Lazy Gamers Jungle Adventures Review Is Up

"DeservedCriticism;c-16357623" wrote:

"Sk8rblaze;c-16357574" wrote:

"Writin_Reg;c-16356486" wrote:

"Zeldaboy180;c-16356327" wrote:

"NorthDakotaGamer;c-16356301" wrote:
@Zeldaboy180

I look for gameplay reviews. I have been forced to watch lets plays to get any actual reviews of all the packs. The squeals about objects are unappealing, so that is why I do not trust those anymore and see them as fake. Most of the EA game changers reviews are purely on the look and no longer the gameplay. They "review" CAS and build/buy mode. They do not review gamelay, which informs me better about a pack. LGR reviewed the gameplay.

I do know what you mean, there are plenty of simmers who will say no wrong about the sims packs. There are also those that do speak their mind though, LGR isn't the only one.

I watch Drgluon almost every night, he streams the sims, and he is honest about what he likes and doesn't like.

I also was watching another streamer that said they understand it's a gamepack, but the rabbit hole questions still disappointed them.

Those are chance cards. Every Sims game has had chance cards.

I mean, it's excusable when they're an afterthought in a pack that has three vacation destinations, a hotel system, vacation homes, new lifestates, tons of new items and interactions, building items, etc. -- chances are you've played TS2: Bon Voyage, so I'll spare you the rest.

This is a $20 dollar game pack which is advertising itself as an adventure through a jungle, so you better believe, with a focus so narrow as that, I want to actually be adventuring a jungle. Not reading a text pick-your-own-choice adventure, because I can do that for free online.

I thought the belief was that game packs would allow them more time and development resources to fully flesh out a feature? When I see things like that, it just furthers my opinion this new business model is just EA's attempt to monetize the living plum out of this franchise.

I don't neccesarily take issue with the text-based adventures. My concern just from watching videos is just how long the actual adventuring takes. I clocked someone analyzing a relic and it took one in-game hour. Thing is they have to dig it out of the dirt, they have to get it out of the dirt clump, and then they have to analyze it. Sounds like three hours per thing at a minimum, and all of that is time you're sitting there doing nothing. (and yeah, incidentally that person playing was interacting with the stream and largely ignoring the game while the sim analyzed stuff)

All Sims games have moments where you want a Sim to learn a skill, and you sit there waiting for a bar to fill. However, 1) This seems to be the bulk of the pack's entire experience, and 2) Sims 4 has such a terrible history with Speed x3 that to this day I would not dare to use it. I have no idea if Speed x3 has been properly fixed, I've heard no confirmation of it being fixed, and it's jeoprodizing the stability of an entire save file to even try.

My issues with this pack are:

1) The time spent doing basic actions is absolutely obscene. Why did they make it take so long to do actions that players are expected to do repeatedly for the pack?

2) The outcomes are all luck-based. I loathe fishing in Sims 4 because the baits aren't effective enough. In Sims 3 if I want a deathfish I just need to use an angelfish. In Sims 4 it tells you "USE A SMALL FISH" and omg half the fish population uses small fish as bait so it doesn't matter anyways. Those traps in the temples likewise look luck-based. When I realized some traps are absolute decoys with no function beyond potentially forcing a fail....where's the thought here? It doesn't even seem like the player can plan or try to mitigate failures in any way. I was hoping for skill-based outcomes and that seems to exist to a degree, but it also seems like a certain chunk of the puzzles remains luck-based. The result is you're motivated to examine everything first (which exaggerates the first issue above), you still might fail, and even then you have to question what does any of it matter? The punishments are moodlets too, so the entire thing just feels like a trivial waste of time. I have no idea why the pack's content seems designed to waste time.

3) The locations being blocked off. I'm sure most of us assumed there were at least two temple entrances and the five layouts occurred in seperate ones. Instead, it seems like the locked off locations are....kinda pointless? The ones I've seen explored were tiny and had zero purpose. They were just....there. To see such a disappointing location and then realized they lock off access to half of them for no reason....why?? I'm a crazy-curious person, and I'm dying to know how they felt this enhances the gameplay. It honestly feels like the decision was made to give the illusion of more content, since if your first trip is disappointing or you only watch one stream and feel disappointed, you can always tell yourself "maybe the other paths are better." They're not and they all seem pointless. Even the temple itself seems to be limited to once per day, and I have to ask why. When I see people play, they do the temple and then spend the rest of the time watching their sim hit a rock with a hammer OR socializing in town. Neither seem really exciting. I wonder if the next point ties into this in regards to the temple....

4) The cash rewards. This one has me wondering if it's a reason they lock off the temple periodically, though again this is a strange design choice. The cash rewards seem absolutely obscene. Explore a temple? He's a minimum of ten thousand dollars. I heard and expected the cash rewards might be high, but holy plum. This seems downright unbalanced. However, if this is the reason for locking off the temple, why not just drop the reward values accordingly in order to allow temple access more frequently? Locking off the temple just seems to encourage wait time. Nobody likes just waiting around and some people (me) hate when cash rewards are too high. What on earth is the motivation for making players spend more time sitting around in exchange for more expensive rewards?

The entire balance and design of the core interactions just seems so backwards it's downright confusing. I legitimately question if the interactions are designed to take ages and the locations are blocked off all with the purpose of drawing the experience out and making it seem bigger. I don't suspect that as a default, but rather I simply cannot think of any other rational motivations for the pack interactions being such a time sink. Surely they playtested it and realized watching a sim hit a rock with a hammer for one hour every time you want to do something isn't fun, and yet here we are. These interactions honestly feel like they take 5-10 times as long as the interactions from World Adventures, and I cannot possibly fathom why they chose to do this.


All I can say is that if playing it is as boring as watching it is, then I honestly question if Outdoor Retreat is actually better, solely on the grounds that Outdoor Retreat at least holds your attention by making you scan the forest floor for plants and insects, not reducing the entire experience into a one hour luck-based interaction by the sims.

I had some degree of hope for this pack, so it's very disappointing to see it looking so dull. I remember the first comment I made about it was that the teaser had me concerned the skeletons weren't a threat, but rather "LOL that skeleton just told me a joke #WeirderStories #BlameSteve," and holy plum I was spot on. I can look past the goofy tone of the skeletons if the rest of the experience seems worthwhile, but now knowing the rewards and seeing how boring the gameplay looks, I'm just left with disappointment and a sense of awe that there were so many bad decisions made regarding time management.

I think the excessive time is designed to draw the experience out, purposefully so the player has to go back and do it again. Believe me, personally I think it is boring. I don’t want to watch my sim dig for several sim hours. Why does everything in this game take an excessive amount of time? This is the first game pack I regret buying.