When EA released The Sims 3 earlier this year, one of the major criticisms reviewers leveled at the game was that it lacked content found in The Sims 2. The concern was that Electronic Arts was holding content back so they could charge for it in future expansions. As it turns out, the first Sims 3 expansion pack does indeed have a great deal in common with The Sims 2: Bon Voyage. However, World Adventures expands on many of the original game's ideas with new environments, quests, and other perks, making for a satisfying refresh of the original game.
The Sims team has built upon the Bon Voyage experience in a couple significant ways. You now visit France, Egypt, and China, as opposed to the Sims 2's generic Beach, Woodland, and Far East, and it's also possible to go on adventures instead of just tours. You accept quests through a message board located in front of your Sims' hotel, which usually involve venturing into a dangerous cave, temple, or tomb. It takes several in-game days to complete each quest, but the substantial rewards make it worthwhile.
The actual exploration is a fairly simple matter of uncovering secret doors, digging out rubble and avoiding the occasional Mummy. It feels quite a bit like an old adventure game, albeit with simpler puzzles. The most taxing of them involves pushing a statue onto a switch -- no creating a mustache using cat fur and syrup here. Success is predicated on preparation, which means buying plenty of tents and dried food ahead of time to keep your Sims' needs satisfied.
Outside of the tombs and temples, World Adventures does a good job at lending each area a certain amount of local flavor. You'll find lots of little touches, from watching your Sim ride a Vespa around France to using chopsticks to eat in China. Each area also has its share of local attractions, such as the Pyramids and the Forbidden City, which can take a whole game day time to explore. The only disappointment is that the "Champs de la Sims" is not actually set in Paris, but in what appears to be the French countryside. While an actual city would have been much tougher to design and implement, it would have gone a long way toward differentiating it from the other locations. After all, what's France without the Eiffel Tower?
