The Sims 3: Generations is the expansion pack that gives every age in your household a life of its own. Children build tree houses and play make-believe, teens sneak out past curfew and throw parties the moment the parents leave, adults stumble into midlife crises, and elders get to be the grandparents everyone wants. You will need The Sims 3 base game installed to play it, and once it is in, your Sims' lives run through each stage with far more to do, celebrate and remember.
Childhood and the Teen Years
Generations front-loads its best ideas into the youngest Sims. Kids can climb into a tree house to hang out with friends, dress up from a costume chest, ask for a bedtime story or befriend an imaginary friend that only they can see. Playing pretend as an astronaut, a dinosaur or a princess is an actual activity now, not just a line of trait flavor.
Teens get the drama. Curfews can be broken, pranks can be set (a booby-trapped shower, a whoopee cushion on the principal's chair), and bad grades earn a grounding that actually restricts what they can do. Prom arrives with a limo, a date and a shot at being crowned, and the school year ends with a proper graduation ceremony at City Hall. After-school activities such as scouts and ballet fill the afternoons, and a boarding school will take a troublesome teen off your hands for a few years if you prefer.
Adult Life and the Elder Years
- Midlife crises
- Adults hitting the middle of their lives can suddenly want a new job, a new partner or a wildly different look. Give in and chase the wishes, or hold the family together while the crisis runs its course. Either way, it makes the adult stage more than a long stretch of working and sleeping.
- Parenting that matters
- Reading to children, helping with homework, teaching a toddler to walk and setting boundaries all shape who those kids become. The new Nurturing trait makes a Sim a natural at it, and the Daycare profession lets you turn the home into a business by looking after the neighbors' toddlers for a fee.
- Elders with something to do
- Older Sims can spoil the grandchildren, tell stories about the old days and pass advice down to the younger generation. Canes come as an option, and the elder years finally feel like a stage worth playing rather than a countdown to the family plot.
Celebrations and Drama
The expansion adds a full calendar of events that mark the big transitions, and each of them can go wrong in ways worth watching.
- Weddings are now a proper ceremony with an arch, a wedding party and guests who react to the vows, preceded by a bachelor or bachelorette party the night before that can get well out of hand.
- Teen parties happen when the parents are out, and whether the house survives, and whether the parents ever find out, depends on how well the host keeps the guests in line.
- Graduations, school field trips and family reunions bring the whole household together for a milestone, and the gossip afterward spreads around town, including rumors about which Sims are cheating on their spouses.
Creativity and Memories
A chemistry set lets Sims brew potions that might lift a mood, put someone to sleep or simply blow up in their face. A video camera records whatever is happening in the house, and the resulting home movies can be watched on the family TV, a nice way to replay a graduation or a disastrous party. Spiral staircases, water slides and a stack of new furniture round out the build and buy catalog for a growing family home.
Tying it all together is the Memories system. Major life moments are recorded automatically as they happen, from a first kiss to a promotion to the day a child leaves for boarding school, so each Sim carries a scrapbook of their life. Reading back through it after a few generations is where the expansion's name earns its keep.
If your saves usually stall once the kids grow up, this is the pack that makes the whole family worth following. Add The Sims 3: Generations to your game and watch a household grow up, mess up and remember all of it.
