The Sims™ 4
Description
Play with life and discover the possibilities. Unleash your imagination and create a world of Sims that’s wholly unique. Explore and customize every detail from Sims to homes–and much more.
Reviewer’s Take
The Sims 4 is simply a measly cash grab by the EA Corporation. It lacks many wide ranges of solidarity, and doesn’t consist of any sort of depth while playing. It is simply a massive downgrade from other games, such as The Sims™ 3.
Emotions
The game released with a new feature in the sims, known as “Emotions” on the surface, this sounds great! What these emotions do, is overwrite the original “Mood” meter. Which, is already fairly clunky to begin with.
However, 6 years later, and the mood meter has devolve into being a hassle. It is no longer important, and is just something to add annoyance to your experience.
The emotions do not have any realistic part in the game, for example, you can be feeling happy, and if your sim needs to go to the bathroom, their mood instantly switches to “Uncomfortable”
This will change their entire attitude to reflect, and it’s such an immersion breaker, and really shows no real reason for it’s existence, this can happen with other moods too, the moods serve no real impact or depth to the game.
Customization
The customization is lacking in some ways, improved in many others.
This I can honestly say, is a good improvement.
The customization, however, does have a few flaws.
Furniture and other decorations, are not restricted to only a specific set of “splotches” which are essentially presets, you cannot deviate from these presets. You must use the splotches.
The sim customization allows for color picking in a lot of categories, and you have free will to do whatever you want to your sim. Want to give them a witch nose? Well, now you can!
That being said, there are still lacks of customization in the create a sim section. For example, children lack a lot of clothes, most expansions don’t add clothing for them. This makes it hard to diversify your children, as the catalog is so limited.
Building
The building is spot on, it is a well great improvement to the previous sims games. However, I personally never really needed an improved building, but it is good, and i don’t hate it. But i personally didn’t need it, because The Sims 3™ wasn’t hard to build in. Just slower.
The new building adds more streamlined building. You can grab, place, move, everything, including an entire room. Building houses is quick, easy, and (sometimes) fun.
I say sometimes, as, well like in most of the game, there are problems here too. The building is simple, but it is too simple. To the point where people must use hack-y solutions to get the result they want.
Additionally, there is still trouble, because a lot of people can’t figure out specific functions of build mode, for example, did you know that you can use Shift to unlock an object from the grid? I didn’t know that until a long time later.
They did also remove many quality of life favorites, there is no more “Auto Roof” mode in the game, making it borderline impossible to make a good looking roof. I say borderline, because some people still manage to make a good roof.
How? I do not know.
Sims
The sims have been upgraded in some regards, but severely downgraded in others.
For example, Create a Sim, it is decent, you can create virtually anyone,
It is very open, it removed the sliders, and it’s very easy to get the look you’re after. It is a solid concrete ground for what could have been.
Unfortunately, the create a sim is not the best it could be, because of the few things missing:
- There are no height customization, all sims are the same height based on their age, there is no variety in any way here.
- Some ages, like children, and toddlers, lack a lot of options, for example, you can only give them a very small amount of clothes. Requiring custom content.
The create a sim is fun, but it is not without it’s faults.
Depth
The game lacks depth, it lacks a challenge, you can become best friends with someone, simply by taking selfies with them. This does not equal depth. It just makes the game too easy.
The sims live their lives like nomads. They don’t work on their own, they don’t find jobs, they don’t do anything of importance, other than eat, and sleep. Sometimes, they will even avoid eating and watch TV. It depends on what they want to do.
It doesn’t help to try and control your sims either, because often, they will decide on their own to simply drop what you tell them to do, therefore, they don’t do it. To make matters worse, you can no longer queue up actions, making it feel like a chore, more than a game.
The Community
The community from what I can tell, is very close knit. They care about each other, and are very kind to each other. There are a few bad actors occasionally, but that doesn’t matter.
The community is responsible for creating famous modifications for the game, examples being:
- Wonderful Whims
- Sims 4 Multiplayer Mod
The community is what is holding up The Sims™ 4, and unfortunately, EA Corporation is capitalizing on this.
EA’s Practices
EA Corporations has been farming DLCs heavily for The Sims™ 4, and all of these DLCs add little to no actual content. For example, the Get Together DLC, you’d expect that to add a lot of stuff, it simply added groups. It says there is more, but that’s loosely implemented, and is very lacking overall.
The base game came out with no content whatsoever, they charged $60 for a game that will only give you enjoyment for a few hours. You couldn’t even swim at first, pools didn’t exist, nor did toddlers… They released an unfinished game, hoping people will buy it, buy it they did, and complained, they did.
EA also is known to recycle ideas, they didn’t include it with the new game, they made a new DLC for the new game, which you must purchase once more. You don’t have Weather, nor do you have Pets in the base game of The Sims™ 4.
The thing is, The Sims™ 4 is well over 7 years old, it came out in 2014, and fans are craving a new sims game, and the news isn’t bright, there are no news about a new game from EA relating to the sims.
Conclusion
The Sims™ 4 is lacking heavily, with only a hand full of improvements. It lacks a severe amount of depth, and has no real fluency. It requires mods in order to make the experience any better, which means console players are completely out of luck.
My advice to you, is to instead of purchasing The Sims™ 4, is to purchase The Sims™ 3, which comes with much more features and so much more to do, even in the base game.
