beeps' ts4 review
Hey guys! So I’ve given myself a solid month of playing The Sims 4, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and opinions about the game in case there are any fellow TS2-lovers out there who are debating on whether to get the newest version of the best game ever in the world. *deep breath* Here we go!
Emotions. EAxis pushed this gameplay feature like there was no tomorrow. Emotions this, emotions that, your Sims will have emotions, EMOTIONS! Seriously, calm down EAxis. I can say with all confidence that I am totally, completely, 100% [pause for dramatic effect] neutral about emotions. Quite frankly they were annoying to me at first because I wasn’t used to my Sim’s behaviors being influenced by all the things they did/saw/said/ate/etc. But the more I learned about which types of things influence my Sim based on their personality traits, the more it made sense to me. It’s an interesting layer that they added to the game, but I would be as inclined to play TS4 with emotions as I would be to play TS4 without emotions.
Multi-Tasking. Love ♥ Love, love, love. In my opinion, this is the best gameplay feature that has ever graced the Sims franchise. Ever. When it comes to TS2 you can call me a total fan-girl, but after playing TS4 with the multi-tasking feature I can really see how relaxing playing can actually be. For example in TS2, if your Sim was eating a grilled cheese sandwich and you wanted him to turn on some awesome Smustle music, he would stop eating his sandwich, walk over to the stereo, turn it on, at which point you would have to command him to walk back to the table, sit down, and eat his sandwich. In TS4, you can simply command your Sim to switch on the stereo from their dining chair, leave them be, and they will automatically go back to eating their dinner! Genius! This is also true with talking on their cell phone, chatting with family members, reading and more. I love this feature.
Click & Drag in Live Mode. Another feature EAxis incorporated to produce smooth gameplay is the ability to click and drag certain types of things while in Live Mode. Let’s say your Sim just finished making up an excellent quality family-sized serving of pancakes and left for work immediately after pulling them off of the stove. The click and drag feature allows you to click on the plate of food, drag it over to the kitchen, and stick it in the fridge so it doesn’t spoil! While your Sim is gone! Everything is clickable in your Sim’s inventory as well. So when your Sim child comes home from school, you can navigate to their inventory and click on their homework and select “Do Homework”. Your Sim child will then conjure her homework from thin air (I know some Simmers hate this, but I don’t mind) and choose the most convenient place to work on it. You can click and drag stray books back into the bookshelf, click and drag dirty plates into the sink or garbage can, and more! It’s very convenient for the Simmer not to have to toggle between Live and Buy Mode or simply wait for your Sim to come back onto the lot in order to tidy up or get rid of dirty plates.
Unlockable Social Interactions. This is another great layer EAxis added. Depending on your Sim’s personality traits and their socialization skill level, your Sim can unlock special social interactions. For example, your Sim who has the family-oriented personality trait can unlock the ability to “boast about family” to their friends or other family members or your body builder Sim can unlock the option to “show off muscles” to their fellow gym rats. It’s just another layer that makes gameplay a little more interesting and unique to that Sim you are controlling.
Aspiration Stages. Like other games before, Sims in TS4 have aspirations which are goals intended to be pursued by a Sim until they fulfill them. But more interestingly, the game adds a number of objectives that must be completed in order to continue earning satisfaction points, which are used to buy various aspiration rewards. The objectives add another challenge to fulfilling their aspiration, and I’ve found that it most often relates to your Sims’ whims (wants), skill building, and even their school and career objectives. In contrast to the single Lifetime Wish in TS2, it seems to be a bit more challenging to have to complete each objectives list while working toward fulfilling their aspiration in TS4 which is good news for the Simmers who love spending their time making their Sims happy! That’s me, by the way.
Toddlers and Pools. Apparently, this has been quite a hot topic of discussion since before the game was launched. I knew immediately my reaction to no pools - so what? Pools are completely dispensable to me. I liked having them, but not having them would in no way halt me from buying the game. Toddlers on the other hand... I was pretty shocked when I heard that the toddler life stage would not be included in TS4, and it did make me think twice about buying the game. I’ll just say that after playing for a while without toddlers, I don’t miss them so much! I didn’t realize how high-maintenance they are in TS2, and it really makes the child stage more entertaining to play.
Babies. The babies are great in TS4, but I know some Simmers would beg to differ. They are incredibly low-maintenance, which frees up a lot of time for your Sims to work towards their aspirations, fulfilling their whims, and building skills and relationships. Babies can now be breastfed, which is super handy, and their bottles and diapers appear and disappear into thin air WHICH I LOVE. No more floors covered with stinky piles of baby garbage! Yippie!
Adoption Pool. When a Sim goes to adopt a child, a panel pops up with thumbnails of various children needing homes AND YOU CAN PICK WHICH SIM YOU WANT. You can see their age, their gender, their name and obviously their appearance before you adopt them! Genius!
Huge Lot Map. The neighborhoods themselves are very small, but the actual lot map is huge! It’s a cross between the lot map in TS2 (only the lot) and the open-world concept in TS3 (the entire hood). When you load a lot inhabited by a family, there are a LOT of areas you can direct your Sim to walk or run to without having to wait for a load screen to travel to a separate section of the neighborhood. I really didn’t like the open-world in TS3 (I always felt like my Sims would just wander away from the lot and often showed up in random areas of the neighborhood), and the lot map in TS2 is limited to only their personal lot (every other area in the neighborhood requires a load screen in order to play). It’s like they tried to find a happy medium, and I’m happy :)
CAS, Sharing, and The Gallery. When I first bought the game, I had no knowledge that the Gallery even existed. Basically for those who haven’t played the game, the Gallery is an online sharing center where Simmers can make their Sims, houses, even individual rooms available to other Simmers who might find use for them in their own game. It’s like a super simple way to share content with other Simmers. I don’t see myself downloading many individual rooms, but I have already downloaded a house and a few Sims that I love. The only down-side I can see at this time is eventually there will be SO many houses and Sims to wade through that I think it will be really easy to miss some great creations. Hopefully EAxis will implement some more filters as more Simmers share their items. CAS is incredible. The facial manipulation will take a little practice, but the body customization and clothing options are awesome. And remember people, this is just the base game! I can’t wait to see all of the content that gets added with each expansion.
Lighting. My one major disappointment with TS4 is the lighting - not necessarily the natural lighting and shadows and position of the sun and all that, but the low lighting in homes and inside community buildings. I hated, hated, hated this in TS3, and it seems to be about the same in TS4 as far as I’ve been able to tell. There is a lighting intensity slider in the game settings that can be changed, but I still feel like even the highest setting doesn’t give me enough light to comfortably play. Hopefully there will be a nice lighting mod that I can use in the future!
Neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are weird. From the neighborhood view, it appears as though the hood is very sparse with only community lots and a couple residential lots here and there. Adversely when you are loaded into a lot, there are rows of houses lining the streets that don’t even show up in the neighborhood view. Additionally, there are very few lot spots to build on or move into because the overall size of the neighborhood is very small. Also, is there not an option to place your own empty lot? I hate that you are forced to use the size lot that EAxis chose for that particular spot on the neighborhood map. I tend to play smaller lots and find it a hassle to have to landscape overly huge lots. I just want to be able to choose my lot size!
Nit-Picking. My first nit-pick is bills. I’ve already seen a mod to lower your Sims’ bills, which I will probably end up downloading. My poor single mom who is making decent money in her Secret Agent career can’t seem to ever catch up by the time her mountain of bills comes due. My second nit-pick is about appliances and plumbing. They break. They break a lot. I do like the fact that you can eventually upgrade your appliances to be self-cleaning (once your Sim has a high enough mechanical level and the required parts), but they break and need repair way too often for my liking. My third nit-pick is moveobjects. There is no moveobjects cheat in TS4, which wouldn’t be a huge deal if placing objects was a little more like TS2. For example, if you place a wall light up, it takes up a square on the floor. That means that you are not able to put a plant, table, TV, anything underneath the wall light. And there is no cheat built into the game to make that possible either. Sad face. My last nit-pick is the fact that when your Sims are at work or school, you can’t look at any of their panels. You can’t see their personality information, their career information, their relationship information, nothing! In TS2, I would take advantage of the time my Sims are at work and snoop around my Sim’s panels so that I could make sure their relationship levels were at a good and plan out what I wanted them to do when they got home. It’s pretty boring to play a single-Sim family and just sit there while they’re at work and wait for them to come home.
tl;dr Okay guys, that’s my review of TS4! All in all, I think it’s a solid and highly entertaining game and should hold my interest for quite some time. I’m planning on purchasing expansion and stuff packs once they start coming out (something I never did with TS3), however I’m not totally ready to move on from TS2 as of right now. Total truth be told I’ve pretty much stopped playing it, but I’m still so attached to my TS2 Sims and their stories that I don’t feel right putting a pin in it just yet.
Emotions. EAxis pushed this gameplay feature like there was no tomorrow. Emotions this, emotions that, your Sims will have emotions, EMOTIONS! Seriously, calm down EAxis. I can say with all confidence that I am totally, completely, 100% [pause for dramatic effect] neutral about emotions. Quite frankly they were annoying to me at first because I wasn’t used to my Sim’s behaviors being influenced by all the things they did/saw/said/ate/etc. But the more I learned about which types of things influence my Sim based on their personality traits, the more it made sense to me. It’s an interesting layer that they added to the game, but I would be as inclined to play TS4 with emotions as I would be to play TS4 without emotions.
Multi-Tasking. Love ♥ Love, love, love. In my opinion, this is the best gameplay feature that has ever graced the Sims franchise. Ever. When it comes to TS2 you can call me a total fan-girl, but after playing TS4 with the multi-tasking feature I can really see how relaxing playing can actually be. For example in TS2, if your Sim was eating a grilled cheese sandwich and you wanted him to turn on some awesome Smustle music, he would stop eating his sandwich, walk over to the stereo, turn it on, at which point you would have to command him to walk back to the table, sit down, and eat his sandwich. In TS4, you can simply command your Sim to switch on the stereo from their dining chair, leave them be, and they will automatically go back to eating their dinner! Genius! This is also true with talking on their cell phone, chatting with family members, reading and more. I love this feature.
Click & Drag in Live Mode. Another feature EAxis incorporated to produce smooth gameplay is the ability to click and drag certain types of things while in Live Mode. Let’s say your Sim just finished making up an excellent quality family-sized serving of pancakes and left for work immediately after pulling them off of the stove. The click and drag feature allows you to click on the plate of food, drag it over to the kitchen, and stick it in the fridge so it doesn’t spoil! While your Sim is gone! Everything is clickable in your Sim’s inventory as well. So when your Sim child comes home from school, you can navigate to their inventory and click on their homework and select “Do Homework”. Your Sim child will then conjure her homework from thin air (I know some Simmers hate this, but I don’t mind) and choose the most convenient place to work on it. You can click and drag stray books back into the bookshelf, click and drag dirty plates into the sink or garbage can, and more! It’s very convenient for the Simmer not to have to toggle between Live and Buy Mode or simply wait for your Sim to come back onto the lot in order to tidy up or get rid of dirty plates.
Unlockable Social Interactions. This is another great layer EAxis added. Depending on your Sim’s personality traits and their socialization skill level, your Sim can unlock special social interactions. For example, your Sim who has the family-oriented personality trait can unlock the ability to “boast about family” to their friends or other family members or your body builder Sim can unlock the option to “show off muscles” to their fellow gym rats. It’s just another layer that makes gameplay a little more interesting and unique to that Sim you are controlling.
Aspiration Stages. Like other games before, Sims in TS4 have aspirations which are goals intended to be pursued by a Sim until they fulfill them. But more interestingly, the game adds a number of objectives that must be completed in order to continue earning satisfaction points, which are used to buy various aspiration rewards. The objectives add another challenge to fulfilling their aspiration, and I’ve found that it most often relates to your Sims’ whims (wants), skill building, and even their school and career objectives. In contrast to the single Lifetime Wish in TS2, it seems to be a bit more challenging to have to complete each objectives list while working toward fulfilling their aspiration in TS4 which is good news for the Simmers who love spending their time making their Sims happy! That’s me, by the way.
Toddlers and Pools. Apparently, this has been quite a hot topic of discussion since before the game was launched. I knew immediately my reaction to no pools - so what? Pools are completely dispensable to me. I liked having them, but not having them would in no way halt me from buying the game. Toddlers on the other hand... I was pretty shocked when I heard that the toddler life stage would not be included in TS4, and it did make me think twice about buying the game. I’ll just say that after playing for a while without toddlers, I don’t miss them so much! I didn’t realize how high-maintenance they are in TS2, and it really makes the child stage more entertaining to play.
Babies. The babies are great in TS4, but I know some Simmers would beg to differ. They are incredibly low-maintenance, which frees up a lot of time for your Sims to work towards their aspirations, fulfilling their whims, and building skills and relationships. Babies can now be breastfed, which is super handy, and their bottles and diapers appear and disappear into thin air WHICH I LOVE. No more floors covered with stinky piles of baby garbage! Yippie!
Adoption Pool. When a Sim goes to adopt a child, a panel pops up with thumbnails of various children needing homes AND YOU CAN PICK WHICH SIM YOU WANT. You can see their age, their gender, their name and obviously their appearance before you adopt them! Genius!
Huge Lot Map. The neighborhoods themselves are very small, but the actual lot map is huge! It’s a cross between the lot map in TS2 (only the lot) and the open-world concept in TS3 (the entire hood). When you load a lot inhabited by a family, there are a LOT of areas you can direct your Sim to walk or run to without having to wait for a load screen to travel to a separate section of the neighborhood. I really didn’t like the open-world in TS3 (I always felt like my Sims would just wander away from the lot and often showed up in random areas of the neighborhood), and the lot map in TS2 is limited to only their personal lot (every other area in the neighborhood requires a load screen in order to play). It’s like they tried to find a happy medium, and I’m happy :)
CAS, Sharing, and The Gallery. When I first bought the game, I had no knowledge that the Gallery even existed. Basically for those who haven’t played the game, the Gallery is an online sharing center where Simmers can make their Sims, houses, even individual rooms available to other Simmers who might find use for them in their own game. It’s like a super simple way to share content with other Simmers. I don’t see myself downloading many individual rooms, but I have already downloaded a house and a few Sims that I love. The only down-side I can see at this time is eventually there will be SO many houses and Sims to wade through that I think it will be really easy to miss some great creations. Hopefully EAxis will implement some more filters as more Simmers share their items. CAS is incredible. The facial manipulation will take a little practice, but the body customization and clothing options are awesome. And remember people, this is just the base game! I can’t wait to see all of the content that gets added with each expansion.
Lighting. My one major disappointment with TS4 is the lighting - not necessarily the natural lighting and shadows and position of the sun and all that, but the low lighting in homes and inside community buildings. I hated, hated, hated this in TS3, and it seems to be about the same in TS4 as far as I’ve been able to tell. There is a lighting intensity slider in the game settings that can be changed, but I still feel like even the highest setting doesn’t give me enough light to comfortably play. Hopefully there will be a nice lighting mod that I can use in the future!
Neighborhoods. The neighborhoods are weird. From the neighborhood view, it appears as though the hood is very sparse with only community lots and a couple residential lots here and there. Adversely when you are loaded into a lot, there are rows of houses lining the streets that don’t even show up in the neighborhood view. Additionally, there are very few lot spots to build on or move into because the overall size of the neighborhood is very small. Also, is there not an option to place your own empty lot? I hate that you are forced to use the size lot that EAxis chose for that particular spot on the neighborhood map. I tend to play smaller lots and find it a hassle to have to landscape overly huge lots. I just want to be able to choose my lot size!
Nit-Picking. My first nit-pick is bills. I’ve already seen a mod to lower your Sims’ bills, which I will probably end up downloading. My poor single mom who is making decent money in her Secret Agent career can’t seem to ever catch up by the time her mountain of bills comes due. My second nit-pick is about appliances and plumbing. They break. They break a lot. I do like the fact that you can eventually upgrade your appliances to be self-cleaning (once your Sim has a high enough mechanical level and the required parts), but they break and need repair way too often for my liking. My third nit-pick is moveobjects. There is no moveobjects cheat in TS4, which wouldn’t be a huge deal if placing objects was a little more like TS2. For example, if you place a wall light up, it takes up a square on the floor. That means that you are not able to put a plant, table, TV, anything underneath the wall light. And there is no cheat built into the game to make that possible either. Sad face. My last nit-pick is the fact that when your Sims are at work or school, you can’t look at any of their panels. You can’t see their personality information, their career information, their relationship information, nothing! In TS2, I would take advantage of the time my Sims are at work and snoop around my Sim’s panels so that I could make sure their relationship levels were at a good and plan out what I wanted them to do when they got home. It’s pretty boring to play a single-Sim family and just sit there while they’re at work and wait for them to come home.
tl;dr Okay guys, that’s my review of TS4! All in all, I think it’s a solid and highly entertaining game and should hold my interest for quite some time. I’m planning on purchasing expansion and stuff packs once they start coming out (something I never did with TS3), however I’m not totally ready to move on from TS2 as of right now. Total truth be told I’ve pretty much stopped playing it, but I’m still so attached to my TS2 Sims and their stories that I don’t feel right putting a pin in it just yet.