It’s time for one of those rare game reviews of mine! Horse people, feel free to move right on.
Lago Simiore is Blacky Sims’ final big Sims 3 game world. It’s a large world, almost completely filled out, with mere two empty lots for builders. The focus is heavily on the scenery and the views. This world is eye candy, pure and simple Mediterranean eye candy. How it escaped my notice for a year is beyond me. I’ve been looking for a Mediterranean world since Monte Vista came out and turned out to be too small.
Lago Simiore uses all the expansion packs but no custom or store content, making it an easy install compared to some custom worlds. On the down side, it’s made by German players so all lot names and flavour text is indeed in German.
The lots are highly decorated and take a bit longer to load on my computer than I am accustomed to. They seem free of routing errors so far, though. A 30 seconds wait for a beautiful lot where the game doesn’t stagger to sort out pathing is a good trade-off. This is a world that has been played in, solidly tested, before release. I am finding venues to be nicely populated now. Empty venues are a big issue in most worlds where routing fails keep consuming CPU attention.
An immense amount of detail has been put into the lots and what’s on them. My favourite is a residential lot in the hills. The flavour text simply tells us that there was a fire. Well, that’s a fixer-upper for sure.
If EA wants me to fork out cash for The Sims 5, this is what they need to start learning to do. Beautiful open worlds. Well tested pathfinding. Sceneries that beg you to take screenshots to show off to other players (hell, why not do what Blizzard did and build Twitter functionality right into the game?). Smooth, functional design with lots of quirks and things that make you stop and go wow. I’ll never trade this game play in for the glamourized date simulator that is The Sims 4.
Download Lago Simiore here.