Impressions: The Sims 3: Ambitions

It's finally here, the latest expansion for The Sims 3, titled Ambitions. This expansion pack is focused around one of the most maligned part of The Sims franchise, the careers. Prior to the expansion, if your character had a career, every day they would run off to their place of work (office, hospital, restaurant, etc.) and disappear into a rabbit hole, not to be seen again until they returned home, bedraggled and exhausted. In the current Sims game, the Sims 3, they added the ability in the base game to control how hard your character worked, but aside from that minor element of control, you couldn't play out the story of their career.

This expansion pack remedies that situation through the addition of professions, special careers that you get to actually play. Some of the careers added are Firefighter, Ghost Hunter, Inventor, Private Investigator, Architect and Stylist. In addition, the original Doctor career has been updated with out-of-work activities that you can use to advance your career.

The expansion pack also adds two music channels (Roots and Soul), new skills (sculpting, inventing, etc.), and cosmetically, tattoos. Finally, the expansion pack adds a third town, Twinbrook.

Alongside the release of the expansion, a major patch was released that upgraded elements of the UI, message system, etc.

So, what do I think so far? Well, sadly I've only had about two or three hours with the pack so far, and as a result have only really created one character (Chase Hudson, a beefy, manly, gorgeous red-head) who started the Firefighter profession. Right away, the differences are apparent. Instead of the standard bars that show what your skills need to be at to advance, you're given three goals (in Chase's case, Increasing Handiness and Athletics, Responding to Emergencies and Befriending Coworkers). Chase's place of work is, of course, the firehall, which is a fully featured building with a fire truck, alarms, offices, beds, a kitchen and a trampoline (!).

You can maintain and improve the firetruck and alarm bells to help your handiness alarm, you can work out in the gym in the basement. Heck, you can even do a full 5 day shift, staying at the firehall 24/7 if you choose (which I did. What else is a bachelor to do?). Responding to emergencies is a neat addition (with epic music!). You hop on the firetruck and head to the site of the emergency, where you will put out flames, break down doors and rescue hapless citizens. Your performance will be graded and you'll be paid commensurate with your performance.

As always, The Sims team adds neat little additions that really make you smile. As a firefighter, one of Chase's romantic interactions is labeled, "I'm a firefighter" which will automatically trigger swooning from anyone you use it on. Heck, I swooned. ;-)

In any case, I haven't even scratched the surface of this expansion pack, but so far, I've really enjoyed it. Hopefully I'll have a chance to really dig in to it over the next few days, and provide a fulsome review. Until then, happy simming!