The Sims 4 Reviews
The Sims 4 is a game that rewards players the more time they spend with it. The heavier emphasis on the emotional state of each Sim adds a lot of variety to even regular household chores. While the controls predictably leave a lot to be desired, they get the job done as best as could be expected in a game with so many options at the player's disposal. Fans of the series who either don't already have the latest entry on their computers, or who prefer the console experience, can likely grapple with the controls and have fun. Thankfully, most of the features of the PC version are intact, and this is a full-featured port you can happily play for hours from the comfort of your couch.
The Sims 4 land on consoles with some technical glitches, but definitely still have the essence of the life-simulator par excellence. Enjoy the experience but you'll have to get used to the controlller to get the most from your creativity.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
With The Sims 4, the choice is yours and how you play or have fun with the game is entirely up to you. The tools are all there, but you're in charge of how your gameplay is built.
Although the Sims 4 is also a charming, humorous experience on PS4 and Xbox One, it suffers greatly from its cumbersome controls.
Review in German | Read full review
The Sims 4 attempts to bring genuinely happy moments throughout your Sim's lifespan; occasionally, you will even find yourself smirking. However, those moments are quickly bogged down by tedious goals, a terrible HUD and menu navigation, and gameplay that is outright boring. Life events like a date or wedding put less emphasis on the occasion and more on completing monotonous objectives. These goals wouldn't be too dreadful if the commands given to the Sim would actually follow through. However, there were too many times where the Sim would completely ignore what I wanted them to do. All of these gameplay problems are bundled up in a poor performing port that chugs more than it should. The Sims 4 is an unsatisfying experience right from the start.
Ignore the starter pack effect, jump into the expanded social circles of The Sims 4, share your worlds and you'll discover for the most part that this game is a true sequel through and through.
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!
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.
Review in Polish | Read full review
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.
Superficially, The Sims 4 is the upgrade everyone wanted. It's prettier, rife with the possibilities only the fourth entry in a longstanding simulation series can provide.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Despite what's been left out, The Sims 4 feels like it's heading in the right direction.
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.
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.