The Sims 4 Review: You must go back before you can move forward

When playing The Sims 4, it’s important to remember that all of those fond memories you have from The Sims 3 were a result of five years worth of work, including 11 expansion packs and 9 Stuff Packs. That’s not to say that The Sims 4 base game shouldn’t be fun without all this extra content, I’m just tempering expectations by reminding you that EA and Maxis likely have a long term vision that expands far beyond the launch.

Where we are now with The Sims 4 is merely the base for which many expansions will be built upon. Unfortunately, none of these expansions have even be detailed yet and without any sense of what the future entails, it’s hard to look past what’s missing in this game. The absence of toddlers and pools hasn’t gone unnoticed; the lack of customization options in Create a Sim is disappointing; but, if you can manage to look past these small bumps you’ll find a game with a solid foundation.

Earlier this week, in my “review in progress” I talked a bit about Create a Sim, house customization, and the change from a seamless, open-world to one which has now segmented, split-up by loading screens. Although I suggest checking out the full piece, I’ll give a quick recap of each. Create a Sim, while powerful in its ability to let you mold your Sim, lacks the more in-depth creative devices like Create-a-Style. Build Mode is all-around a major improvement as you can not only add entire rooms with the click of a button, but now search for items more easily and download/install user generated content directly from within the game. And lastly, even though The Sims 4 divides the world into smaller neighborhoods, the results are a much faster first-time boot up and a decrease in the number of crashes.

In terms of gameplay — though a case can be made that house building is gameplay — the big focal point of The Sims 4 is emotion. While moods have been present in previous Sims games, they never really impacted your actual gameplay in a natural way. In The Sims 3, for instance, “Moodlets” were effects based on things that happened to your sim that basically impacted their overall well-being. There was no real noticeable impact from an awkward social encounter, for example.

This time around, emotional states can now affect the way your Sims behave and the interactions they may have with others. Being rejected on a date could result in some serious embarrassment, causing your Sim to want to be alone for a while. Thankfully, many of these emotions last for just a short time and can often be changed based on other actions you perform.

All Sims start the game in a Fine emotional state, but quickly start acquiring different moodlets that eventually change their emotion to something else — Happy, Confident, Flirty, Energized, Inspired, Angry, etc. These different emotions open up all sorts of possibilities when it comes to interacting with objects or other Sims, making the entire experience a much more realistic and lifelike one. Sims now appear more human and less like bots, and because of that it’s much easier to become invested in their stories.

The ability for your Sims to multitask is another feature briefly touched upon in previous games, but finally fully embraced in The Sims 4. In previous games, your Sims would perform tasks that you assigned to them, or ones that they automatically performed based on need. Some of these actions could be performed at the same like, like sitting and reading or watching television and chatting. The Sims 4 expands upon this by allowing your characters to perform multiple tasks at once — provided what you want them to do is physically possible. You can now read while on the toilet, flirt while making dinner, and things of that nature.

While multitasking results in much more believable Sims and less micromanaging, it’s not without faults. Though Sims are definitely smarter in The Sims 4, logic still eludes them at times. Pathing issues still exist; sometimes a Sim will walk the longest way possible to get to a bathroom that’s just a few steps away; sometimes two Sims on a date will sit several people apart rather than right next to each other. Most of these you can laugh off, chocking it up to good intentions with typical Sims issues. We’re used to them by now, but I don’t necessarily think we should settle with it. Improvement can be made.

Aside from mechanic tweaks and overall UI changes, The Sims 4 is by-and-large the same type of game. It’s an interactive dollhouse that can tell a million types of stories, especially with all of the aspirations, personality traits, skills, and careers available to you. Create-A-Sim may not be as robust as we were promised, but there’s definitely enough in the base game to keep things fresh until the first expansion arrives.

For those who prefer some purpose to their gameplay, your Sims do have goals in life. Fulfilling their dreams (lifetime ambition) or rising through the ranks in their career can give you something to work towards, but it can sometimes feel a bit tedious — things like writing five books or telling 20 jokes can get a bit repetitive. Fulfilling these goals results in some pretty worthwhile rewards however, like the ability to turn back the clock on aging.

There’s no denying The Sims 3 was a content-packed game. Five years will do that. But over time, it also became a little clunky. It was dated. The Sims 4 serves as a fresh start. It inherits many of the ideas of its predecessor, improving upon them in most cases, but also wipes the slate clean in order to start the cycle of content over again — with what is hopefully a much more stable build. Unfortunately, that means we must temporarily say goodbye to features we took for granted, like pools. The Sims 4 is still the same ol' fun you've had in the fun, but with a little more weird and much less content.