The Sims 4 Review

First and foremost, this is only a temporary review. “The Sims 4” (from now on Sims 4) is still added to, just a few days ago, the latest game pack (Jungle Adventures) was released. In addition, a single review can’t encompass the whole game. I’ve been playing quite a lot of it, but I haven’t even tried out all jobs and all other things the game offers (such as having a long-lived dynasty or owning a business or restaurant or vet clinic). But still, the game deserves a review.

In their fourth iteration, the sims have been changed quite a bit. Gone is the large, open world of Sims 3 where you could walk around the whole neighbourhood and travel around with cars, motorbikes, bikes, and even horses (Pets expansion necessary). Sims 4 offers a combination between the world of the first two titles and the third one. You have small neighbourhoods with an open area which the sims can walk around in, so visiting your friends is still possible, but between those small neighbourhoods, you have to travel and get a loading screen. It’s not as bad as it might sound - there’s quite some stuff to discover and gather in those neighbourhoods and loading times are not too long. And you can visit all worlds, no matter which you live in.

The classic wishes which have been around since Sims 2 (the fears were removed in Sims 3) are gone. Sims have whims and ambitions. A whim is something simple and short-term, such as reading a book, watching TV, hugging a sim, or travelling to a certain place. They come and go and some of them are influenced by the sim’s mood (more about that below). Ambitions are something you choose, something your sim will strive for, like a big family, wealth, becoming a master vampire, or many other things. Ambitions are not set in stone, they can be changed at any time (and you keep your progress) and they come in steps, each of which includes a few things to do, such as practice with an instrument for a certain time or try the food from the Jungle Adventures world. Ambitions do not include careers, unlike the life wishes in Sims 3 (if we’re honest, a lot of them are about reaching the top of a career).

Whims bring us to another big change: moods. Sims 3 had moodlets which influenced how happy a sim was at a given time. Moods have more influence on the sim than the moodlets did. A sim can feel happy, focused, inspired, sad, angry, and many other things and it influences their behaviour and what they can do. They can also be in a neutral mood which is called ‘Fine.’ Certain actions, surroundings, happenings, but also traits have an influence on the moods. Sims with the ‘Creative’ trait are inspired more often, sims which have made a blunder in front of others tend to be embarrassed, sims which have worked intensely can become tense, focused, or confident. You get the drift.

Create-A-Sim (or CAS) has been dialled back, too. The colour wheel is gone, completely free design is no longer possible (but every object comes with quite some pre-designed varieties).

What has also been changed is the way the game is growing. In the first iteration, there was the basic game and the expansions. Same goes for the second iteration. With Sims 3, the players also got stuff packs which didn’t bring changes, but new things for build and buy mode and for the create-a-sim tool, in addition to expansions. Sims 4 added the game packs to the mix. Settled between full expansion and stuff pack in price, they’re also in-between when it comes to content. As the stuff packs, they add new objects. As the expansions, they add new game-play, but on a lower level. A recent example: Sims 3 had “World Adventures” as one of its first expansion packs. The pack brought three vacation locations (France, Egypt, and China) with a lot to discover. Sims 4 recently got “Jungle Adventures” which brings one vacation world (the second overall) with a few locations to discover. It’s mostly centred around the new culture and the temple exploration. Both is fun, don’t misunderstand me, but World Adventures had a lot more content for about twice the price. Yet, the game packs are also closer to the point in many cases. Instead of an overall expansion like “Supernatural” for Sims 3, Sims 4 had the “Vampires” game pack. It was completely focused on the vampire theme, from the objects to the new game-play. So if you want to play vampires, you buy it. You don’t need to shell out for an expansion pack which includes creatures you don’t really need (I mostly played the witches from the Supernatural expansion, hardly the fairies or werewolves). It’s also more logical than including the vampires in another pack (Sims 3 included them in their Late Night expansion which brought the only metropolis setting).

  

But now from the basic mechanics to the actual game-play. The basic principles of The Sims haven’t changed, of course. They were there since the first iteration.

Your sim has traits which define their interests and what they enjoy or don’t enjoy doing. They also have a certain influence on the moods. Sims with some traits can also learn specific things faster (a sim who loves dancing, for example, will learn it faster).

Your sim also has needs. In Sims 4, there’s six of them (bladder, fun, hunger, social, energy, hygiene), the first iteration had 8. Sims are autonomous enough to take care of their basic needs when they sink below a certain level. They will go to the toilet when their bladder need is low. They will get some food when their hunger need is low. And so on. So you don’t have to keep an eye on all of your sims the whole time, they can manage their daily lives.

Sims need a job or another way of making money (painting, writing, gardening, and some other skills can result in things to sell). They will not choose a job by themselves, but in most careers, they’ll leave the house and come back without you having to control them much. There’s, however, three interactive careers with the “Back to Work” expansion pack.

Sims age and will eventually die (and, perhaps, return as a ghost). They can also die sooner in an accident or, if they’re emotional, of too much feelings.

Sims can fall in love and found a family. They can have kids together (or adopt them). Kids grow up into adults and can then start their own life in the same game, but another home (even in another world in the same save game). Like this, you can have a long dynasty of sims in a save game, generations upon generations of them.

In short, sims are a pretty good simulation of everyday life and that’s what the game is about. You can try out whatever life model you want, from a sim who just earns money to pay the bills and uses their spare time for their true passion of meeting every sim in the worlds to a sim who wants to be a triple agent one day (top of the ‘evil’ branch of the secret agent career, the only career with 11 instead of 10 stages). You can found a large family (8 sims er plot is the maximum, though, so before your couple can have more kids, the oldest might have to move out) and see where it leads you. You can have a sim who is filthily rich (there are money cheats which are easy enough to use, the two most-used have been around since the first iteration) and just does as they please without working a day in their life. You can just build houses with the build mode, if you feel like you should have become an architect.

And you can share every family you make and every house you build with the whole community. With Sims 3, Origin and EA started a community to share content and Sims 4 has capitalized on it with an in-game browser to go through all the community-created content.

On the technical side, that comes with a few bad sides. You need to install, maintain, and open the Origin app to play the game. You need to register all expansions with Origin, too (not much of a problem for me, since I bought most of my additional content directly from Origin). But such programs are no longer unusual. Whether that’s good or bad is pretty much up to your personal tastes.

My verdict of Sims 4 so far is positive. I’m having a lot of fun with the game and I know I will have more fun with it in the future. There are a few things I don’t like and a lot more which I like. No game is perfect, but this one definitely is eating more of my time than it should - like every Sims game before.