Review: Sims 3 Island Paradise

I made the mistake of reading a few reviews of Sims 3: Island Paradise before I had the game myself. It was released in stages from 26-28 June: first in the US, then Europe, and finally here in the UK. By the time I booted up my copy, I’d read multiple reviews of the game, and they were largely…underwhelming. Comments such as ‘a stuff pack for twice the price’ and ‘very few new features’ cropped up regularly, and many seemed unhappy to have forked out the £30 that EA seem to think expansion packs are worth these days.

You can run as many resorts as you like for all different target groups, while building a veritable vacation empire

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Understandably, I was a little bit reticent as I waited for the game to load. After the junk food binge of exam season and the inevitable celebrations afterwards, my bank balance was already in a sorry state. However, as a die-hard Sims fan, I couldn’t let this one pass me by, regardless of the general consensus.

Sims 3: Island Paradise is largely based around Isla Paradiso, a new world made up of an archipelago of islands, some inhabited, some not. New features include houseboats, diving, running resorts, and even the odd chance to glimpse a mermaid.



If this all sounds a bit like stuff that should have been included in other expansion packs, you’re almost right. Snorkelling and diving are fun for a while, but don’t have the same depths as other skills in the game, like gardening or fishing. Had it been an add-on in World Adventures, I think it would have been a nice touch, but it doesn’t add much to the general playing experience.

Resorts are, without a doubt, the best addition from this expansion pack. They allude back to Sims 2: Open for Business, which was loved by players for the freedom it gave sims in their career choice. You can choose to buy up a successful resort for a pretty penny, you can grab ‘Hobart’s Hideaway’ for free, or you can go out on a limb and make your own resort from scratch in any world you like. I decided to make my own, and I had a lot of fun. I’m more of a story player than a builder, but the blueprint mode allows you to place all of the necessary rooms and amenities with ease.

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Building your resort from a zero star economy hotel to five star luxury is both challenging and fun, with visitor reviews providing you with the feedback you need to make a real island paradise. And if you can make more money from a ‘stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap’, why not? You can run as many resorts as you like for all different target groups, while building a veritable vacation empire.

However, it would have been better if building resorts weren’t the only option. The mechanics would have been simple enough for the creators to incorporate bars or restaurants, which a lot of people wanted from Late Night. For whatever reason (probably to squeeze more money out of devoted fans later) resorts remain the only option for your service-driven sims.

Of course, with 10 expansion packs, you can expect one or two of them to be a bit lacking (I’m looking at you, Generations) but it’s still hard not to feel a bit cheated out of your cash. Island Paradise adds little to other worlds in the game, despite Barnacle Bay and Sunlit Tides fitting the island theme perfectly. You can customise these to accommodate the new features, but the process of building your own dive sites (one of the main uses for the diving skill) is a bit awkward and clunky, and not really worth the effort.

There are, however, some decent additions to the new expansion, besides the resorts. The new outfits and hairstyles allow you to accessorise and alter your persona from ‘beach bum’ to ‘high-class holiday’ to ‘deep-sea diver’. House boats, whilst not revolutionary in terms of architecture, give your sims freedom to move about the sea without a burning urge to get home because one of the motive bars is in the red. Both of these, however, could have quite easily been in an island stuff pack.

I really wanted to like Island Paradise, and it’s certainly not the worst Sims 3 addition, but it just doesn’t match up to some of the other great expansions, like University Life and Pets. A lot of the comparisons to the stuff packs are justified, and you do feel a bit ripped off paying expansion prices for one new career, a mechanic which could have easily been included elsewhere, and a skill which adds little to gameplay. If sims gamers really want the island experience, I’d recommend getting your hands on the much cheaper Sunlit Tides or Barnacle Bay worlds. Either that, or wait until Island Paradise inevitably drops in price.

You’d think that by now, EA would have realised what Sims players want in their base game – we want pets, we want holidays and we want seasons. With Sims 4 coming out in the near future, I hope that EA focus more on quality of expansions than quantity, and give us more bang for our buck. However, as long as gamers (myself included) continue to fork out for lower-quality expansions, it looks unlikely to happen.

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