LGR's Best (and Worst) Sims 3 Packs

Come on , you know , ever since I started reviewing all of these , some years ago , I have gotten one question about the Sims three more than any other .

And that is which expansion pack is the best ?

Which one's the crappiest ?

How does this one compare to this other one ?

And , you know , until they were all out , I had no way of really answering that properly , but now that they're all here and it's done and the Sims four is on its way , I figured it's as good a time as any to take a look back at all .

The Sims three expansion packs and stuff packs and put them in some sort of arbitrary subjective list that I would put together if I were to do so .

And I just did .

So let's watch it first .

We're gonna start at my expansion pack list and we're gonna go from the very worst to the best and then we'll do the stuff packs after that .

So let's get straight to number 11 .

Showtime .

The pack at the very bottom of my list is here for good reason .

It was completely unnecessary , not just because of the Katy Perry connection .

I don't give two craps about her being on the cover or not .

What bothered me was that we already had late night for this and show time was basically the same thing with a slightly different coat of paint .

I didn't find the new careers .

Fun .

Didn't care for the online social features .

Sim Port was a mess and the genie was just kind of there .

This was just completely forgettable and was the first expansion I uninstalled immediately after reviewing it .

Number 10 .

Supernatural .

All right , I know several are going to send me hate mail for this .

But whatever , as I said in my review , I just don't care for these creepy and kooky mysterious and spooky paranormal packs .

I did like some of the outfits and the goth infused items , but the rest of it I never played with ever again .

My style of play is more grounded in reality and whenever you start tossing in fantasy elements , you lose me .

Give me a spinoff game if you're gonna do that .

And holy crap .

Were those zombies annoying or what ?

Maybe they were after brains so much because whoever made it so that you couldn't initially disable them needed a brain badly .

Number nine .

Into the future freaking time travel .

Ok .

Sims .

Team .

You done jump the shark on this one .

It's silly over the top and downright subpar as far as things it adds that I actually find fun traveling to utopian and dystopian futures .

And messing with sci-fi fantasy objects can be a fun gimmick .

But for me , the charm wore off quickly and it became more of a nuisance than a really compelling way to play .

Building your own Androids is easily the best part of the pack .

But the fact that you can then bring these overpowered super beings into the main game totally broke my immersion number eight world adventures .

When this first came out .

I was not impressed at all because it made the Sims three feel like more of a spin off of the life simulator .

It should have been it added objectives , progression , and adventure and goals that to me didn't belong in this type of sandbox game .

However , as time went on , I really started to appreciate the fact that it three distinct new areas to explore that differed from the rest of the game .

And it broke up the monotony of living a normal life and let me explore tombs like some sort of Indiana Jones with bladder control problems .

It's not a bad pack at all .

Actually , it's just not my cup of tea 100% of the time .

Number seven pets .

The only reason this is not higher on my list is the fact that I am not a huge pets person .

I love my pets in real life , but I just don't have much fun keeping up with them in the Sims .

I'd rather just make Duke Newcom an attempt to woohoo the entire town instead of spending all my time training Fido to not take a million dumps on everything .

Unicorns were pretty cool .

I guess if only because they were hell's minions in disguise .

But I just don't much for this one .

Otherwise the only thing that kept it installed on my hard drive was the town itself which had this cool never ending fall aesthetic .

Also , that ice cream truck still creeps me out and I wish it would just crash into a telephone pole and explode .

Number six Island Paradise .

I've got to be honest .

The only reason this isn't closer to the bottom of the list is because of my own life experiences having lived island in the Caribbean myself in real life .

The fact that you could finally have a bit of that lifestyle in the Sims three was just awesome to me .

Otherwise this pack is kind of forgettable with only houseboats , scuba diving and running your own hotel being the highlights and all of them can be lived without in your game quite easily .

It also broke the playability of the game after extended use for some people myself included .

So use with caution .

Number five ambitions .

If you think about how much time your SIM spends at work or messing around with random hobbies and skill building at home , it makes sense that an expansion adding to both of these would come , highly recommended new careers , expanded , base game careers , new hobbies and skills , tattooing thrift shops and freaking detonation made for quite the enjoyable expansion pack in my eyes .

And it came with a whole new town that I felt was nicely designed and I used it quite a bit .

It's all the kind of stuff I think of when I think expansion pack without delving into the territory of fantasy or paranormal silliness and that makes it well worth it to me .

Number four generations .

I am well aware that some people don't like this one much and I can see why you only get the most bang for your buck from this .

If you play with families and Sims of all ages and several of the new editions seem minor or were added to the base game through a free patch anyway .

But while I can certainly live without a lot of the stuff , it adds , it just flushes out so much of the game and adds so many new interactions and options that it feels like a very worthwhile addition .

Basically , generations is all stuff that should have been in the base game to begin with .

And that's either a good or a bad thing depending on how cynical you are .

Number three , university life , as you might have understood by now .

I really enjoyed the opportunity to do something a little different from the normal routine in the Sims provided .

It's also pretty realistic and doesn't go overboard .

And University life is the best example of that in my opinion for the Sims .

Three Sims aged young adult and older can attend college and enjoy all that that entails including copious amounts of streaking and experimenting with mood altering substances .

It's chock full of new activities , items and skills and the pace is just different enough from the normal game play that it's a great distraction from the virtual rat race of the rest of the game .

Number two , late night .

This was my favorite pack for a long time .

For one simple reason .

Cities .

I love cities .

I love tall buildings .

I love the city lifestyle .

I love the high rise apartments .

You can live in here and I really dug the new dive bars and nightclubs .

It's a shame that most of the time they were completely empty and that the celebrity system was more of a pain than fun for very long , largely due to the stupid paparazzi that never went away .

It also had vampires that were less involved than those in supernatural , but I didn't care .

I just wanted to walk around the city and enjoy the downtown ambiance and get fat off of food trucks .

And number one seasons .

If you saw my review for this , you'll know that this is one of the few packs that seriously drew me in right at the beginning and got me excited for the Sims three .

Again , I loved seasons in the Sims two and they were even better here .

Rain , snow , summer , autumn holidays .

Aliens , this just an all around enjoyable expansion pack .

And I didn't hate any of it .

In fact , I thought it was the one that changed the absolute most about the game no matter how you choose to play .

Because weather is such an intrinsic part of everyday life in both the Sims and the Real World .

Weather changes , moods , changes , plans , changes , small talk , conversation topics is just something that should always be in a life simulator and I approve 100% and now it's on to the stuff packs and as you might have guessed , if you saw my reviews of those , I don't particularly care for any one of them too much , mainly because the price is ridiculous for what you get .

But whatever here are my best and worst and this time we're going in the opposite direction .

We're starting with my favorite and ending with my least favorite .

Let's get straight to number one high end loft stuff .

Yeah .

Go figure that the very first stuff pack they released also end up being the best and it would all go downhill from here even though I wasn't super psyched about it to begin with .

It added several items that I frequently used and brought back some from the Sims one as well , which makes this my favorite stuff pack .

Number two fast lane stuff .

Cars are awesome .

Garages are awesome and rockabilly music is awesome and yes Sims still teleported inside of these cars .

But that's more the fault of the bass game , not this pack .

Plus the Norwegian version of this was called Full Fart .

And that still makes me laugh .

Number three , seventies , eighties and nineties stuff .

I still don't know why they didn't just call this decades stuff , but whatever , it's three of my favorite decades in one pack .

What's not to love .

Well , other than the fact that it left out a lot of stuff that was super iconic from those decades and many items just look generic but whatever , it still had its place and it came with some really cool music .

Number four town life stuff .

This was pretty much just a bunch of prebuilt lots , but nonetheless , I had fun making my own phallic town using it in conjunction with the Creative World tool .

And while the lots they came with didn't add anything new to the game , they still looked pretty cool .

At least if you were into that type of modern architecture .

Number five , outdoor living stuff , all sorts of stuff for living outdoors and some stuff for the most outdoors , pretty boring as far as premises go .

But I also ended up using several of these items in my houses throughout the years and farting on non drinkable lemonade aside , it could have been worse .

Number six .

Master sweet stuff .

My , my what a stuff pack .

Sure , all it added were eye masks and a bunch of stuff for your bedroom and the best I can say is at least most of it looked half decent , but honestly , the greatest part about this pack were the item names full of innuendo and sexual connotations .

Glamour puss and delicate dangling participle .

Oh , yeah .

Talk dirty to me .

Sims .

Team number seven movie stuff , generic cosplay outfits and non functioning decor items .

Me I can't say I've ever used anything from this pack beyond what I did for the review except for maybe the Dr Franken Furter outfit just to amuse myself when everything else got boring .

Number eight diesel stuff , a son of a nut sack .

What a waste of hard drive space .

This was , I didn't care about the brand and half the items were downright hideous .

Not only that but many of them didn't let you change their style .

So even if you did like the mesh , you were stuck with some awful texture on top of it .

And finally number nine , Katy Perry's Sweet Treats .

Ah , yes .

The Sweet Treats House of Pain and me eating the artwork at the end of the review .

Need I say more .

Yes .

In fact , I do because this was an atrocity and represents all of the worst aspects of the Sims series .

From the lazy item designed to the stupidly high price to the Ham fisted Cash grab nature of its half hearted celebrity and Sweet Treats made me fear for the future of a series that I love and it also makes me shed a malcontent tear knowing that sealed copies now sell for upwards of $70 .

And knowing that even when I bashed this thing to Helen back , that might have actually made some people want it more , which makes me feel like a bad person .

Screw this pack .

I hope I forget about it .

And that is all for my best and worst of the Sims three expansion packs .

Stay tuned for my full review of the Sims four on this channel .

Shortly after it comes out , all of these are going to be dirt cheap soon now that the Sims four is coming out on September 2nd 2014 .

So if you've missed any of these and anything that I said sounded intriguing , maybe it's a good idea to keep a look out for some sales and grab it as long as it's not sweet treats but whatever they stop manufacturing that anyway , which is just good for the betterment of humanity .

And if you want more , in the meantime , there are plenty of videos on my channel covering the Sims three , the Sims 24 and one and whatever else I happen to cover , which is a lot of stuff I make new videos every single week .

So subscribing is not only very appreciated but will help you get more content to hopefully enjoy .

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And as always , I thank you very much for watching .