Not so long ago The Sims 3 landed on PC and consoles. But guess what? It's now free on the Nokia Ovi Store letting Nokia owners live out their own virtual life according to their design. Is it as addictive as its PC brethren? Read our Sims 3 review to find out more...

The Sims is the most popular PC game franchise of all time, letting users play god with a virtual household of characters known as Sims. The Sims 3 from Electronic Arts carries on the life simulating series in its most feature packed edition yet.

Like the PC and the recently released console versions, The Sims 3 for Nokia handsets lets players create a Sim from the ground up, right down to their gameplay-affecting personality traits. You can choose to make your Sim a nice, kind person whose aim is to be liked by as many folk as possible, or design a less kind soul with a ruthless side. Its personality traits will impact on how other Sims in the game perceive it throughout.

You even get to pick five specific personality traits. A Sim can be neurotic, have a good sense of humour, a genius, friendly and vain all in one for example. The changes you make will genuinely alter the game as your Sim grows old, guaranteeing each game to be different in some way or other.

Being a life simulator, there are certain categories of gameplay you'll need to take part in. These include Career, Skills, Wishes, Persona, Job, and Relationships. As in the real world your Sim will need to work and eat. Luckily players can now control their Sim to make them explore the rest of their locale. Visiting the map to purchase groceries, go to work and meeting new people are essential to survival and meeting your objectives.

Just like real people, the Sims have hopes and wishes, goals, needs and wants. Just like us, they dream of getting that all important pay rise or promotion. And if you don't feed your Sim it will become hungry. If you don't wash it it will start to smell. The Sims 3 is a proper real life simulator in your pocket. If things do get tiresome you can always teach it a new skill, or spruce up your home with new furniture by bringing up the Build Mode menu.

Unfortunately, it's when you start to dig deep into the many, many features of The Sims 3 that the experience starts to grate. Testing The Sims 3 on an N97 we found the controls difficult, frustrating and unresponsive at the worst of times. Simple tasks such as making your Sim walk involves more taps of the screen than should be necessary. It's not a problem all of the time, but it's still annoying. What makes it worse is the sluggishness of the game's touchscreen sensitivity, most notably in menus requiring you to slide a bar to access further options.

Not that The Sims 3 is a terrible effort. Far from it. With lots of options, gameplay quirks and as many features as its console and PC cousins The Sims 3 mobile is still a commendable title for fans of the franchise. Credit where it's due. Electronic Arts has spent a lot of time making The Sims 3 work on mobile handsets. A bit of gameplay patience goes a long way. But its controls severely let it down.

Download The Sims 3

Check out our The Sims 3 review photo gallery: