4 Hours of playing The Sims 4 – First Reaction

What?!

I got a few days to myself, which I just wanted to spend slumming around my apartment playing games and doing creative stuff. I decided to buy the Sims 4 and the expansion pack Get to Work. I’ve played The Sims, The Sims 2 and 3, and a dozen expansion packs. Of course The Sims 4 was an obvious choice – no doubt about it!!

I didn’t even bother to do the research, to look up reviews. I’d seen the new 3D sim-models, they looked great! Every earlier part in the series has been a joy to play. I was ready to just plunge into some sim action. In fact, I even had a small plan – I wanted to rebuild the story of Bruce and Madeline, where I created robots in sim 3, who would then take over the neighbourhood.

Robotic sim mod via http://sims4updates.net/mods/robot-trait-2-flavors-by-captainkyokyo-at-mod-the-sims/

Not possible in Sims 4, even with the Get to Work expansion pack. It is however possible via modding, but you just create the robot via the sim builder anyways.

No Matrix apocalypse for me.

I was however intrigued by the sim builder at first (character creation mode). Very sleek.

Racial diversity especially was done very well. Look at the right hand side of the screenshot, I can discern several Asian ethnicities.

You’d almost think the sim builder had reached new heights, but no. The palate of elaborate settings for patterns, colors and textures that Sims 3 had, is not implemented, which means you have to choose from a preset of styles to each clothing item. This actually goes for every item in the game – chairs, windows etc. This means it can be hard to reach the aesthetic vision you might have had for the appearance of your sim and their house. For example, I couldn’t style my sim and their house using a rich green color. Choices were too limited compared to Sims 3.

What a bummer! I love all game modes almost equally much (build a house, build a sim and live). I can spend hours creating before I even get started with living, so this was a big disappointment.

Interface was very simple and clean compared to the blue plastic-looking interfaces of earlier sim games, ushering you to pay more attention to the world than various needs and other panels (you can still choose to play with it open if you wish).

Below is a picture of the neighborhood. Stylistic and with very few houses. I was first very puzzled with this presentation. Think about Sims 3 with a practically open world you can zoom in and out of.

Sims 4 neighbourhood

If this looks like a neighborhood that would have loading screens, you are right. Loading screens…?! Oh dear, lets not go back to the days five-minute loading screens, please! I couldn’t believe that the game had taken me back in time, broken up the world into chunks which now had to be loaded in sequence. This was my biggest let down.

Gamespot wrote in its review of The Sims 4:

The Sims 4’s biggest problem is that The Sims 3 exists

It’s hilarious and absolutely true! So much that I decided to buy another expansion pack for Sims 3 (Generations) and reinstall the game. I now plan to play The Sims 3 and 4 side by side, until one of them wins the battle of my full dedication.

May the best game win!