I want to start by saying that I've been a simmer since that day back in 2000 when, driving home from work, I heard Howard Stern talking about some crazy new life simulator game from the simcity people. I definitely have a specific play style. I'm not a storyteller; I LOVE building, and designing, and decorating, and landscaping, and so forth. I like it to happen gradually, though, so my sims only build with money they earn. I want to say, too, that I very rarely post on boards for ANY game. I'm not one of those that condemns new things automatically, either, and with previous iterations of The Sims I found new things I liked, new things I disliked, and still found a way to enjoy the game. That being said...
Things I Like:
-The Sims themselves. The emotions, the variable interactions with the environment. The date and party systems. The many kinds of conversations. Group conversations that flow organically. Conversation topics actually matter. The comedy skill. Gradual physique changes. True, they look a little cartoonish, but in every other sequel I grew to love the new look and I'm sure the same will happen here.
-All the unlocks and hidden items. One thing I thought 3 lacked was the career rewards that 2 did so well; I love the way careers progress now, with rewards of various types at each promotion, and the new career paths are clever and innovative. Promotion requirements have become more diverse, and it seems that one promotion will have difficult requirements, but the next one or two are easy. Well done.
-Gardening; gardening has always been among my favorite activities in the Sims, and 4 does it better than ever. Lots of crops. Grafting. Woot. My only tiny complaint is that the harvesting animation could have been more involved, but small price to pay for all the improvements. Oh, and growing flowers was a nice touch. I wish they had reintroduced having to trim the hedges, but I get it.
-Build mode. Roofing is infinitely easier. Nice job on detail items like the spandrels, and the 3 door heights, and the columns that can go on wall ends or corners. I've heard there are curved walls, too, but I haven't checked yet. If so, bravo.
-Cooking. I don't even need to go into detail here. Brilliant work.
Now things I don't like. I hate to say it, but this is the first Sims game I've played where the cons PROFOUNDLY outweigh the pros. I'm not totally dismissing it yet, but I have a feeling it will get shelved for a year or two until the game has time to grow into itself. Or until they throw it out entirely and come up with something new. My expectation was that this would be the one; this would be the base game that set a new standard for some longstanding omissions, that introduced a world with all the basic realities of the real one. 3 was so close; I thought this would be where it all came together. That being said...
-Dishwashers!!! How are there not dishwashers?? We have, what, 6 oven hoods (a nice touch, btw, even if they dont do anything), but no dishwashers?? Ditto on the trash compactor, the food processor, the video game console, sprinklers, cars, driveways and so forth. I cannot imagine why these were taken out. I can accept the erstwhile absence of washer-dryers (a little more complex to use and manage), but we've had dishwashers since I was running it on a pentium 133. Just seems sloppy.
-The pools. its been said.
-Buy mode. It seems that a lot of effort has been put into providing pre-designed, pre-furnished modular rooms, so much so that I feel as if it's the suggested paradigm. The rest of the interface feels clumsy, especially the drop down sort-by-function list.
-Build Mode. So much has been automated that I can't figure out how to customize certain basics, like deleting single floor tiles instead of whole rooms. The sledgehammer tool being among the primary methods of deleting structures (and not well) seems like an unnecessary and cumbersome mandate to change 14 year old habits. And honestly, ditto for all the UIs; you can no longer just glance down and see all the immediate information on your sim at once.
-The design tool, or lack of it. It has become impossible to match anything but what is already meant to be matched.
-With the immensely overhauled build mode, I figured they would have finally introduced a way to make split level homes, or foundation homes that connect seamlessly to foundationless rooms. I was really hoping to build a house with a foundation and an attached garage. Further, as popular as the basements were, I figured they were pretty much a shoe-in.
-This is small, but infuriating. When placing a counter against a wall, it automatically adds a small flashing (thats the small vertical piece of counter against the wall, like a backsplash only shorter); it rightly disappears if you move the counter away from the wall. BUT when you build a counter island, the corner piece has that flashing both against the wall AND on the freestanding edge, then stops at the next piece. Its very awkward, and there's no way around it. Turning off autocounters makes no difference.
-The Map. It's been said, I know, but every time a load screen comes up, it pulls you out of the game. When I worked at disney and there was some glaring technical interruption (like looking behind the curtain) we would say that it broke the magic. In the sims 4, you break the magic anytime you go anywhere but the next room. It's like going to a movie but leaving every few minutes to buy popcorn by the single piece. Couldn't we at least have made it so that you can travel freely to anything in your little subdivision without a load screen?
-The Campiness, or wackiness or whatever. The Sims has always had a nice balance of camp and seriousness, enough to satisfy many different game styles. You could make a wild and crazy family with a loud, zany house, or you could make a reserved, stately family with an elegant, subdued house. Not so with 4. Consider the telescope. It's a neat thing, with that shack and the motions that give a nod to roger rabbit, but there really is no way to tastefully place that telescope in an elegant, subdued house, and there are no other telescopes. That's just an example, but you take my meaning.
-No shopping on lots, not even rabbit holes. I was excited when they said there would be no more rabbit holes, but I didn't think they would replace them with NOTHING. We're back to just vanishing when we go to work, ordering things like books and seeds by phone or computer, and not really going anywhere but the park, the gym, the library or the bar. I live in Wyoming, and even to me that seems pretty small town. Hopefully there will be an "open for business" type expansion in the near future, but until then I'm going to make a Kevin Bacon sim and try reenacting Footloose.
I have so many more, but, honestly, this is depressing. I realize that the base game is usually somewhat basic, and I can accept, eagerly, that things like weather and travel destinations are necessarily somewhere down the pipe. I suspect, too, that a great many design decisions were made in the interests of scaling down to make a more stable client that is easier for low end systems to handle. Scaling down is one thing, but if you scale a boat down to the ribs then you've got no hull to float on. It's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I'll close with a few quick questions: first, is there any DLC available yet, and can it (will it) be accessed from inside the game? Also, are there any anthropologists on the design team? Might be something to look into.
EA Staff (Retired)
