Though I hadn’t seen any reviews of Late Night on Metacritic, I went ahead and bought the expansion pack after reading a positive review on Cinema Blend. It took me a good two hours to be able to play the game, though, because it kept crashing. This didn’t really surprise me because The Sims 3 has got to be one of the most unstable programs I run, based on the number of crashes I get. I’m on a Windows 7 64-bit machine, which I’m sure contributes to it based on all the problems other people seem to have on 64-bit machines with The Sims 3. Why EA/Maxis isn’t preparing for the future (not that 64-bit machines are particularly futuristic anymore, but that just makes EA/Maxis look even worse) is beyond me.

I finally stopped crashes for The Sims 3 and its previous expansions by using the 4GB patch program, but even after doing that for Late Night, it still crashed as soon as I moved a family in. I tried removing my Documents\The Sims 3 folder. I tried the suggestion found in this forum about bulldozing the fire department in Bridgeport, rezoning it as Residential, rezoning it as a Fire Department, and then copying the fire department building back from the Community Lots to that lot, but that arbitrary string of events didn’t prevent crashes either. Finally I realized I hadn’t turned off Data Execution Prevention for the Late Night executable, so I did that and the game hasn’t crashed since.

After all the hassle of getting the game downloaded, installed, and running without crashing, I only had a couple hours to play, which isn’t much for a Sims game since they’re such time sinks. I’m playing with a couple Sims I had created in a different town and ported over to Bridgeport via copying them to the Library. Annoyingly, though the two girls started as sisters, they’re no longer siblings in my Bridgeport copy. I used a cheat to boost their relationship level so they’re at least best friends, but it bugs me that they aren’t family any more. I’ll have to find some mod or cheat to let me edit their relationship because it’ll drive me nuts otherwise. I don’t know why their family trees didn’t persist in the move to Bridgeport, since I did all the copying and moving around from in the game.

I’m making one girl be a shy vampire and the other’ll be a celebrity. The shy soon-to-be vampire has met a couple of vampires around town but hasn’t befriended any, so she can’t ask to become a vampire yet. The soon-to-be celebrity has been hanging out in bars, drinking “juice” with neighbors and celebrities. I’m loving all the new hairstyles and clothing in the expansion, and I think some of the new social interactions will be fun once I get a chance to use them. I had one girl create a band and then had a new ‘Band’ sub-menu when I clicked on things, but couldn’t find an option to make my band practice or perform together. I had my girl Form a Group with the other band member, but then when my girl started playing bass, the other band member got all huffy about me not wanting to do anything and walked off. I’m trying to rehearse with you, you dumb jerk! The ‘Band’ submenu just had options to quit the band, rename the band, that sort of thing.

One weird thing with moving my girls from another town was that I had to “transfer” one Sim’s Military career to the Military lot in Bridgeport. I didn’t have to do anything for my Sports Professional Sim, she just automatically knew that her job was at the sports complex in Bridgeport.

When playing around in Create-a-Sim, I was able to customize my Sim’s lifetime wish. I hoped this would mean I could choose arbitrary combinations, like “Reach level 4 in the Cooking skill, plus catch $4,000 worth of fish, plus explore 3 tombs in France”, but no, it’s just a list of every possible lifetime wish. It’s nice to be able to choose a lifetime wish other than the few suggestions that come up based on your chosen Traits, though. I’m also so pleased to finally be able to adjust breast size and muscle definition without resorting to mods. Looks like the developers used that breast slider a good amount themselves, based on all the busty Townies my Sims met in Bridgeport. I can’t wait to play the game more because I know I’m going to find other little tweaks and fixes that were unadvertised. I already think I saw mention in one of the loading screen tips that there are different swimming pool shapes available.