Work life balance

GAME OF THE WEEK:THE SIMS 3: AMBITIONS, 12 cert, EA, PC (also Mac)

Got a God complex? Take it out on some tiny computer- generated characters. The Simsis back with a new expansion pack that now allows you to take control of their working life.

The Simshas always been a bit of a Big Brother experiment for me. I like watching how I can manipulate their lives with a little shove in the right direction. Less fun is the general day-to-day stuff, such as making sure they remember to shower or go to the bathroom. The Ambitionsexpansion pack for Sims 3 taps into the more interesting side of the Sims' lives.

Previously, you could make them follow a career as a nightclub DJ, doctor or even a criminal, but just as a means to pay bills and fill your home with stuff. They’d disappear off at a certain time, and return back a few hours later with pockets full of cash and a desperate need to sleep for several hours.

The new expansion pack allows you to follow them to work, giving you a whole new arena in which you can exert your benevolent (or otherwise) influence.

You can take on a career as a stylist, a firefighter, doctor, private investigator, inventor, architect and ghost hunter, in addition to the regular Sims careers.

As an architect, you can directly affect how the local townscape will look. Becoming a stylist means you could do a Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on your neighbours’ homes and get paid for it. You get the idea.

And like most things in life, your Sims can take the good route (curing patients and saving lives as a doctor) or the bad (testing experimental drugs on patients). Firefighters get the chance to shine as a local hero by putting out blazes, but they can choose to indulge in their destructive side and smash up everything in sight while on a job.

Like all Sims games, Ambitionseventually suffers from a little repetition. But it addresses a major gap in the Sims' lives that, up until now, remained unfilled.