The Sims 4 Review - More BooHoo Than WooHoo

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
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Shayman said:
Well, I'm glad I waited for your review Jim. EA wants AUD$90 for this shell of a game. I was thinking that I'd spend the cash on the Sims 3 expansions - then I felt sick at the thought of giving them more money... I'm not on the "worst company in America" train but bloody hell EA, enough is enough. We can see through your bullshit.

Also, every time I hear, read or say 'emotion' I hear it in Jim's David Cage impression. Thanks a lot xD
In his youtube Squirty Play of the Sims 4, when that part came in the tutorial, he read the entirety of the section in David Cage's voice. It was awesome xD
 

Ikajo

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Oct 31, 2013
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I picked up my copy of The Sims 4 today and spent the day enjoying myself immensely playing the game... They are just so funny to watch. I even ventured out of my usual comfort zone and made my sim a family with hubby and child... I actually really like this game. I didn't become bored...
 
Feb 28, 2008
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JarinArenos said:
Mahorfeus said:
Thank god they gave out The Sims 2 for free. With that, why should I even bother with this drivel?
The Sims 3 was a better game in basically every respect. Pick it up on sale, or maybe wait for them to give it away when The Sims 5 comes out.
Not in *every* respect, I would say. For instance it completely did away with the Memories system and with the Career-specific items. Also it never bothered to release an "Open for Business"-style EP which was a big absence IMO.
 

JarinArenos

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Jan 31, 2012
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MasterOfHisOwnDomain said:
JarinArenos said:
Mahorfeus said:
Thank god they gave out The Sims 2 for free. With that, why should I even bother with this drivel?
The Sims 3 was a better game in basically every respect. Pick it up on sale, or maybe wait for them to give it away when The Sims 5 comes out.
Not in *every* respect, I would say. For instance it completely did away with the Memories system and with the Career-specific items. Also it never bothered to release an "Open for Business"-style EP which was a big absence IMO.
Fair enough. Open for Business was an expansion I never played. I don't recall the specifics of the Sims 2 memories system, but sims 3 had a mechanic that could be described as such, recording a scrapbook of "first [X]" events of your sim's life. It was part of their social networking patch, so I mostly ignored it, but it was there.
 

Seracen

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Sep 20, 2009
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Sims was never really my thing, but many of the arguments presented in the review are points I hear reiterated with every release of the series. My friends constantly lament how previous versions were more robust, that despite the (relatively minor) veneer of better polish, the content is actually LESS.

Companies are supposed to learn and improve with each new iteration. The only lesson learned here seems to be how to monetize more efficiently (ie: rip off the consumer). Ostensibly, I imagine that the best version of Sims might actually be Sims 2 (what with all the expansion packs available, with the game, on the cheap...and little to no DRM to boot).
 

Gerishnakov

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Jun 15, 2010
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The way EA manages the Sims francise looks more and more with each release like the Reaper cycles from Mass Effect; allow a galactic civilisation (version of The Sims) to develop to almost complete 'maturity', destroy reaping the benefits, and start all over again.

JarinArenos said:
Mahorfeus said:
Thank god they gave out The Sims 2 for free. With that, why should I even bother with this drivel?
The Sims 3 was a better game in basically every respect. Pick it up on sale, or maybe wait for them to give it away when The Sims 5 comes out.
Sims 3 did away with the true ability to play out a game over an entire neighbourhood. The only way to do this in TS3 was to turn off aging, taking any semblance of challenge out of the game entirely - which I believe is the direction EA wants to take The Sims anyway.
 

masticina

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Jan 19, 2011
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Yeah it kinda looked like this would happen. I guess get ready for the 17 DLC packs that cost the low low price of $30 each. I mean you want the game complete right, it only will be $510 or about that price. That isn't to bad right hell we even through the update to get toddlers in for free. Come in come all and see the great The Sims 4.

Its, a shame, oh well in the end you don't require to buy it or you don't require to buy all the DLC packs. It is just a shame to see where The Sims is going that is all.
 

Ticklefist

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Jul 19, 2010
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Don't believe it. You'll likely enjoy The Sims 4 a lot more than you will The Sims 3 vanilla. And your computer will run it better, too.
 

gamegod25

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Jul 10, 2008
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psychostudent said:
Seems like EA didn't learn from the disaster that was SimCity.

Worst of all they knew that the Sims 4 is bad game so they didn't send any review copies to the press. Instead of taking more time to make a better game, they release a crappy and buggy game to make more money! And you know they are going to release tons of DLCs.

Incredibly small maps necessitating jumping from map to map. So yes faster load time per map but with the amount of times you move from map to map, the total load time is worse and it breaks the immersion of the game.

Making promises an never keeping them. Yes SimCity has smaller maps but we promise to give bigger maps soon! Let's hope they keep their promise for the Sims 4 and implement pools and toddlers in a FREE update and not a PAID DLC.

Can you tell that I'm still bitter about SimCity?
EA never learns from it's mistakes, they may get slightly less offensive about their practices but they always find a way to fuck up and fuck over gamers.

While it's hard to expect the game to have as much content as the previous with it's countless expansions, the big issue (which I could see a mile away just looking at the previews) was that it just doesn't offer enough new stuff or improvements in exchange. Unless your David Cage I don't think the new emotions system is a big deal. There is just no reason for this to exist and (even if it weren't EA with their penchant for abusing DLC) you know there is a bunch of DLC content already in the pipeline that was left out of the base game. Maybe in a year or two it might be worth a buy when it's on sale and bundled with a bunch of DLC packs....maybe.
 

chozo_hybrid

What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets.
Jul 15, 2009
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Mahorfeus said:
Thank god they gave out The Sims 2 for free. With that, why should I even bother with this drivel?
I'd never played a Sims game, so I was happy when they did that, have enjoyed it thus far. Was never sure if it would be the sort of game for me. In small bursts, it seems to be.

Sad to hear the state of this one though, such a shame.
 

Ironshroom

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Apr 3, 2012
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Shayman said:
Well, I'm glad I waited for your review Jim. EA wants AUD$90 for this shell of a game. I was thinking that I'd spend the cash on the Sims 3 expansions - then I felt sick at the thought of giving them more money... I'm not on the "worst company in America" train but bloody hell EA, enough is enough. We can see through your bullshit.

Also, every time I hear, read or say 'emotion' I hear it in Jim's David Cage impression. Thanks a lot xD
EA is a failure of the game design
 

Shayman

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Mar 6, 2014
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Sight Unseen said:
In his youtube Squirty Play of the Sims 4, when that part came in the tutorial, he read the entirety of the section in David Cage's voice. It was awesome xD
HOW did I miss this?! To Youtube! :p
 

Flankhard

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Mar 28, 2010
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shirkbot said:
Well it sounds like my 1-man EA boycott continues. I regret not grabbing the Sims 2 when they were giving it out for free, but such is life. Thanks for the review Jim.
Make that 2. I have still not signed on to Origin. All AULAs say the same: "The AULA is subjective to change". If they can change what you sign on to, there's got to be some mutual trust... some love even. And EA have not made love to me in a loooong time. They just tease me with these booty call games that I know is going to make me feel used and robbed.

They need to hire someone that knows the meaning of old expressions like "Shooting yourself in the foot", "Don't sell the fur till you've caught the bear" and "Don't shit where you eat".
 

Xannieros

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Jul 29, 2008
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I'm going to have to say I am done with EA.

Battlefield 4 - Broken for about a year, widespread crashes and bugs.
Simcity - Do I need to say anything.
Sims 4 - Gutted and a step backwards, while not releasing review copies.
Titanfall - Over-hyped and featureless, dull within a day. Shoddy afterthought campaign.
Dungeon Keeper - Mobile money grab, a shameful take on the classic.

I can say I saw the complaints coming after I saw the list of things they took out.
Open world was a really nice and fitting addition to Sims 3. Taking that out alone made me not want to buy it. To me, the Sims is just a name that people will throw money at. It feels like minimal effort for a big payout.
 

shintakie10

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undeadsuitor said:
I remember the general consensus about Sims 3 is that is was "slightly better looking compared to Sims 2 but complete shit in every other way"

so seeing sims 3 propped up as the better alternative is pretty enlightening.
The problem with pretty much every iteration of Sims is that its not put up against old base games. Instead its put up against the entire backlog of expansions plus the base game.

Its a pretty unfair standard to live up to honestly.

However in this case the problem isn't that the base game for 4 doesnt match up against 3+expansions. The problem is that the base game for 4 doesn't really match up against the base game for 3. That's a problem.
 

immortalfrieza

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May 12, 2011
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shintakie10 said:
The problem with pretty much every iteration of Sims is that its not put up against old base games. Instead its put up against the entire backlog of expansions plus the base game.

Its a pretty unfair standard to live up to honestly.
I don't know about everybody else, but I don't consider that a unfair standard to live up to. Each sequel should have everything the previous base game did and at least the most noteworthy stuff from every expansion for the previous game right out of the gate and then put in stuff that we've never seen with future expansions. Instead what we get is a game that cuts out as much as EA thinks they can get away with just so they can sell back to us the same stuff we already bought as expansion pack content over and over with each sequel. The Sims 4 is just EA not even bothering to pretend to hide the fact that they're obviously ripping off their customers by doing this.
 

Shadow-Phoenix

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Mar 22, 2010
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Xannieros said:
I'm going to have to say I am done with EA.

Battlefield 4 - Broken for about a year, widespread crashes and bugs.
Simcity - Do I need to say anything.
Sims 4 - Gutted and a step backwards, while not releasing review copies.
Titanfall - Over-hyped and featureless, dull within a day. Shoddy afterthought campaign.
Dungeon Keeper - Mobile money grab, a shameful take on the classic.

I can say I saw the complaints coming after I saw the list of things they took out.
Open world was a really nice and fitting addition to Sims 3. Taking that out alone made me not want to buy it. To me, the Sims is just a name that people will throw money at. It feels like minimal effort for a big payout.
Except EA didn't develop Titanfall, Respawn did entirely, I can agree with the rest but lets not pull the "it was EA's choice in everything whether you like to believe it or not" line, it was all Respawn, EA merely published it.
 

Kajin

This Title Will Be Gone Soon
Apr 13, 2008
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The worst part is they could probably release the expansions with triple the content at a third of the price and they'd make more money from fans who would be willing to pay out for a proper expansion instead of the glorified, overpriced DLC that they've been releasing for the last decade or so.
 

DeimosMasque

I'm just a Smeg Head
Jun 30, 2010
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I find it interesting that the Sims 3 had seemless towns with little loadings screens yet the Sims 4 is back to the old Sims 2 way of loading screens for every section of the city that isn't your home.

That seems like a HUGE step backwards.