What I liked:
CAS is enjoyable for creating a Sims physical appearance, lots of leeway available for tweaking a sims physical appearance.
Game play is smooth, animations are very nicely done. Especially well done are the stair animations, the best example being how camera now follows the character who ascends and descends the stairs instead of pausing while the character is on the stairs then jumps to the character when the animation is complete in SIMs 3.
Disappointments for me:
The over-all area the two worlds combined has much less content than the basic SIMS 3 game. The modular design breaks the areas down into smaller modules that require transitional loading times. While this improves game performance by focusing on local events for the player, it also makes the world feel far smaller.
Transitions between areas within a given town (world) are a bit annoying, though it does improve performance because only that area module is loaded instead of the whole town. This has also removed the need for vehicles for my Sims to go where they need to go, so that kind of travel is now assumed, although some traffic is visible as background ambiance to make the roads seem a necessity.
I am disappointed by not having as much freedom with customizing things like makeup colors, apparel, or anything else as we had in Sims 3. The color wheel and various pattern options for creating styles is definitely a feature that should have continued in Sims 4.
The textures are nice for plants, shrubs, trees, etc, but the terrain leaves much to be desired. I can play with all settings on the highest level, but terrain lacks any texture detail and looks more like its spray painted.
With over 3000 hours spent in playing Sims 3, most of that time revolved around designing custom styles for apparel, furnishings, homes, and even vehicles to suit my individual Sims.
Suggestions?
If possible, I would like to see the levels of style controls re-introduced into SIMS 4 instead of fixed color options.
Overall thoughts?
All in all, SIMS 4 okay, but simply lacks the level of creativity possible for the player that was available in the basic SIMS 3 game even without the various DLC made available later for that game. For me the game feels overly streamlined and simplified.
EA Staff (Retired)
