Whoo, The Sims 3: World Adventures arrived today! I had preordered it on EA’s site but was dubious about it 1) arriving the day it was released (i.e. today) and 2) actually being left on my doorstep/mailbox versus being stashed in some package center for me to go and pick up with my little paper slip in hand. EA and UPS teamed up to make me happy, though, and I found the package left by my door this afternoon. Yay, no driving across town to pick it up myself from UPS or FedEx!

I got it installed with no trouble, though it took a while (maybe 10-15 minutes). There was a little silliness when I went to run it, surprisingly. I thought “do I run the usual Sims 3, or should I run the specific Sims 3 World Adventures program?”. Well, so I tried running the World Adventures launcher, and it prompted me to update with a game patch. Already? Fine fine, go ahead. So I got that installed and it shut down my launcher. Whatevs, I figured I’d try opening the regular Sims 3 launcher this time. So I did, and it prompted me for an update… Wait, didn’t it just do this? Seems like the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing. I was concerned that it would somehow be undoing whatever the World Adventures update had just done. When it finished installing, I opened the World Adventures launcher to have it bing! at me and say it couldn’t do anything with the Sims 3 because some other Sims 3 thing was already open. Er… So I closed that and opened… Well, I can’t remember which one I opened next, but I opened one of the two launchers and started playing the game. *shrug*

Though I’ve been playing with one family for some time, all its members are old and near death (and actually they live with three ghosts currently; how’s that for foreshadowing?) and it just doesn’t seem right to drag them out to a desert or to learn martial arts when really they should be relaxing at home growing Death Flower Bushes, just in case. So I made a new family and got to try out some of the new traits. I have a girl that’s Adventurous, Snobby, a Natural Cook, and she just happens to be dressed in the Sims’ version of Parisian attire. I made a husband for her that’s some kind of Asian, and he’s Disciplined and Brave, and I plan to martial arts it up with him. Sooo, now I’m building a house for them with a nice basement for storing Nectar (way to skirt that higher ESRB rating, Maxis!). I’m tickled with the fact that basements are finally an easy thing to make in the Sims, since always before you had to manually dig in the ground to a certain depth and it was always a bit wonky. I’ll be sure to post some screenshots once I have my Sims doing craaaazy foreign and adventurous things. I was pleased to note that the guide for World Adventures noted highly skilled martial artists will be able to teleport, as in The Sims 2 Bon Voyage.