1. What did you first think of the art style?
The sims4 was my first sims game that I was starting to play back in 2014, I had played sims3 a bit before but I had not liked it that much, it ran badly on my computer and I thought that it looked old. I liked the art style in the sims4, I thought it worked pretty well. I was not a huge fan of the clay hair, Maxis have gotten better at making it more detailed but back in the day the clay hair did not look great. I think the art style kinda works still today but it has aged a bit, textures no longer look detailed and the UI feels like it was made for smaller screens.
2. Thoughts on the closed world?
In the early days it was not a huge problem because my save was so small, I was fine with traveling between lots but after a couple of years loading times increased to incredibly long loading times and the game actually crashed on me until they made the game 64-bit (but not after several years which they should have done way sooner) because it used too much RAM (which will cause 32-bit applications to crash). I had to create new saves quite often. Even with the game running in 64-bit the closed world system is not friendly towards old saves and traveling between lots takes very long in my saves. So in the beginning it was it was fine, now it doesn't work very well anymore.
3. What surprised you the most?
That I actually liked playing the sims, I thought that I would not like it. I played the game a lot the first three years, created all sorts of saves and families and had a great time.
4. Which missing features did you covet the most?
Since I had not played any sims games previously I did not miss anything. When packs started to come out I was excited because I thought that the game would receive way more development than it did. I thought that all jobs would for example be like the jobs in Get to Work from now on and all packs would be as large and offer me the same entertainment over the years, but it kinda stopped after City Living, packs started to feel the same and I think the game's peak was around Cats & Dogs and Seasons, after that, it started going down and I was starting to get tired of the game.
5. What were your impressions of the emotion system?
I liked it, it added gameplay, I played with a starter household with three sims with very little money so it offered a great challenge. I was not aware of how easy the game got once you got more money though and once you started getting money the gameplay was not challenging anymore. I also thought that they would add more gameplay when it came to emotions which would make the game more challenging but they didn't, they added more stuff instead which made the game less challenging and emotions mattered less.
6. Were you able to continuously play without getting bored?
For the first three years I played the game a lot. I think after City Living I started playing the game less. The game did not receive enough development to keep me entertained and more stuff did not do a whole lot for me, I still played the game regularly up until Discover University where the sims4 was kinda ending for me. Now it feels like they are dragging the game out and I am mostly only interested in new content or mods. But not kits, because that's just more stuff.
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/716416477448284989/94411ACA86B7B8D2CC51A32530E20E7F074388C2/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false
28th of May, 2015
Overall I had a great time with the sims4, I loved it the first three years, what I was probably disappointed with the most was that it did not receive as much development as I thought that it would get.
