Sims 3 too dark

Hi, my sims 3 game is almost unplayable due to how dark it is in game, I tried messing around with the settings and found if I went off full screen this made it brighter but I lose the side scrolling function and if I try to make it windowed but still almost full screen, the bottom bar gets smaller? My screen resolution of my laptop is 1536 x 1024. Any recommendations on how to fix the lightening issue and small bottom bar?