The Sims 4 Reviews
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.
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.
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.
Anti-DLC gamers should also beware. Although it is not new for the Sims to feature numerous expansion backs, the additional paid content for this game is frequent and abundant. Some packages are visibly more fruitful than others, so it is easy to pick and choose, and gamers certainly do not need to buy the content to continue to play and enjoy the base game.
If you can stick around after being thrown in at the deep end with the ‘robust’ DLC releases and, quite frankly, awful controls then The Sims 4 is definitely worth it.
Three years after the original release The Sims 4 arrived on gaming consoles, but unfortunately, the re-release has nothing new to justify this delay. Still, the game itself is quite fun.
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The Sims 4 is still fun with plenty of cool tweaks, but it feels somewhat empty without much innovation
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 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.
Even in virtual worlds, variety is the spice of life. The Sims 4, for all its polish and cleverness, simply isn't very spicy.
While there are certainly some things to like about The Sims 4 such as building a custom mansion, or being visited by the Grim Reaper, the entire experience feels like a starter kit for bigger things in the future. If you had The Sims 3 and its multiple expansions, The Sims 4 will feel stripped down. If you have never played a Sims game, it might be a better option to hold off until The Sims 4 flourishes into a more complete package.
It's these sorts of missing gameplay pieces, often inexplicably so, that leave The Sims 4 feeling incomplete. While what does exist makes for a fun game, as a long-time fan of the series I found myself constantly looking for tools and items that don't exist. The Sims 4 feels barebones, and unusually so even for a base game. One can only hope Maxis and EA make up for it with the inevitable line of expansion and stuff packs.
While The Sims 4 is a good first effort that will entertain goal-chasers and fan creators, it lacks much of the variety and humor that defines The Sims.
The Sims 4 is beautiful and charming, but its constricted structure makes it disappointingly limited.
The Sims 4 has room to grow, but right now you're better off continuing to play its predecessor. While certain features were axed in the name of progress, those features were a large reason why many have come to love the series in the first place.
The Sims 4 takes a step forward in some ways, while taking two steps back in others.
The Sims 4 is a visual and mechanical upgrade, but it's missing many of the things Sims fans are used to.
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.