Sims 4 - Disappointment Incarnate

By David Piner -

The Sims 4 is a disappointment to me, as a gamer. I mean, I’m not some crazy EA hating rage commenter that trolls Metacritic for EVERY EA game, but when they toned down SimCity into a smaller more simplier game, I absolutely went nuts at the idea because it brought it back to where the original SimCity was. With Sims 4, it’s literally, absolutely, nothing but quasi-fraud and in your face “BUY MORE OF OUR EXPANSIONS.”

Let’s talk first about what Sims 4 does and doesn’t do compared to Sims 3. First, it doesn’t have 11 expansion packs and 9 stuff packs. Next, it doesn’t have toddlers or a swimming pool. Next, it lacks the open world, you load into your plot like SimCity. Oh, basements, grocery stores, and different school / work locations are missing. Ultimately, it’s more bare-bones than Sims 3 with no expansions.

Yet, of course, Internet reviewers are all like this is the best most impressive awesome game ever. The new emotion system is amazing! Sure, for the 3 people who play the game for anything but a dollhouse simulator. Ugh, it’s just so annoying.

Why do people think that we gamers are somehow idiots? Like oh yeah here is a giant steaming pile of crap right here on this place. This STUNNING dry aged crap we’ve been smithing here in our BEAUTIFUL development lab is right here just for you. Just load up Origin and let it crap all over you while you play this amazing game.

Ya know, I stood up for SimCity, because I thought it was fun. I’m also old enough to have played the original SimCity which was LITERALLY the same game, just with worse graphics. So I loved the simple idea of just laying down a few zones and enjoying the simple complexity involved in putting the zones in the right and wrong areas. I don’t need a true 100% in-depth city simulator to say it’s a good game. Keyword: game.

Let me explain my story with the Sims 4. I’ve been sitting here, on the fence. I’ve played the Sims since before the Sims was popular. I played the Sims on a laptop, in a hotel room, with free 56k Internet and broken glasses, holding a copy of both EGM and PC Gamer in my hands reading their top Sims tips and cheats. I played Sims 2 and made huge castles for large families. I play Sims 3 when I get free time.

Yet Sims 4, just you know, Sims isn’t a game you boil down to the good parts. The good part is all of the parts. It’s the fact that your Sim could do 234923 things and you can alter and edit and adjust until your hearts content. Sims 1 had a lot going for it. Now the repo man is gone and your Sims can forever just sit in debt or whatever. Modding The Sims is like a right, you mod and mod and mod and add in all these cool downloadable things so that you end up with a plethora of cool "stuff" for your place. The expansions and stuff packs just build ontop of the base foundation game. This is all truth.

However, the foundation game is just... too basic for me. You get to zone into one plot only, you only hang out in a small neighborhood, there are no cars (wtf??), and every sim in the map walks by your house every 30 seconds since you know, you have to go outside and talk or your Sim will have a breakdown. Plus you know, swimming pool, toddlers, etc.

I’m going to be honest, I have like 4 hours into the game. My keyboard has been broke the last day and I’ve been moody, but I will say it’s fun - just not, I don’t know, a product worth such a steep price tag. Let’s face it, you can buy some really in-depth large scale games with tons of replayability for the same price or much lower. Just because something doesn't emulate a previous edition doesn't mean it's bad, look at Archer, but you have to present something breathtaking and wonderful, like the original, not just minimize what the previous games had in them and then iterate on the a.i. and graphics a bit.

Emotions and moods are cool but it's literally just small buffs and stuff you have to deal with. Take a brisk shower and your sim is all energized for awhile, but cook without a lot of cooking skill and it just makes your sim ticked off. What's up with that. I guess it's cool.

It’s obvious the idea here is either, and this sentiment is parroted across the whole Internet, they didn’t have enough time to finish and just pushed this out or they are wanting to sell the missing features later on.

I will say that there is a good bit of “stuff” in the game. Lots of doors, t.v.s, etc. But it feels almost like the same amount Sims 3 had, except with easy mode rooms instead of pools and Sims less affected by environment (looking at you older Sims game that punished you for building large rooms and not making them hoarder paradises). Some of the new tools are nice, but it feels like you can't really edit the terrain like you used to. The small world and maps is just bleh.

So in summary, I like the fact that there is a lot of foot traffic on your property, the "stuff" looks good, the Sims facial expressions are awesome, and the graphics/A.I. is great. I don't like what feels like the SimCity engine and smaller plots and neighborhoods/maps, and what feels as if EA is reaching into my pocket to shake out a ton of money for expansions to add in what came with the basic game before, assuming that Origin doesn't just offer it for free to appease the rioting Internet fans like they gave free games away for the SimCity fiasco. 

What do you think about the Sims? Should we start a global campaign to bring The Sims Online back and the ideas of a Sims MMO, just without the money trees, or should we just accept that EA hates every single one of us and is worse than a payday lending company as far as ethics go *points to the corpse of Earth & Beyond.*

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David "Xerin" Piner

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