The Sims 4 Reviews
The Sims 4 is an enjoyable life simulator, and looking beyond its omissions is a fantastic game that keeps you entertained, for a bit. Ultimately The Sims 4 showed much initial promise, but the inclusions do not outweigh the omissions in this game, and the total package leaves us wanting.
The Sims 4 is a visual and mechanical upgrade, but it's missing many of the things Sims fans are used to.
The Simtimates Collection and the Bathroom Clutter Kit both add a decent amount of options to the game in categories that were previously lacking. The collaboration with MeUndies brings cute and vibrant prints into your undergarment wardrobe. The Bathroom Clutter Kit lets you customize your bathroom spaces to make it feel more like a home. At only $4.99 each, these two new additions are absolutely worth picking up.
The Sims 4 is just like a dollhouse: it's pretty and polished and there are all sorts of possibilities, but in the end, it's really quite empty.
The Sims 4 is a fantastic game at its core, but with its tiny neighborhoods and many features simply missing, it holds itself back from Sims greatness.
The Sims 4 is basically The Sims 3, but shrunken and sterile. While some tweaks and enhancements are nice, none of them can offset the overall lack of engagement provided, and the looming promise of DLC is no compromise.
If you can get past all the issues that The Sims 4 has on consoles, it's a ton of fun. That's a pretty big 'if' though!
The Sims 4 may not feel complete in some aspects, and those coming from The Sims 3 may not feel at home with some of the gameplay elements, but The Sims 4 is still a decent game on its own.
A fair attempt to bring the game to consoles, although after first deleted save you'll probably move over to PC. It's still an amazing title full of content and challenges, but it's missing finishing touches in some crucial parts.
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The term "You get out what you put in" is best defined by playing the Sims 4. It's an enjoyable game that fans will without a doubt love, but minor idiosyncrasies spoil what fun, can be gained from the experience.
The Sims 4 will be worth it. Right now, it's too hamstrung by EA's need to make those expansions worthwhile to be a solid standalone title.
As much as the series has evolved over the years, The Sims 4 has the least to offer with no real additions to the gameplay besides sims being more "expressive", though really that just means that there are more character animations than before. If you're looking for a nice graphical upgrade to the standard Sims gameplay and perhaps some promising expansion packs and custom content on the horizon, go for The Sims 4. If you've already got yourself The Sims 3 and any expansion packs for it then you've probably got more content and creative freedom than you'll find in The Sims 4. Personally, I would hold out on getting the game for an inevitable price drop.
The graphical staleness that is presented as an update, slight overhaul to building mode, and new sim creation system don't make up for the wholesale removal of content and features that are now expected to be mainstays of the series.
Sims fans have been worried about all the cuts of longtime features in The Sims 4, and while some critical elements are indeed missing, the core addiction remains. Plus, with the addition of the online Gallery and the ability to share and download creations, it's easier than ever to liven up your little virtual world.
In many ways The Sims 4 is a beginning, its core foundation of functions playing their parts beautifully. But in others it feels like a step back, like a set of systems designed around future expansion in mind and not providing the necessary wealth of options from the start. Though The Sims 4 does so much to widen its berth, diehard fans will likely be looking to moor up somewhere else entirely.
Despite what's been left out, The Sims 4 feels like it's heading in the right direction.
Every game in The Sims series has been followed by a spate of expansion packs which add items and features, but The Sims 4 seems to have been designed solely for the sake of its expansions. It begs to have things added to it, and many people will be left feeling rightfully aggrieved to have paid full asking price for it. The gameplay is as fun and addictive as ever, but while added features breathe plenty of new life into the old formula, they aren't enough to keep The Sims 4 from feeling like half a game. It isn't a complete misstep, but it's certainly a long way from the heights intended for it.
Sacrifices have been made in getting The Sims 4 to be as clean and crisp as it is, with features usually expected notably absent, but the gains are striking enough to help swallow their loss – for now. Everything ultimately hinges on what comes next, and hopefully Maxis will show us they've got some great new ideas, as well as some old ones revived.
At the end of the day, The Sims 4 is a core game, pure and simple. It is made specifically so that more content can be pumped into it via DLC. The overall functionality of the game is fine, with no real breakthroughs, just a little simplification and minor tweaks. Nothing groundbreaking here. It wasn't entirely unenjoyable, even for someone like me who doesn't really play The Sims normally. But it didn't convert me either. The Sims 4 is certainly not deserving of the fan backlash it's currently receiving on the internet, but it's not the revolutionary leap forward you would expect from a game that has had years to develop.
The Sims team needs to do some heavy duty work on the automation side of things, but otherwise they've created a good place to build from.