Ten days in Sunset Valley

In keeping with my latest fandom, my first household in Sims 3 is Eve and Roarke (who, because the game requires a first and a last name, is named Roarke Dallas - I think they'd both be amused at that). I like the way personalities are constructed in this version - you pick five major personality traits from a long list, and then a long-term lifetime goal based on those traits. The results are remarkably spot-on - Roarke is throwing parties and schmoozing with the guests while Eve is taking the opportunity to question those guests, then getting called back into the police station, and getting bonus happy points whenever she eats pizza. I also appreciate how the goals the characters want to achieve vary nicely over time. In the original Sims you'd reach a point where you just can't achieve any more, and in Sims 2 it would get rather repetitive. But here I'm playing with the longest possible life span and I'm seeing some nice variety in both short term and long term wants. I don't think I'm going to get bored waiting for an interesting want to come up.

My only complaint is that fast forward is slow! It's downright frustrating! I don't know if that's because of my CPU speed (it's 2.8 GHZ - the game requires 2.0) but I really wish they could do something about that.

The interesting thing is this is the first Sims game that I got right on the release date, so the internet doesn't yet have answers to all my questions. For example, I simply cannot find Willow Hennessy, whom Eve needs to befriend so she'll (assuming Willow is a she) will serve as a police informant for the Developing Informants challenge. I looked around the whole town and she isn't walking around anywhere, there's no Hennessy household, there's no floating turquoise icon showing her location like there is for the people Roarke needs to befriend, I have no idea what to do - and the internet doesn't know either. Also, I've been spending a really long time on the Cook 5 Perfect Meals and Build Muscles wants - way disproportionate to the number of points I'll get for them - but I can't google up any insight on how I might expedite them.

It's also a bit frustrating not to have access to the full range of cheats (I don't even know how to do the thing where you delete a Sim and their moods and wants are reset - I've found the Make All Happy cheat, but I can't figure out where to actually go to delete and reenter) and to Sim PE. I wanted to make the Kendall household from the Margaret of Ashbury books. That's a complex household - Roger Kendall needs to be an elder and his wife Margaret needs to be a young adult, but the game won't allow an elder to marry a young adult. Roger has two sons from a previous marriage who are older than Margaret (which is what makes that household interesting to play), but you can't create older adult stepchildren in the in-game creator.

But overall, if we could just have a patch to speed up the fast forward, I will be very happy and enjoy learning the ropes along with the rest of the user community.