The Sims 3: Late Night Review

The Sims 3 Late Night sees the return of vampires, night life, and celebrity status.

The Sims 3 has yet another expansion to add to the experience of playing with the every day lives of little people. While the expansions are designed to keep the game fresh and entertaining, does Late Night keep things interesting?

Late Night comes with a sense of nostalgia, bringing back some of the most popular gameplay elements of past Sims expansions, notably nightlife, celebrity status, and vampires. Fans have requested these features for quite some time so having them all in a single expansion works in EA's favor.

The music is superb as always, with added techno tracks that work especially well in the club scenes. Simlish versions of songs by Travie McCoy, My Chemical Romance and Soulja Boy all appear which keeps the game in tune with music trends of today. The added music in neighborhood view dutifully conveys the idea of a fast paced, exciting city, even if sometimes gameplay doesn't keep up with that ideal.

Graphically the game is much of the same you've seen so far, with no real updates or tweaks to the engine. Everything runs smoothly as well, as often times expansions can carry lots of new bugs along with it. Nothing of the sort seems to pop up with the game.

With every expansion a new neighborhood is added. Bridgeport is a new city area that, while the concept is nice, doesn't seem to convincingly portray the density and high volume of a real city. The center of the city has all the high rises and club spots, with suspension bridges leaving out of the city and into a more suburban area. While the suburbs and homes are beautiful, the actual city is sparse. It left me wanting a little bit more in the way of lots, or at least more Sim activity in public locations. 

One nice addition is high rise buildings that your Sims can move into. Most buildings only consist of the bottom and top floors, the bottom being basically the lobby and the top being the floor your Sims lives on. This floor includes 3 other apartments of which other Sims come and go at all hours of the day. You can knock on their door to converse with them in the hallway, but you aren't able to actually visit inside their apartment, unless you are invited to a party, which is a disappointment.

The nightlife is broken into three types; bars, lounges and clubs. Each one takes a little more celebrity status to get into. If your Sim isn't famous enough, they can bribe the bouncer or attempt to sneak in, both of which have hilarious animations that really captures the quirky humor The Sims has always offered. 

Dive bars feature darts, pool tables and shuffle boards, and have a dank yet welcoming feel in their design. Lounges are a bit more sophisticated looking, and dance clubs are all out parties, complete with indoor swimming pools and hot tubs. Each community lot is designed with just the right feel, but of course your own hot spots can also be designed as well with a red velvet rope and all.

A couple of new paths have opened up career wise for Sims. The new mixology skill will help Sims become fancy bartenders, successfully flipping glasses around as they pour drinks. There is also the option to have musically inclined Sims form bands and play gigs around town. Both options are a lot of fun and fit perfectly in with the sort of idea of what making it in a big city would be like.

Sims can now form groups to hang out in, so that they and their friends can all club hop to the same places together. You can have a small group of two, but there's no actual dating aspect as some old incarnations have had, which is sorely missed.