1_21Guns
September 5th, 2014, 09:02 PM
It's more of a rant to be honest, but I thought other Sims fans may be interested. In summary if you play Sims for raising families etc and particularly enjoy the pre-child stages, I wouldn't bother with TS4 :(
Create-a-sim is undoubtedly brilliant, well the mechanics of it at least - it’s simple, easy to adjust things and well.. genius designing really… but.. I’m somewhat disgusted at the lack of clothing options, every other Sims game (yes I’m pretty sure even the original Sims) had more clothing options than that, let alone we’ve lost the wonderful customisation tools we were given in Sims 3. It’s set items of clothing, with about… 3-8? Different colour options, which to some people may seem like a lot but compared with the later it’s diabolical to be honest. Yes it’s wonderful to be able to customise each and every outfit individually with little accessories (which I think there’s more in TS4 than there was in TS3.. for once) and it’s all so simple and easy but it’s just really lacking something.. and the hair for Christ’s sake, that’s l literally just it’s this or nothing, no options to add different tones to the hair (apart from a handful of hair styles containing pre-coloured sections determined by the hair colour itself).. there’s very little customisation at all actually.
So, passing from that section we reach loading into the game (once we’ve had the faff of picking a house, which wasn’t much of a faff, but the sections are a little odd) and there’s this long winded can’t press a single button tutorial, which was helpful at first but after 10 minutes it got a little bit frustrating and for the life of me I couldn’t find a way to skip it. An hour and a half into the game it starts going on at me like “lets take a moment to learn about stairs”.. no lets not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helpful tips and tutorials but there should always be a way to skip them and a way to get them back if you need to. The tutorial (while you can skip each tip which doesn’t really move anything on any faster) pretty much determines your initial gameplay.
I quite like the emotions, it adds another twist on the game which opens a lot of new doors and new wants. However, on the topic of wants I was quite shocked to discover that you can just pop into your aspiration panel and change it whenever you fancy. (Of course you complete certain targets within an aspiration so changing after you’d completed some I’m assuming would wipe your progress but never the less) I feel this takes away from working towards changing an aspiration if you’re not too keen on it, it’s a similar case with the traits. Now some people probably did express having issues with not being able to easily change such things in TS2 and TS3 but that’s because you had to work for it, in Sims 3 it was actually fairly easy to change such things as long as you completed your Sims wants (kinda the point of the game really..) but no, we’ve skipped over that section entirely. I am aware there is some form of “target” system in the game, and I also noticed while my Sim was on a date there’s an interesting new feature which gives you goals to complete within the “event” as it’s called which is admittingly a much better idea, personally I sometimes found myself stuck on where to go next during dates to make sure they were successful.
So… my Sim is in a relationship, everythings going swimmingly blah blah. So they decide to try for a baby, after completing this interaction you get the wonders of being able to take a pregnancy test using the toilet (a much simpler way of knowing). I was also very pleased to discover there’s no hideous maternity wear - in fact the Sims stay in their normal outfits and the bump just grows as expected. Now, it’s all fun and games until she gives birth (I chose to give birth at home). Now, I already knew about this.. disappointing failure, but when a baby is born it stays in its bassinet, there’s no walking around with it, no nothing. And frankly the models have gone rapidly downhill since TS2, although on the plus side at least we have arms and legs again! But, ignoring that I honestly find that the baby models are pretty terrible, after putting so much attention to detail into creating the Sims you’d almost like to think they’d bother with the baby models - nope, they look like potatoes (I wish I was joking). It’s not all negative.. just about, the new option to breastfeed is good, I’m assuming it must have some sort of positive impact on development though or it’s kinda aimless.. I think I lasted about a day before growing the baby up which seems to be a fairly common theme.
And finally, a quick opinion on the skills and jobs. The only skills I’ve mainly used are cooking and charisma, the new way of cooking is very interesting actually although to a degree a little annoying. When you open the fridge to get some leftovers it also opens your personal inventory, but when you make enough food for a few days it gets a wee bit frustrating keep having to switch back to mood. The method of selecting “cook” to attempt a dish before it becomes an option is interesting though and I’m quite glad to see the cooking animations aren’t quite as lazy as TS3 (In fact all the animations appear to be a dramatic improvement). As far as careers go, I’ve tried the entertainer career and the tech one. The careers have little goals/targets to complete to accompany the performance meter which actually is something of a relief because it requires more than just building skills.
I haven’t experimented enough with build/buy mode to feel comfortable discussing those, but the brief experiences I’ve had with it have certainly been.. interesting (not necessarily in a bad way).
Overall, I’ll be honest I’m glad I didn’t bother getting my hopes up, because it means I’m not disappointed. I just find it a pity to gain good things we have to lose positive things, every new generation of Sims feels like one step forward and three steps back. Perhaps by Sims 5 (should such a horror occur) they’ll have finally cracked it.
Oh! Forgot to add the dramatic increase in loading screens.. bit pesky..
Create-a-sim is undoubtedly brilliant, well the mechanics of it at least - it’s simple, easy to adjust things and well.. genius designing really… but.. I’m somewhat disgusted at the lack of clothing options, every other Sims game (yes I’m pretty sure even the original Sims) had more clothing options than that, let alone we’ve lost the wonderful customisation tools we were given in Sims 3. It’s set items of clothing, with about… 3-8? Different colour options, which to some people may seem like a lot but compared with the later it’s diabolical to be honest. Yes it’s wonderful to be able to customise each and every outfit individually with little accessories (which I think there’s more in TS4 than there was in TS3.. for once) and it’s all so simple and easy but it’s just really lacking something.. and the hair for Christ’s sake, that’s l literally just it’s this or nothing, no options to add different tones to the hair (apart from a handful of hair styles containing pre-coloured sections determined by the hair colour itself).. there’s very little customisation at all actually.
So, passing from that section we reach loading into the game (once we’ve had the faff of picking a house, which wasn’t much of a faff, but the sections are a little odd) and there’s this long winded can’t press a single button tutorial, which was helpful at first but after 10 minutes it got a little bit frustrating and for the life of me I couldn’t find a way to skip it. An hour and a half into the game it starts going on at me like “lets take a moment to learn about stairs”.. no lets not. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for helpful tips and tutorials but there should always be a way to skip them and a way to get them back if you need to. The tutorial (while you can skip each tip which doesn’t really move anything on any faster) pretty much determines your initial gameplay.
I quite like the emotions, it adds another twist on the game which opens a lot of new doors and new wants. However, on the topic of wants I was quite shocked to discover that you can just pop into your aspiration panel and change it whenever you fancy. (Of course you complete certain targets within an aspiration so changing after you’d completed some I’m assuming would wipe your progress but never the less) I feel this takes away from working towards changing an aspiration if you’re not too keen on it, it’s a similar case with the traits. Now some people probably did express having issues with not being able to easily change such things in TS2 and TS3 but that’s because you had to work for it, in Sims 3 it was actually fairly easy to change such things as long as you completed your Sims wants (kinda the point of the game really..) but no, we’ve skipped over that section entirely. I am aware there is some form of “target” system in the game, and I also noticed while my Sim was on a date there’s an interesting new feature which gives you goals to complete within the “event” as it’s called which is admittingly a much better idea, personally I sometimes found myself stuck on where to go next during dates to make sure they were successful.
So… my Sim is in a relationship, everythings going swimmingly blah blah. So they decide to try for a baby, after completing this interaction you get the wonders of being able to take a pregnancy test using the toilet (a much simpler way of knowing). I was also very pleased to discover there’s no hideous maternity wear - in fact the Sims stay in their normal outfits and the bump just grows as expected. Now, it’s all fun and games until she gives birth (I chose to give birth at home). Now, I already knew about this.. disappointing failure, but when a baby is born it stays in its bassinet, there’s no walking around with it, no nothing. And frankly the models have gone rapidly downhill since TS2, although on the plus side at least we have arms and legs again! But, ignoring that I honestly find that the baby models are pretty terrible, after putting so much attention to detail into creating the Sims you’d almost like to think they’d bother with the baby models - nope, they look like potatoes (I wish I was joking). It’s not all negative.. just about, the new option to breastfeed is good, I’m assuming it must have some sort of positive impact on development though or it’s kinda aimless.. I think I lasted about a day before growing the baby up which seems to be a fairly common theme.
And finally, a quick opinion on the skills and jobs. The only skills I’ve mainly used are cooking and charisma, the new way of cooking is very interesting actually although to a degree a little annoying. When you open the fridge to get some leftovers it also opens your personal inventory, but when you make enough food for a few days it gets a wee bit frustrating keep having to switch back to mood. The method of selecting “cook” to attempt a dish before it becomes an option is interesting though and I’m quite glad to see the cooking animations aren’t quite as lazy as TS3 (In fact all the animations appear to be a dramatic improvement). As far as careers go, I’ve tried the entertainer career and the tech one. The careers have little goals/targets to complete to accompany the performance meter which actually is something of a relief because it requires more than just building skills.
I haven’t experimented enough with build/buy mode to feel comfortable discussing those, but the brief experiences I’ve had with it have certainly been.. interesting (not necessarily in a bad way).
Overall, I’ll be honest I’m glad I didn’t bother getting my hopes up, because it means I’m not disappointed. I just find it a pity to gain good things we have to lose positive things, every new generation of Sims feels like one step forward and three steps back. Perhaps by Sims 5 (should such a horror occur) they’ll have finally cracked it.
Oh! Forgot to add the dramatic increase in loading screens.. bit pesky..