LGR - The Sims 4 Review

If you spend any amount of time looking at my channel , then you will know that I am a huge fan of the Sims series .

I loved the first game .

It really opened my eyes to what a simulation game could be , those life simulation stuff .

And then I really enjoyed the Sims too as well .

It was a great addition to the series , adding pretty much on to the first game entirely and just expanding on what was already there and giving more expansion impacts than we ever thought was possible .

And then the Sims three came out in 2009 and it was yet another good iteration to the series .

It had its problems , of course , but it was also something that kept the same formula but just improved and added on to giving things like open world and intense customization that we'd never seen before .

So when you have games like these in a series that has been going around for like 13 , 14 years now , then obviously , there's a lot of anticipation for a sequel and being one of the best selling game series of all time , it's natural that there's gonna be a whole lot of speculation as to whether or not it's going to be any good .

Well , that is what I am here to tell you in my opinion today .

Yes , it's time for the Sims four developed by Maxis and published by Electronic Arts in 2014 for Windows P CS .

And yep , this time around there is no Mac version with no word of it on the horizon currently .

Smarter Sims weirder stories .

Ah , yes , just what we needed because aliens in hot dog suits befriending unicorns and casting spells on vampires while listening to Katy Perry just was not weird enough .

The Sims four begins by beginning and how dare I do that ?

Oh my God .

Worst game ever .

What a pile of rotten ball sacks .

I'm just kidding .

Could you imagine if I was actually like that ?

It's just an innocuous land loading screen .

No big deal .

Once this simplistic screen scamper on by the main menu , plops down some animations in the background showing how weird the Sims are , aren't they weird ?

Look how weird they are ?

Bet you can't wait to see how weird their stories get .

So you may as well just start a new game .

Although perusing the options menu wouldn't be a good idea since there are indeed an optional array of optional options like laptop mode for you .

Top of the lap gamers , options for autonomy and aging of Sims you play and those you don't and options to make the game play a bit more like the Sims three in regards to the social menu and camera roles .

But yeah , starting a new game brings you right into create a Sim the first time you play .

And it's quite telling that it doesn't initially take you to the neighborhood view .

The Sims and their personalities really are the focus in the Sims four as opposed to world building or sandbox exploration .

So you may as well spend some time making them smart or weird or whatever other marketing taglines you can think of .

And thankfully , the Sims four is create Sim mode is vastly improved over the Sims three except where it's not at all .

Most of it is what you expect though .

So you can name them , choose their gender , voice age traits , ambitions , you can even change their default walking style .

Now , if you want to make them prance around like a moron and when you're psychotically ruining their face and body shape , there's no relying on sliders to do the job anymore .

All you have do is click and drag , pinching and stretching their flesh every which way .

Like a deranged plastic surgeon on Mescaline when it works .

It's great .

And I've found that with enough practice , you can create all sorts of convincing likenesses .

So making yourself your friends , your celebrity crushes , your worst nightmares , they're all just a mouse click away .

However , what's really disappointing is when you realize that you can no longer customize the clothing and accessories .

However , you want the feature known as create a style from the Sims three is gone and that sucks because I use that for freaking everything in the game .

From garage doors to G strings .

You want to make this shirt red or yellow or green or any other basic color that seems obvious .

Well , unless it comes with that preset or you mod the game , you're out of luck .

Apparently the reason they got rid of this was because of performance concerns .

And yeah , I can see that when you're adding like 17 variations of leopard print to every outfit you have have .

But it seriously annoys me that you can't at least change the colors of the existing textures .

A simple color wheel for pallette swapping would have gone a long way in making this more acceptable .

Once you've saved your simm , you have the option to upload them to the Sims Four Gallery , which is an in game area that takes the place of the Sims Exchange website .

Of years past here , you can download rate and comment on other people's creations and import them into your game at will or and share them on Facebook if you're really desperate .

Anyway , once you're done forcing your family on to strangers , it's onto the neighborhood view .

And yeah , this is actually what it looks like .

Now , when I first saw screenshots of this , I honestly thought it was a joke because it looks like a Facebook game or the console version of the Sims .

But it's not a joke .

This is what you get .

Two little cartoon towns divided up into six neighborhoods , each of which contains up to five playable lots , move to an existing house or build your own on an empty lot , depending on how much work you're willing to put in .

And I've got to say I highly recommend building your own because the new build mode is incredible .

Even if you're no good at designing homes , it doesn't matter because rooms are so malleable and simple to create that .

It's a piece of cheeseburger shaped cake to build them rooms and even the entire house can be picked up and moved as a whole unit , you can place premade rooms inside and around other rooms .

Everything is adjustable in ways that satisfy me completely .

And there are plenty of additions that really spice up the look of houses and lots little details and features that make each building pop and that can be a good or a bad thing depending on your aesthetic choices .

But hey , don't let these societal norms stifle your creative freedom by mode is rolled up into build mode too .

And you've got quite a selection of items to pick from though .

I'm a bit with the fact that many of these have to be unlocked in game before you can buy them .

I like a sense of progression in most games , but here it can take away from the traditional sandbox idea of the Sims .

Thankfully , there is a great sorting and searching system now , meaning you can sort by tags and object types and even use a search bar to find stuff without having to flounder around menus all day .

You can also use the shift and bracket keys together to scale items .

Infinitely , it's ridiculous and seems kind of like a glitch , but I don't care .

I love it and I hope they never change it .

It's useful too .

I mean , hey , you want a gigantic TV , but can only afford a tiny one to scale it up and it's as big as your wall and being a Sims game .

There are at least 35 chairs on offer to suit your bum comforting desires .

Surely there could be more and I expect a chairs expansion in 2015 .

There are some unfortunate omissions in build mode though , like no curved walls , only curved foundations and fences .

The lack of terraforming tools and the lack of swimming pools , I guess leaving out diving boards in the Sims three base game wasn't enough .

Now , they just say screw you guys and leave out the pools entirely .

You can make fountains , but they just kind of sit there wasting virtual water and rusting spare change .

There's no swimming in the game of any kind for that matter .

And as a result , no bathing suits and a significant chunk of the game takes place in a desert .

You have to be a sadistic hydro phobe to build a hot desert town play in and not include a single way to go .

Swimming and cool off .

But once you've got a place to live , it's time to get to the core game play and it's pretty much what you've come to expect from the Sims .

Basically , anything goes and it's up to you to make your own goals .

The Sims as a series is a life simulator grounded more or less in modern day reality .

And it's your job as an invisible , all powerful overlord to guide your Sims lives towards whatever you deem worthy .

As always , you've got their basic need needs to account for .

But following in the footsteps of the Sims three , there's less of a focus on taking care of their comfort and more of an emphasis on playing with the world they live in and all of the menus are rather minimalistic this time around taking more than a few cues from the 2013 Sims City atrocity .

A reboot along the bottom right here .

You can expand .

Your Sims needs their traits and detailed statistics of their entire life to date their current inventory and a list of collectibles that can be found in the game world .

The staff of their relationships , both good and bad , the skills they've learned and their adeptness at them , their career if they have one and how well they're doing at it and their current aspirations and available rewards for completing them which range from simple mood potions to additional traits .

Then over to the left past some familiar speed controls , there's a section that shows your Sims bank account , some controls for their phone and home lot , any queued actions and their current emotional state .

Emotions are another significant addition to the Sims series at large and they replace the vague mood meter of games past while Sims have always acted in ways that implied certain emotions .

Now it's made explicitly clear how they're feeling at all times .

Sims can feel any one of 14 emotions at a time and these are affected by everything from their surroundings to their interactions with other Sims to an event that happened earlier in the day above your Sims portrait , you'll see some things that your Sim wants .

These are known as whims and these whims are affected by their traits as well as their current emotion .

So if as Sim is feeling angry , they can do a hard core workout to vent .

If they're feeling focused , they can speed through a book or a program on a computer more effectively .

Or if they're feeling confident , they can go up to random Sims and hit on them without fear .

Overall , I kind of like the emotion system as it constantly changes up what may happen at any given time and provides some new context sensitive interactions with each emotion .

Of course , it can be manipulated pretty easily simply by ingesting unlocked potions or surrounding yourself with specific things .

Many decor and clutter objects can emit an emotional aura and when this is enabled , any nearby sims will be overcome with emotion .

So , if you've got a study , it's a good idea to fill it with objects that emit auras conducive to instilling a sense of focus and avoid objects that instill hyperactivity .

If you place a bunch of them around each other , These can conflict though and sometimes their emotions change so rapidly from one extreme back to the other that your SIM could probably be diagnosed with a variety psychosis .

Another new feature of their day to day routine is the ability to routinely do more than one thing at once throughout the day .

And thank balls .

Sims can now perform many actions simultaneously without having to stop the previous action down in the bottom left .

You'll see the SIMS can queue up their activities as normal .

But below that , you'll see the multitasking section up to three things can be done at once as long as they don't flied with one another .

For instance , your SIM can exercise , watch TV , and talk to their spouse at the same time .

Or you can go to a bar , carry , drink in one hand food in the other and chat up the bar flies all night long or my personal favorite .

You can take a dump while browsing the internet till your legs about go numb , which hits so close to home .

It's wonderful .

Sims can also talk to more than one SIM at once or leave and enter a while performing other actions like changing seats or getting food .

This means that keeping your Sims social needs fulfilled is easier than ever .

And the significance of this edition cannot be understated .

It just makes most of the gameplay feel more dynamic and lifelike and takes away so much of the tedium of micromanaging all their actions and priorities .

Sims can now just live their life and get things done without becoming a social outcast .

And that is quite simply brilliant .

Of course , if they want to be a social outcast , there are plenty of things to help them accomplish their introverted desires .

Electronics abound more than ever .

In fact , with everything from old school computers and word processors up to virtual reality and smartphones , in fact , there are no newspapers or landlines anymore because with all this tech , your Sims carry around , you simply don't need them .

But with all this fragile equipment in use , you'll want to stay up to date on your repair skill especially since is no repair man anymore .

It's either fix it yourself or replace it outright .

In kind of an odd choice .

Many of the hirable services are no longer available and all you have from the outset are made services and pizza delivery skills are also divvied up more generously with separate skill trees for just about everything you do from playing the guitar to playing video games .

This means you have a lot more to occupy your Sims time at home .

And that is a good thing because going out on the town is a bit of a drag .

You know how I mentioned earlier that the town is divided up into separate lots .

And this means that another significant feature from the Sims three , the seamless open world is totally gone .

It may appear that there are all sorts of places to explore when you look around .

But it's an illusion .

What you see on screen here is the entire explore area of this neighborhood .

The stuff immediately surrounding it is only set dressing .

If you want to go somewhere else besides your home lot or the surrounding public land , you can click it or call it up on your phone and choose it from the map screen .

Your SIM will then disappear and you're given a loading screen lasting anywhere from 20 to 45 seconds .

And that's running the game from an SSD hard drive .

So your results may vary but now you're there and you can do as you please .

Oh , but wait , you want to go across the street to another lot .

Well , that's another loading screen .

That's just about as long , ah , 30 seconds later .

There we go .

Things are good here .

Oh , but wait , I need to check on my other Sims needs , but I can't see them because for some reason it doesn't let you if they're off screen .

So I'll just choose to play them .

Yeah , you got another loading screen after 30 hours of game play .

I got positively sick of loading screens in the Sims four .

Why would they do this ?

Well , again , it's under the guise of performance and making the new features of the game work properly and it's got some good side effects .

Like you don't have to wait for textures to stream in .

There are no rabbit hole lots anymore .

There's far more Sims that will show up on each lot and you can easily send your Sims to other towns without sacrificing their progress .

All of these are very good things and I welcome such additions with open arms , but it comes at a cost and that is the feeling of freedom when playing the game .

It is quite simply a pain to go from one area to another in the Sims four .

And it makes me want to stay in one area far longer than would .

In fact , 90% of the time I just stay at home and hold social events there .

So I don't have to bother with maps and loading screens .

It makes me feel a bit claustrophobic and it's the exact opposite of what I felt when playing the Sims three .

Sure .

You can still explore your general vicinity and collect weird little things and find hidden areas .

But even this feels empty and repetitive .

The collectibles always show up in the same exact spot every single day and the hidden areas don't really offer much of real value .

And because your map is so small , you miss out on some other cool things like transportation .

There are no cars in the game except in the background as decorations and the trains and steamboats you see are the same .

They're just there to look nice and do nothing .

Same with the Cityscape in the background .

You can't go there .

It's just a tease of things that can't be done yet .

Not only that , but I'm already having performance issues after about 30 hours playing the same save game , seeing some stuttering longer load times in general glitchy .

So these restrictions are just dis pointing all around .

However , when you're simply living out your life and focusing on the gameplay , it does have the Sims four is quite the engrossing experience like prior Sims games .

There's something undeniably captivating about simulating these virtual existences and living vicariously through an avatar buying a house , making the space your own , getting a job , leveling up your skills , growing a garden , getting a promotion , falling in love , building a space , eating , sleeping woo hooing , taking a dump .

It's good fun .

When you decipher the Sims four's limitations and play around them , it's quite easy to get lost in the game and let suspension of disbelief do its job and take over .

Of course , it's inevitably shattered by something silly like the inability to carry your newborn baby around the house or when they age up , they skip the toddler stage entirely and magically poof into a fully fledged kid .

Creepy to say the least .

And yet another bizarre design choice that could probably be explained , but no one really cares because it's missing .

And as a player , you just want to enjoy a game without feeling ripped off .

And that's what it all comes down to is the Sims four worth buying or not .

Yes .

Asterisk , asterisk .

Holy crap .

Asterisk .

It's fun .

But it is not amazing .

Especially for the price .

The regular and limited version of the game are priced at $60 .

The digital deluxe edition costs $70 .

The premium edition costs $80 and the collector's edition costs the equivalent of $106 .

So not only is it more expensive than any base game in Sims history , but it arguably has the most problems in comparison to its predecessors and take into account the inevitable onslaught of expansion packs , DLC and possibly a premium subscription service .

And you've got a game that costs more than ever for an II reputation than ever .

So why do I say it's worth buying then ?

Well , because it's not an awful game and is not even close to being as bad as it could be .

I am having fun playing this game .

And thank goodness , it's not another e a tragedy .

A La Sim City 2013 or battlefield for , but a game not being a total waste of time does not by any means result in it being worth a full $60 or more .

Absolutely not from my point of view , it's worth about half the asking price considering it started wearing out its welcome after several days of play .

But I also truly think that there's some great stuff here like the build mode improvements , the multitasking and the ability to really get creative with lots .

Seeing as they're all sectioned off now and can be way more complex .

I can see this being a far greater game to play in the future .

But as it is right now , it needs a lot to merit a wholehearted recommendation .

If the Sims four was the first or even second game in the series , it'd be totally awesome , but it's not .

And as much as a would like you to forget that the Sims three exists and has a lot more for a lot less money .

That's not how it works .

Being a sequel to a long time franchise , people naturally expect improvement and iteration or at the very least maintaining the status quo while augmenting and optimizing what was already there .

Yes , base games always have less than a fully expanded game of the past and that's fine , but they've never taken out this many core features from the previous game either honestly , it seems like a throwback of sorts to the Sims one in two expanding on the ideas and gameplay of those games and just look at my channel .

I'm often a huge fan of retro throwbacks , but that's not what I wanted here .

And I don't think a lot of Simmers did either .

The Sims four is a good game .

It's just not good enough to merit the price and as flawed and as buggy as the Sims Three was , it's still my preferred Sim game to play .

So if you're looking to try this new Sims game and want my subjective opinion here it is .

The Sims four is fun for what it offers .

It pulls it off without too many problems .

But as it is on launch , it's not enough to a long time simmer like myself , I would recommend just holding off until the price comes down quite a bit .

And I think you'll be happy that you did .

And if you enjoyed this video on the Sims four and would like to see further Sims four stuff that is inevitably coming more stuff on the previous Sims games which I've covered a ton of and just a bunch of other things .

Well , you're in the right place .

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And as always , thank you .