phreakindee: Great review, and funny one too <3

TS3 basegame and WA were ridiculously expensive in Finland too, base game was about 65€, I don't remember WA's price but I remember thinking, it's a rip off price. Ambition's price was ok, thirty something €, HELS 20€ and this new one I have not yet seen on shelves. I suspect the base game and WA were expensive because of the "free" 10€ store points we go. Now WA is only 20€, but I don't think I could stand not having LN until the next EP comes out just to save 15€.

Kiwi Tea I too come from NZ and get my games from fishpond.
Full price is as follows plus discount I think you have to shop around to get the best deals.

The Sims 3 Fast Lane Stuff (Add On) $42.99 now $39.97 Save $3.02 (7%)

Ships within: 8-15 days Add to CartAdd to Wishlist

Me too.

The sad thing is they sell Sims 2 EPs and SPs for 50-70 USD aswell here.

So, to anyone that already owns the game. Does it include free Simpoints?

The car that is included which is the main reason I might want to get it is the F1.

No. You don't even get free stuff from the store this time either.

I would kind of count the helmet set as a pack, even though its for everyone. Even so, HELS didn't give out free things :p

Fast Lane comes with a Rockabilly music station which you can set as a Sim's favourite music style.

That is cool

But unfortunatly every sim that has custom music as a prefference will now automatically have it changed to Rockabilly after installing the SP.

Easily fixed using testing cheats, but it's oversites like that that keeps me having a very low opinion of EA playtesting. (AKA a monkey named Abe)

I loved your review. It was fun. And I totally agree with you.

How does the whole car-sim relationship work? So far all I see is my sims motorcycle in her friends list. Do these sims get to talk to their car, or talk to other sims about their car? Ah well. It was worth it just for the motorcycle and the vroomy engine sounds.

Is it right that the ability to have a relationship with your vehicle was included in the last update? I read something about it on the website.

Sim-Car relationship! Why? So you can mourn the vehicle when it "dies"? Marry your car and have a litter of baby roller skates? Who develops these things - a bunch of sweaty prebuscent computer geeklings?

Why does everyone think car relationships are meant to be "romantic". Its simply caring about the car and its condition, and more of an appreciation for the vehicle, not a deep, loving companionship.

I think people think it's romantic because it has no obvious use in the game. There is no car deteriation which requires fixing/care (e.g. its condition) or is there? I'm not sure but I'm pretty sure there isn't any deteriation. It would make sense if they did it that way because then the higher your relationship with your car, the quicker it is to repair/upgrade (and doing which you earn relationship and mechanical skill points) but no, EA had to be just a little bit strange.

I agree. They could've made it so that you have to maintain your car every couple of weeks, similar to how a firefighter needs to maintain the firetruck; Sims with the Vehicle Enthusiast trait don't have to maintain their vehicles as frequently. They could've made it so that vehicle enthusiasts learn the handiness skill faster (do they? I don't have the SP so I don't know).

If EA really wanted to go down the relationship-with-your-car route, they could've added more features to it -- e.g. when you become friends with your vehicle you can upgrade its horsepower, when you become good friends you can upgrade it again, when you become best friends with it you can do a !super upgrade! that'll make it unbreakable and perhaps even undetonatable? All of these things are already present in the game so it's not like it would require a major programming overhaul.

Of course, not all Sims are mechanically-inclined so there should be a mechanic-type NPC that will tune-up your vehicles for you (but not upgrade them) for an affordable price. And since I know EA is lazy, he doesn't even have to be a bona fide mechanic! They could've just shoved some random Sim behind a cash register to perform instant magical tune-ups. Or they could've made the repairman the mechanic. The possibilities are endless.

I think people would find the car relationships less creepy if they had included some of the things I mentioned above. Then there's actually a point to forming a "relationship" with an inanimate object.

I understand what you mean, but still. They made it so Sims could walk everywhere why not drive the same way? The lots that aren't connected directly to a road only have a square or two between the edge of the lot and the road and I can't imagine it being THAT difficult for EA to properly pull off. That was one of the things that bothered me a lot when I first played TS3.

And EA SHOULD fix that in a patch not an expansion, although if I do get a new PC built that can take more than just the base game, I will probably fork out the $$ for the expansions regardless.

Totally! That would be completely awesome. Can you imagine how it would be... Of course in my Dream Sims game I'm pretty sure there was that sort of thing going on.