Potentially useful app but missed the mark. Thanks to SimPrograms for supplying us with a review version for this app.
I am a fan of Prima guides for The Sims 3, they can have very useful information – especially The Sims 3 Pets Prima guide I found very useful. So I had high hopes for the app! The app has 4 parts: free tips, object catalog, advanced strategy and interactive maps. The free version of the app gives you tips & hints for each game. Basically it loads images of each new tip and imo some of these images can cut out prettier! May sound nitpicky but you judge for yourself:
Free tips
Some of these tips are even new to me! (like foals from well trained horses can start with a head start on jumping/racing skill!) You can filter these tips per game or have all games on at the same time. The second part of the app is Objects Catalog, with these you can look at all the objects the different games have. However you can only look at one game at a time. You can sort by category (clocks/beds/dressers/plants/etc) or even search in the database.
The Object catalog in the new Prima app.
Third part of the app is a bit more useful, tables of different things you can buy, collect or gain. But, I do not think anyone who actually plays the game has tested this app, the cheat ‘shazaam’ does not exist (according to the app it adds 2500 lifetime happiness points) ‘TestingCheatsEnabled’ is not enough information to make that cheat work (its Testingcheatsenabled true or false). Giving false information is not good! Especially when this is information people pay to get.
Advanced Strategy
Another thing that I noticed, with different careers after the 6th level you can specialize toward certain path (criminal > thief or evil) but in the advanced strategy app (base game filter) ‘evil career’ is just listed as criminal career… there is weird alphabetical order that lists spa specialist before political and base game careers are again listed in EP > career. If you are going to split up information it should be split up properly, the information seems incomplete too, they mention the different tones each career can have (work hard, etc) but forgot about that with the part time jobs. I would suggest to Prima to get a Sims player or two and completely go through the different tables to fact check.
Now to go the good bit!
The interactive maps are wonderful! You get a map for each of the official world you get with the different games, Sunset Valley, Bridgeport, Twinbrook, Appaloosa Plains. These maps show where you can find all the collectables in the world, community lots and even house information. You can zoom into it and really see the details of where the world the gems/other collectables are located. You can even select what you want to show on the map, so if you are only looking for bugs you can deselect the other icons and only see the bugs.
Interactive map for Sunset Valley
I clicked on one of the gem locations and this information popped up:
One of the gem locations in Sunset Valley
It would have been better to be able to select a single type of gems (diamond for example) so that it only shows the location where that gem could appear. Also it is a shame you do not get this for the other official EA worlds (Riverview, Barnacle Bay, Lunar Lakes) Overall
I would call this a mediocre app, it has the potential to be great or even fantastic if they only had asked feedback from actual players and updated the app accordingly.
2.5/5
Ps. Prima’s customer service is horrendous. I contacted them twice via email and once via twitter, because this application was not available outside US at first, no reply.