My experience with the Sims only goes back to Sims 3, and then I only started playing two years ago, but despite its flaws it has kept me hooked for two solid years. Some may scoff that since I didn’t play Sims2 I can’t understand Sims4- so my opinion has flaws. Keep in mind, the Sims player base has to evolve and grow to stay alive. Nostalgia is fine, but EA needs to be progressive. So after 20+ hours playing Sims4, here is my review:
Pros – I am still playing. It is still challenging me. At heart, it is The Sims.
• You don’t have to kill your plants and replant to improve quality. The bugs are a nice effect.
• Your Sim will pick an outfit on their own instead of you having to manually change their clothes or have them wear the same thing each day even though they have multiple outfits laid out.
• More than three outfit choices per category
• Multi-tasking is not perfect, but it is a vast improvement
• The daily tasks to progress at work are nice, as are the mini-challenges and steps of achievement for your life goals. My Sim disappearing off the porch to “go to work” does not bother me. I know it would take a lot of programming to have each profession articulated and animated.
• Weight and working out is funny. After a few days I noticed my Sim didn’t look as nice as when I designed her. She was getting chubby! She was constantly moving – she took 75 minutes to shower, she had not time to sit down! So why was she gaining weight? I read the forums and saw this was a game feature and put my Sim on salad restriction and made her find time to exercise. She now has more muscle that I wanted her to have, but at least she is not busting her seams anymore. However, she frequently dreams of a hamburger, fries and milkshake. I chuckle every time I see it.
• There should be a check box to turn off the #$%& tutorial without having to go through Origin and manually disabling it.
• If it keeps me playing for 60 hours I will consider it money well spent.
Cons – probably nothing you haven’t heard already.
My biggest issue that no one is really screaming about but me is the art style – not CaST (made me cry, but I’m past it now). The housing style and furniture actually looks exactly like the Fisher Price dollhouse designs of my childhood. I feel like I am playing dolls when building or decorating my house. It all looks plastic and choke proof. I can mostly get past that when in Live mode.
• Life span is too short – no epic play, although you can drink an elixir of youth or turn off aging
• Toddlers – should have killed the babies and gone straight from pregnant to toddler if you had to cut something; with toddlers you had goals to accomplish and they were cute.
• basements – blah blah blah (5th expansion for $39.95); pools (not that big a deal for me)
• LOTS TOO SMALL AND TOO FEW – half the game is building and we have no room to build!
• Loading Screens. I can understand between worlds and even between neighborhoods – although the neighborhoods are so small I wonder at that – but going from one house to another in a FIVE LOT area requires a loading screen?
• Making Sims purchase books from the bookcase and food from the fridge in your home is not what we had in mind when we asked to get rid rabbit holes. Wouldn’t have been hard. Just like a museum, but with a cash register tied to the items for sale. Or are you saving that for the “downtown” expansion?
• No support for 64-bit machines. Most new games being developed cut support for 32-bit machines in 2014. Maxis doesn’t even acknowledge this decade.
It appears to me that Maxis is over-reacting to the playability problems Sims 3 had. It has gutted most of the innovation and put restrictor plates on this game to ensure "everyone" can play it. That is disappointing. But like I said at the beginning – I am still playing.
EA Staff (Retired)
