Today I was lucky enough to be invited to London to experience The Sims 3 hands on. After a few formalities, we (I think there were 9 of us in all, including two dragged-along partners - one belonging to me) were allowed to get our mitts on the game.

Please, bear in mind, the game we played was a pre-alpha build, and certain features may not be present in, or may differ from the final release.

If you don't want to read potential spoilers about The Sims 3, don't read this!

I dove straight into Create-A-Sim. A lot of the questions that were being asked on the EA UK forums were about different age groups, so I needed to create a family with a variety of age groups.

In the new Create-A-Sim is you can spend as short or as long a time customising each Sim as you like. You can go in, put a name in (you can choose a surname separately for each Sim), and hit the randomise button a few times, or you can get right into the details of their facial features and the patterns of their clothes. The great thing about the way this has been designed is that you don't need to go into all these details unless you want to.

A couple of new things here:

• As some have said, the default skin tones are red, green, blue, and also three shades of "natural" colours (each of which you can slide from light to dark).
  
• You can choose almost all the clothing types by separate tops, bottoms & shoes as well as whole outfits, like you can for everyday wear in TS2 (except with shoe choices too...) and you can set accessories for each outfit separately.

Once your Sim's appearance is customised, it's time to set up their personality and lifetime goal. You can choose from the list of traits, which I won't bother repeating here as the list already exists on lots of other sites, and based on those traits (if your Sim is a Young Adult or older) the game presents you with five lifetime goals to choose from. These range from things like reaching the top of a career to maximising a skill and doing something with that skill (eg. maximising logic and becoming a chess champion). Finally you set up your Sim's favourites: their favourite music, food, and colour.

Again, I'll repeat this point: if you can't be bothered to set all this up, you don't have to. You can just randomise each Sim and then all you have to do is give them a name. That will also randomise their favourites and traits.

So, once you've created all the Sims you want, you set up their relationships. This works the same way it does in TS2. No way of setting up more "complicated" relationships here, like step-parents. The game shows you a lovely portrait of your family, and you can "ok" them to go back to the neighbourhood and move them in.

On the neighbourhood view you'll notice you have loads of space. There are plenty of empty lots with lots of different sizes, and plenty of pre-built houses lying empty. Not being able to place new lots was a concern for me, but there's so much space that this honestly won't be a problem!

The starting money for the family of 6 that I created was 24000 Simoleans. I only created one family so I have no idea if this is the standard starting money.

So I moved my family into a house and got into some gameplay. First thing I noticed? They're independent. They don't need me. Straight away they start to amuse themselves in ways that suit their traits. The "evil" uncle has gone onto the Internet to troll forums. The "athletic" father has wandered off to the gym. The "friendly" child gets on his brand new child's bike and rides to a park to meet friends. The mother with "commitment issues" is chatting up the neighbours. The "family oriented" teen is teaching her little sister to walk. And all of this without me telling them to do a thing.

Getting a job has been made much easier. You simply move out to the map view by clicking the map view button (or using the shortcut which I think was either ctrl+M or just M), and locate the building you want to work in. They're shown on the map view with the symbol for the career, so they're easy to locate. The career tracks are:

Criminal, military, political, medical, athletic, culinary, science, law enforcement, music, journalism, education

And there are also part-time jobs, which you can have from teen through to elder, even as adults or young adults (a great choice for busy parents!):

Bookstore clerk, grocery store clerk, spa receptionist, spa specialist, grave digger

Socialising has also been updated. As you talk to another Sim, some information about them and what they think of you appears in the upper left. If they have any relationship to you (husband, brother-in-law, ex-husband), it'll show this in the top left corner too. As you perform interactions with them it'll give you an idea of what they thought of that interaction. If your Sim, Sim B, flirts with someone who has no interest in them, Sim A, a message might appear like "Sim A thinks Sim B is being weird". If you tell them a joke, you might be "being amusing"... if you flirt and they are interested you might be "being flirty", or even "being irresistible", depending on their relationship level and level of attraction to you.

There are loads of great new interactions which convey more subtle ranges of emotion than the interactions in The Sims 2. For example, if your Sim has been flirting with another Sim for a while, they can "confess attraction" to tell them how they feel about them. Then if that goes well, maybe you'd want to ask if they'd like to "go steady". This is no longer an option just for teens, adults can go steady too now.

Pregnancy is much improved. As before, you can try for baby in bed, or in the science labs, depending on what you prefer. Either way, hearts fall around everywhere... and if you hear the baby chimes, well done, you're pregnant! Cue feeling ill, back pain, and cravings. My pregnant Sim had a craving for dim sum and canned soup!

If your Sim gets back pains during pregnancy, her partner can give her a massage, or she can go to the spa and pay for a massage. There are three types of massage available, some more expensive than others.

But being pregnant can also give your Sim a positive moodlet, so pregnancy is certainly not all bad!

24 hours after falling pregnant, your Sim "realises" she is pregnant, and changes to maternity wear... you peer at their belly... it doesn't seem to have grown. It will grow gradually over the next 48 hours. Better tell your husband you're pregnant before you blow up like a balloon.

That's right, I think my absolute favourite new interaction is "announce pregnancy". You can go to friends, family, and... don't forget your partner... and announce that you're pregnant to them. Just hope they react well... I didn't test this but I wonder how someone who "dislikes children" would react!

Hopefully your partner reacted well. Maybe he'll go and buy you a pregnancy book to help you through your pregnancy. You can carry on with life as normal until the baby's born (except, of course, you get time off work). When the baby's ready to be born you'll get a pop-up in the top right corner of the screen telling you so, and advising you to get your Sim home for a home birth, or to the hospital. I decided to go to the hospital, as obviously that's not something I've seen before. Again, all you do is go to map view, find the hospital, click on it, and choose to go there to give birth. You can also just click the hospital building if you're nearby anyway.

Ready for the cute bit? My Sim's husband was sat in the park reading a book, and he got up and ran to the hospital, and his interaction showed up as "be with mother". Awwwwww! He was a family-oriented Sim, maybe that had some bearing on his behaviour.

On that lovely note, I think I'll leave this blog for today... I have many more notes which I haven't written about, but these were all the main things that struck me as I played. Again, if you have any questions, comment on this blog post, in my guestbook, or PM me. I might have the answer or be able to remember :)