The Sims 3 Showtime - Katy Perry Collector's Edition

As usual with The Sims 3 Expansions, New items, New town and new jobs!

The new town is brilliant, nice and big with plenty of building space and new community lots for your sims to explore and interact with. Obviously a main feature of the expansion is venues,
You get 4 (As far as i've seen) All different sizes starting with a small coffee shop leading to a arena type venue.

You get to make your own stage as you like choosing from props and lighting, found this very easy and didn't take to much time. There's 3 new career's (Again as far as i know), Singer, Magician and acrobat, i thought it was slightly missleading when they say you can DJ as a career, which you can't, you can only moonlight with it much like the mixtologist, still good fun though.

The actual shows last around 2:00 hours and you can arrive at your venue 1-2 hours before your show starts to set up your stage, however if you have a stage your happy with you can just save it and gives you the option of a previous set up.

New fasion items have been added aswell all relating to the type of careers avliable, and lots of new items added to make your sims houses look even better than before!!

It's a good expansion which any sims fan will enjoy, only thing i found, abit like the other expansions, it does become old very quickly. The same animations and moves constantly when your sims preform let it down a little but theese are just little niggles.

When I got this expansion pack for my Sims 3 game, I was really excited. I'd been caught up in the ridiculous hype that was the advertising campaign. Screenshots and promises of fun and NEW goals to go after got me all excited and the prospect of these amazing extra venues, clothes and items I'd get if I spent just a little extra and got the Katy Perry Collector's Edition... It's the first time in my life I've ever bought a collector's edition of a computer game and can I just say, it's probably the last as well. While the shiny cover and the prospect of exclusive extras are both very attractive, what I actually got was disappointing. I expected more in-game bonuses such as the actual hair the Katy Perry sim has (I've yet to find that in my game) and more than just "stage props". Who really cares about stage props? I know I don't. The SUPER VENUE was also rather disappointing. I mean, it's just exactly the same as one that already is in the game except it's a different shape on the outside and has "ultimate" in its title. Waste of space in my neighbourhood. The other extras included a poster (probably fantastic if you're a 14 year old girl which I supposed the game is aimed for) and guitar picks (mind you, not designed for actual use). So a bit disappointed with the whole Collector's Edition business.
The game itself has got an interesting concept - you can visit your friends! Except, not really. Supposedly you can send your sims to your friends' venues and they can see them perform there. Of course in my game, this doesn't work for no apparent reason. I can host guests, but only about a third of the time. Even that seems a bit pointless. If I've got enough friends (and enough luck to make it work), I can earn BONUS ITEMS! Great, except when am I ever going to get the hosting thing to work for long enough to host all these sims?
Then there's the new careers. No sorry, professions. You have to go with your sim to work. Wait, this sounds familiar - oh yes, Ambitions. It's fun for the first Magician, Singer and Acrobat you've got but after that it gets a bit boring. There's only so many routines they can do. The DJ profession isn't even a profession. Or a skill. In fact, there's no new skills in this expansion pack, something I was rather disappointed about. You'd think that DJ'ing would be like the Late Night Mixologist skill, not much use for anything other than being impressive and for a bit of extra money on the side. But no. You can still get "gigs" as a DJ, but you don't have a skill (or at least not a visible one) and you can't, as far as I know, register as a self-employed or get a DJ profession.
There's also this new badge system. It's very similar to what you get in some of the games designed for Facebook and iPhones where you do something and then you get a reward. Some of these goals are quite interesting if you like achieving things in game play but you can't decide what to aim for.
The new talking to people on their walls is also a quite interesting feature, but the way the notification system has been put together is a bit of a mystery. If somebody, anybody, posts on the wall of one of your friends, you'll get notified in game. Can get a bit much if two of your "friends" are having a long discussion and every single reply pops up on your screen.
In conclusion, I did enjoy the newness of the game, although it had some features that had definitely been seen before. The whole thing was a bit overrated and hyped up and I'd probably recommend getting the normal version instead of this more expensive Collector's Edition, unless you really want to pay that much extra for a few scene props and a dress with glittery fruits on it. Not the best of Sims 3 expansion packs, but probably not the worst either.

The latest expansion pack for the Sims 3 is, as stated in the title, good fun. The new careers are great, as are the new items. The only real downside is that the exclusive content needs to be downloaded from EA's Sims Store instead of being included on the game disc. This means that you need an Origin account to do it. If you don't want an Origin account for whatever reason it would probably be best if you buy the regular version.