"ignominiusrex;c-18029536" wrote:
Sims 3, Bridgeport (Late Night Expansion Pack) is excellent for that, because all the buildings are places you can go, and there is no loading screen when you leave your building: you just either walk, bike, or drive a car or motorcycle (or helicopter if you can afford one) to your destination and walk in the door, and downtown is full of clubs, bars, you can take the subway (that's a rabbithole though), and you can travel with your Sim, over bridges, down streets, to the riverside where you can fish or swim (depending on what packs you have I think) and it's all very immersive.
You can also get all of The Sims 3 til Jan 5th for I forget, maybe it was $65? on Steam, or on Origin each pack that is usually $20 or even more, is like $10 for now, but if you want a lot of or most of them you'll spend several times the $64 even doing it on sale, on Origin, compared to that incredible Steam deal.
With Sims 3 there are a bunch of NRAAS mods you have to run to keep the game maintained but there are super helpful people here as well as Youtube videos all about which mods those are, and what steps to do to keep the game running well.
In case you're interested. Sorry if that was too much detail but I know what you mean about wishing San Myshuno were a "real" city like Bridgeport. San Myshuno is great to look at and has a lot to offer, but most of it you can't really interact with.
I'd argue the Sims 3 was the worst for that. Bridgeport is just a suburban community with tall buildings, hardly any any different from all the other worlds in The Sims 3.
The streets in Bridgeport were incredibly empty, and devoid of life. There is no hustle and bustle one would expect in a real city, no traffic either. People didn't walk past your lot. They just teleport into their magical slot cars that phase through each other and zip along to the next lot they are going to, teleport out and run inside, the open world mechanic didn't really do Bridgeport any favours - and this isn't just from the bugs/game performance angle, even from a theoretically perfect angle, it was still incompatible as the speed of time in game necessitated everyone rush into their teleporting slot cars just so sims could get anywhere in a reasonable time.