As of last week, The Sims 1 and 2 are finally available on digital platforms, with all of their DLC included. But the reception has been surprisingly dour.
Fans are upset with the (more than reasonable) £35 price tag and the lack of changes, whether that’s quality-of-life updates or bug fixes to old problems. EA has presented these games as they were 25 years ago, but now they work with widescreen monitors and up-to-date OS systems like Windows 11. These games have aged incredibly well, so running on modern hardware with just a few small problems justifies the re-release alone. They didn’t need much more than that.
Remasters would have been completely unnecessary and would only do a disservice to the experience of the originals. Too often, developers and fans alike treat remasters and remakes as preservation, when in reality, they’re bulldozing the lot and paving over it with an imitation. Sure, it might look like the old house, but the details are ever so slightly off.
EA completely bucked that trend and brought the classics back as they were to a new audience. DRM aside, it’s a huge win for preservation. But there is one Sims game that could do with a more thorough renovation.
The Sims 3 Should Be Remastered With All DLC Included
The Sims 2: Legacy Collection, like the Ultimate Collection before it, includes all the expansions and stuff packs. I have such fond memories of how much new life Seasons, Pets, and Nightlife breathed into The Sims 2, giving me even more reasons to return to my bustling custom neighbourhood. But as a kid, I never got to try the Apartments and Bon Voyage packs, or many of the smaller cosmetic bundles.
These two collections finally let me peer beyond my memories and nostalgia and experience something new and fresh in The Sims 2, even all these years later. The Sims 3 deserves that opportunity.
Right now, buying all The Sims 3 DLC would set you back an eye-watering £341. The game is 15 years old, and the ‘new’ entry (which is now ten years old) is still being supported with a steady release of expansions and stuff packs of its own. The Sims 3, like The Sims 2, should be repackaged with all of its DLC at no extra charge, letting fans venture back to see this underrated sequel from a new vantage point without having to sell their kidneys for Simoleons.
But there’s a slight problem. The Sims 3 struggles when too much extra content is piled on top. Unlike other games in the series, it’s open-world. You can wander from lot to lot freely without waiting around for the loading screens to finish. It makes the neighbourhood feel far more real, like a living and breathing town, and to this day puts The Sims 4’s more rigid approach to shame. Unfortunately, however, its defining feature is also what makes it the most unstable game in the series.
The Sims 3 Can’t Handle All Of Its Expansions
There’s an unending number of community-submitted guides on how to avoid crashes in The Sims 3 and run the game smoothly — lengthy load times and constant freezing even on higher-end rigs and SSD hard drives being the most common complaints. Some players from as far back as nine years ago report running all of the expansions just fine, even with the settings maxed out, but the sheer volume of threads that persist to this day about problems with glitchy textures and CTDs goes to show just how obtuse getting this game to work can be.
The Sims 3 also has a hard time with Windows 11, which is hardly ideal when support for older OS systems is inevitably coming to an end.
Repackaging it with all of its DLC at a reasonable price, a la The Sims 1 and2, just isn’t feasible. Players are already unhappy with the bugs in the 25th Birthday Bundle — the backlash to The Sims 3, held up by playing cards and gaffa tape, would be immense. It needs a remaster that ensures the game can run with all of the expansions on most modern hardware without hassle.
Unlike The Sims 1 and 2, The Sims 3 is already available on digital platforms, so there’s not the same worry about preservation. The original can be bought right now, and it’s exactly as it was 15 years ago. A remaster (hopefully) wouldn’t replace it, it would just make the complete experience, with every expansion, far easier to get into for your average gamer. That’s The Sims’ entire audience, and the fact that one of its best, most daring entries is so difficult to get into and so expensive to experience fully, is an injustice to the series.
- Released
-
June 2, 2009
- ESRB
-
T For Teen due to Crude Humor, Sexual Themes, Violence
- Developer(s)
-
Maxis
- Genres
-