The Sims 3: Ambitions Expansion Pack Review

You know I love my Sims, and The Sims 3: Ambitions is the new expansion pack for the series. With this EP, your Sim has new career opportunities and hobbies available such as a stylist, ghost hunter, tattoo artist, and more!

After loading the Ambitions expansion pack, you have to load the new buildings into your town. These include: consignment shop, salon, fire station, and a junkyard. If you don’t have empty places in town already, I suggest making some areas where you would like these to go before installing the expansion pack. You can of course add these in later if you wish too.

I started off with the Architecture Design path. It is really more like an interior designer. It is the perfect job for those who like to decorate Sim houses and who have the time to do so. There is no “skill” with this profession though, but being a good painter, and being artistic does help. I advise not wasting too much time on any single renovation because Sims don’t seem to appreciate it. One of the things I really like about this path is the Portfolio your Sim now has that can showcase their work from renovations and also what they sketched – which can also be used as artwork.

The Stylist profession is fun for those who like to style their Sims. I personally really enjoyed this career track because it allowed me to fix up some of the unfashionable Sims in the town without having to play their family. You can also solicit work wherever you are.

The Tattoo Artist I found to be a nice new addition to The Sims 3. It is the first time that we’ve ever been able to give our Sims tattoos in the game, so that is pretty fun.

Ghost hunter is awesome. I just love that they put this into the game. You can capture kind, friendly, frightened, lost, wrathful, jealous and evil spirits. They are also available in different ages: young, old and ancient. The older the ghost is, the more they are worth! Very fun profession to try out!

Fire fighter wasn’t really one of my favorites, but I put out some fires for Sims and rode around in the firetruck. I do like the addition of the job though, and the pole you can slide down instead of taking stairs is always fun!

Private Investigator wasn’t really very fun for me. I did a few cases and then went back to ghost hunting. Just because I didn’t enjoy this one, doesn’t mean you won’t though.

Sculpting is a skill that can be used with the Architecture Design path, or to just do as self-employed. It is sort of fun, but after you already made all the designs possible, it isn’t really all that interesting. It does however let you make what you want to after you already made the design once. Too bad they don’t do that for painting/sketching!

The inventor skill is an actual skill (unlike with architectural design), and your Sim can read about it to improve the skill, or actually start inventing things with scrap they find at the junkyard or rummaging through garbage. Sounds fun, huh? Well it isn’t so bad, and you can just buy the scrap. Plus, as an added bonus they can electrocute themselves and catch on fire – maybe your workplace should be near a pool, just in case. One of the really cool inventions I made was a time machine where you can go back in time, and to the future.

You can also now buy real estate and collect your money from places you own. Nice addition to the game.

One of the glitches I ran into was the party at the town hall glitch. All of the Sims in my town went there to celebrate my awesomeness for getting the highest rank in designing. However, some perished from partying too hard and not leaving. Funny, yet sad. If you have this town hall party glitch on Ambitions too, what I did to fix it was to save a copy of town hall, then delete what was there, then put the saved copy in its place. The Sims moved to the sidewalk, and I used my Sim with a moodlet manager to “cure” them all and then they eventually left. * I’m not a technical support person, so I suggest talking with them first as I am just telling you what I did and take no responsibility of dead Sims or game malfunctions for you.









System Requirements:
• Requires The Sims 3 to play

• PC
• OS: XP SP2 / Vista SP1 / Windows 7
• CPU: For XP 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent / For Windows Vista and Windows 7 2.4 GHz P4 Processor or equivalent
• RAM: For XP 1 GB RAM / For Windows Vista and Windows 7 1.5 GB RAM
• HARD DRIVE: At Least 3.5 GB of hard drive space with at least 1 GB of additional space for custom content and saved games
• VIDEO: 128 MB Video Card with Pixel Shader 2.0 support

• Mac
• MAC OS: MAC OS X 10.5.7 Leopard or higher
• CPU: Intel Core Duo Processor
• RAM: 2 GB RAM
• HARD DRIVE: At least 3.5 GB* of hard drive space with at least 1 GB additional space for custom content and saved games.
• VIDEO: ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM, or Intel Integrated GMA X3100




* Thank you to the publisher of The Sims 3: Ambitions, Electronic Arts, and Gamers Gate for providing me with a review copy of this game for the review. All opinions expressed are my own.