The game that I'm going to be reviewing today is one which stems from quite possibly one of the most well known video game franchises of all time, The Sims. This is the 4th title in the main line of the series, though there are plenty of other sims games available to play besides 1-4. The sims 4 was developed by in collaboration with EA Maxis and The Sims Studio. The game was also published of course by EA which I'm sure comes as no surprise to anyone. The sims 4 was released back in September of 2014, and was made available to play on the PC. It recently was also ported over for the Playstation 4 and Xbox one this past November, so you can play it on basically most of the new generation consoles.
I wasn't sure if I really wanted to write this review to be honest, as I'll be up front now that it's not exactly going to be a glowing one with lots of praise for the game. I played quite a bit of the Sims 3, probably anywhere from 175-250 hours which might not be a lot to some of the Sims fanatics, but for me that's a pretty decent chunk of gameplay. I was somewhat excited upon hearing that they were developing a new Sims, as my girlfriend is heavily in love with the game series and I too enjoy it a bit.
However, I started realizing that the game was probably not going to live up to my expectations after seeing updates on it on youtube, and reading about the development. It was going the same way that EA takes most of their games, which involves paying for a lot of content after you've already purchased the game. Upon release, I decided I was going to hold off on getting it myself, however, my girlfriend ended up purchasing it and giving it a go. Her reception upon playing it for a dozen or so hours was fairly lukewarm. And, I have to say that's pretty much where I am with the game as well.
For anyone unaware of what the Sims games actually consist of, the premise is a pretty simple one and it's always the same basically with each game. The game puts you into an open world simulation, where you get to create a digital avatar and control every aspect of their life, for the most part. You can create either a single sim, or a whole family of them which you'll control until they pass of old age, where in then you can control their offspring if you've started a family.
Compared to the past titles in the sim series, the character creation process in this game has been dumbed down quite a bit, and is far, far more basic than it has been in the past. While maybe making it easier for people who have never played a Sims game before, I was slightly annoyed with this and wish it wouldn't have given such simple options for editing the characters. A positive thing is that they've cleared things up for the traits and careers and made everything pretty out in the open, where you'll know exactly what your career path will be and what you'll have to do.
There's been other changes to the game, though most of them aren't things which I would consider great. One semi positive addition is the emotion system which has been added to your sims as you play. This system has created full fledged moods for your sim to experience, based upon the events that are happening to them and what they're doing. There's a lot of new ways to help boost your sims mood up, with things like smartphones being brought into the game for example. You'll easily be able to tell what your sim is feeling, and it's one of the few interesting things in the game trying to figure out what you can do to fix the mood issues.
Now, I'll start getting into the negative things which I'm not really a big fan of. Things like the fact that they've removed a lot of the clothing options as well as building options for your home compared to what we've had in the past. Again, I think this was due to the fact that EA has become obsessed with microtransactions and DLC's, since they get so much more extra money out of their games this way. Of course, I'm assuming that they designed the game to be this way so they can put out DLC's for you to buy clothing packs or item/event packs to add more content to the game. I'm not a big fan of this, and think the game was left a bit unpolished just for the extra cash.
Another set of issues to this game is the fact that they've really taken two steps back in their ability of world building. The Sims 3 did a great job at letting you explore the world around you, and actually having you feel like you live in a city with communities all over the place for you to find and mingle with. This is definitely lacking in comparison, and it really feels like a far less populated world around you, with much less to actually explore and look through. It doesn't matter where you travel to in the game, each area feels quite isolated from one another and you never really feel like there's a booming population to the areas you're in. Combine this with the anger inducing loading screen times, and I definitely wasn't anywhere as happy to explore around as I used to be.
And, that's not the only issue that I found with the world building of the game. As there are a lot of key elements missing in this game which were present for the past iteration of the Sims games. Beyond removing a lot of the exploration elements of your local neighborhoods, they've also removed things like the toddler part of raising your sims which obviously makes sense with raising children in game. In the last few games we got random events like break ins and other events, with most of them all being removed entirely from the game. There are smaller pieces of the game which have been removed as well, such as locations you could typically meet other sims and places where events could take place.
One more thing I can address which might be something people get upset with while playing this is that the AI still isn't all that great for your Sims when you try to let them go on autopilot. This is something which has been a reoccurring issue with the Sims games, and by no means is just a sole issue within this game. Of course, I did hope that with this game they may have improved upon the AI in some ways from the past titles in the series. However, I was let down as the AI is still the same as it always has been. I tend to keep a close eye on my Sims, so it never got to be too angering since the AI wasn't an autopilot too often. However, the moments where I did either let them or had to let them go on autopilot I often found myself annoyed with the fact that the Sims just aren't smart enough to really deal with anything on their own. While not being a huge, glaring issue, it's still a bit annoying and could turn people off who are new to the series, I suppose.
While this newest game sports some nicer looking graphics and has a few new elements added in comparison to the older games, I really think playing the older stuff can be more entertaining and and engaging than this title in particular. It's missing a lot of core elements that made the Sims a fun experience, and has taken out a lot of the customization elements of the game unless you're willing to purchase DLC's to fill in the gaps. While this game isn't the worst thing ever, I really think it is a mediocre sequel to the Sims 3 and I can't say I'm all that impressed with the changes to the game. I'd recommend it if you're looking for a simulation game to play and don't have anything better, but personally I'd go back to the older titles.
Thanks for checking out my review! Hope you've enjoyed it!