because EA. University annoyed me with the cliques stuff. Island Paradise is okay but I got sick of every fucking sim wanting to go discover an island. I never bothered trying Into the Future because by the time it came out I found a non-buggy balance and I didn't want to destroy all I love. And NRAAS mods are basically required if you want the game to not suck. I recommend ARRRing first and test driving the sims before actually buying. Some computers won't handle it and its buggy as fuck.

If I ARRR for some of the expansions will it work with the game I legally own (the base game with Late Night)?

Also I like the town that came with Late Night.

The town that came with Late Night is fantastic, but there's some kind of routing issue that causes the town to break after a generation or so, because of the amount of sims that get stuck. There are mods that fix it

ARRR'd packs will usually work with normal ones, but I'm not entirely sure if it will with the steam version. There are a few mod issues with the steam version because it's set up differently