the-sims-3-world-adventures posts

With all of the excitement behind today's release of Civilization V, you can easily miss some mid-week PC game sales that appeared today. Over at Direct2Drive they have two games that have price cuts from now until 1 pm Eastern time on Wednesday. One is The Sims 3 World Adventures expansion pack for just $14.95. The other is the gold edition of Company of Heroes for a mere $7.50.

Over at Steam, they have their mid-week madness sale from now until Thursday the puzzle game Droplitz is on sale for a mere $2. That's an 80 percent cut from the game's normal price.

It's not a shock to learn that the best selling PC retail game of 2009 will be getting some follow up releases in the next year. As part of Electronic Arts' financial results today, their schedule of games for their next fiscal year shows some kind of new Sims game due for release in the first quarter of 2011 for the PC. From the placement on the schedule this may be some kind of new Sims game rather than just an expansion pack for 2009's The Sims 3.

Also due for release at the same time is a new Spore game from the publisher. EA hasn't been as generous about expanding 2008's alien evolution sim for the PC as they have with their Sims titles. The last expansion pack for the game was released last summer.

Earlier this month the NPD Group announced that The Sims 3 was the best selling retail PC game in the US in 2009. Now the game's publisher Electronic Arts has issued a press release claiming that the latest entry in the people sim series was in fact the number one selling PC game in the entire world last year. EA also claims the game's first expansion pack, The Sims 3 World Adventures, was also on the top 10 lists of best selling PC games in the past year in a number of countries.

While EA didn't mention any specific unit sales numbers in its announcement it did say that The Sims 3's number one sales numbers represent the sixth year in the past decade that a Sims game has been the best selling PC game in a year. In addition, EA says over 100 million pieces of custom content for the game have been downloaded from The Sims 3 Exchange in 2009.

This music video made using graphics from The Sims 3 World Adventures features Nelly Furtado's song "Manos Al Aire" sung in Simlish. Originally performed in Spanish, the song embraces the "World Adventures" theme on a number of levels. Fans curious about how popular music artists like performing their songs in Simlish might want to also check out the behind-the-scenes video. The Sims 3 World Adventures is available now. Continue after the jump for a trailer featuring a sim finding worldwide romance in his adventures.

Download The Sims 3 World Adventures "Nelly Furtado' Music Video (57 MB)
Download The Sims 3 World Adventures "Brad's Adventure' Trailer (9 MB)
Check out all The Sims 3 World Adventures downloads

Releasing tomorrow, The Sims 3 Wold Adventures expansion will allow sims to travel to exotic locations, to explore, sight see, and maybe pick up a few treasures. Also interesting is the music, which is performed by popular artists like Nelly Furtado, Pixie Lott, Evan Toubenfeld and more - all sung in Simlish, the official language of The Sims. Continue after the jump to see The Sims 3 World Adventures launch trailer.

Download The Sims 3 World Adventures 'Behind the Music' Video (30 MB)
Download HD The Sims 3 World Adventures launch Trailer (45 MB)
Check out all The Sims 3 World Adventures downloads

This week we get a second Lego game version of a famous adventurer, the first expansion pack to one of the biggest PC games of the year, and a weird merge between a Japanese RPG maker and a casual games developer. Oh, and Left 4 Dead 2.

Left 4 Dead 2: Valve's 2008 zombie co-op shooter gets a quick sequel as we follow a new set of four characters as they try to avoid being part of the undead apocalypse in the New Orleans area. New weapons, new melee items, new zombie bosses and new gameplay modes are all a part of the sequel.

Just in case you don't want to shoot endless amounts of virtual zombies, Electronic Arts offers you another choice of game that will also come out on November 17. Today they announced that The Sims 3 World Adventures has gone gold and will ship the same day that Valve's Left 4 Dead 2 is released. Besides the US it will also ship to 60 other contries in 22 language that same week.

This is the first of what will likely mean many expansion packs for the latest version of the people sim game. As the title implies, World Adventures takes your Sims to fictional cities in France, Egypt and China. People who register their copy get some extra content including 1,000 "SimPoints" that can be used to download new in-game items from The Sims 3 store. In addition to the expansion a new version of The Sims 3 will ship to stores the same day with added "holiday" themed content.

[Via email press release]

Have you ever wanted to have lots of pop artists from around the world sing songs in the Sims "language" of Simlish? Yep, we haven't wanted that either. But we are apparently getting a whole lot of it in the upcoming expansion pack The Sims 3 World Adventures from EA's Maxis studio.

In addition to expanding the people sim game to other locations on the game's version of Earth, the expansion pack will also add a ton of pop stars and groups from around the world singing their song in Simlish. We've already reported on a few of these artists but the final list can be found after the jump:

The latest stop in the series of The Sims 3 World Adventures gameplay trailers takes to China, where the game combines a bit of mythology to go with the exotic location. It also looks like sims pick up a few extra moves with this expansion, so players can put together the martial arts fantasy they've always dreamed of. The Sims 3 World Adventures is expected to release in November.

Download HD The Sims 3 World Adventures 'China' Trailer (19 MB)
Check out all The Sims 3 World Adventures downloads

For the past two days Big Download has been going over the games that are currently scheduled for release in the fall/holiday time period, which is traditionally been the busiest time for the game industry. You can check out Part One and Part Two of our report here.

Today we conclude our series with the third and final part of our preview as we look at games that will be released from mid-November to early December. We also have some games that as of yet do not have a specific release date but are still scheduled to be released sometime this fall. Once again we remind you that release dates can be fluid; we will report on any changes in ship dates as we learn about them.

Click on the image above to continue reading The Big PC Games for Fall 2009 - Part 3