All these people saying TS4 is a sandbox game make me laugh. This is the game that tells you exactly what to do in almost any instance. This is the game that forces sims to be happy, this is the game that forces sims to be friends. This, is not a sandbox game, and most importantly, it's not a challenging game.
You never loose anything, or get any penalties in this game because it hurts the players feelings. Even if you don't pay the bills sims don't complain and get in a crappy mood about the lack of light like in TS3. There's no repo man so your stuff isn't going to get repossessed. And sims can eat quick meals easy without electricity which they don't have to pay for. No matter what your sim never dies. And this isn't the sims 2 or 3 where your nemesis would make your life a hell by throwing garbage on your lawn or constantly try to harass your sim.
It's actually more challenging to keep a bad reputation in TS4 rather than a good one, which makes no sense ahaha. Because sims are constantly trying to be good to the people they are suppose to hate.