At first I was a little bit hesitant about using the "plop a room down and pull it into shape" method, since my personal approach to building is to create the "main facade" first and then work out the room layout behind it. However, after a few minutes I already started embracing the new ways, because the new push-pull-method is GREAT when you have a certain vision of how you want your building to look, but no idea how to achieve this. In previous Sims games, such trial and error was rather time consuming, what with constantly having to delete the parts that didn't fit.
Sims 4 really invites you to experiment here, and if halfway through you realize that the whole thing would look so much better two tiles further to the right, you just grab it and move it there with no losses at all. Same goes for rotating houses, moving indoor walls, etc. All just a few seconds and clicks now, rather than minutes of tracing back your steps (or having to start from scratch).
Roofs are really easy now, too, as we've seen in the playthroughs. One cool feature that was new for me, though, is that roofs cut out dormers by default, for example. No longer do you have to puzzle all the little pieces around them, but as long as the game recognizes the structure as a room (meaning there are no gaps in the walls), it will cut a hole into the roofing for it. And no longer will the sides of the roofs extent into your room either!
I sorely missed the "moveobjects on" cheat when designing the garden. I haven't quite figured out how plants work yet, since sometimes you can put down flowers that overlap on tiles, and sometimes the game just refuses to let you do so. And you definitely can't move shrubbery any closer together.
On the plus side, we've never had that many different plants in any basegame before.
I sometimes missed Create-a-style. There usually are lots of colour options and they all go really well with each other, but you are still limited to what the game ships with. For example, there's only one type of striped wall paper, and if you want different stripes or different colours... ain't gonna happen.
Speaking of wallpapers, both walls and floors now reflect the light! Whether you have the glassy sheen of glazed tiles, the satin shimmer of polished wood, or the matte surface of concrete, each now reflects the light as it would do in real life. Makes houses look so much prettier!
Columns are so great the way they can turn into pilasters now if placed against the wall! Just missing a 2-storey-variety.
I LOVED LOVED LOVED the Sims 3 open world. Sometimes, I'd just follow my Sims driving / jogging / riding their bike or horse. It felt so immersive. And with the school, work places and so on all having a physical location, each of the TS3 worlds felt like a little universe in itself. The way Sims just disappear in front of your lot with no actual place to go to when they leave for work or school makes it feel rather abstract for me. Sure, there's no risk of them ever missing out on school / work performance because of being stuck in a traffic jam in front of a rabbithole door this way, but I still miss the open world. Features like the house boats in TS3 simply will not be possible either the way worlds work right now - you just could not go very far with the boat.
Also, it is sad that a lot of the pretty scenery in the neighbourhoods is not accessible. Just decoration - pretty much the TS4 variety of distant terrain.
Last point of negative critique: in previous Sims installments, you did have some building structures as unchangeable world decoration, like water towers or little decrepit shacks, but the rest of the houses all were on lots which you could access and edit. If you didn't like the view from your kitchen window, or wanted to give your world a certain architectural theme, you could just go ahead and rebuild all those lots. In TS4, there are entire streets of buildings you cannot edit because they are purely decorative. Don't like that pink house on the other side of the canal? Tough luck!
All that out of the way, the worlds are absolutely beautiful. Birds flying around, ducks in the pond, butterflies and bumblebees in the park, sand or leaves blowing over the ground, at night fireflies come out... The worlds are definitely more detailed now, and I really enjoy that you can see the tram or steamboat go by in the distance. The water is breathtakingly beautiful, with little specks of sunlight dancing on the waves, and there are some really lovely atmospheric light effects like rays of sunshine, glares etc. Makes me even more eager for weather in TS4, because I bet it is going to look spectacular!
And the worlds are very lively, too. If you step out into the street, there will always be some other Sim, even at night, and lots of them during the day. Parks and community lots are really populated, definitely more Sims than I've ever seen in TS2 or TS3. With no lag either. The positive side of the non-open worlds.
I love that Build/Buy mode are one thing now. It takes no time to switch back and forth between the categories, which in TS3 could mean quite a bit of lag while loading menues.
Again, I miss CASt. Objects come in lots of pretty recolours, but not always what you were looking for. In some instances I wish objects had several different colour swatches, for example that you could recolour the bedframe and the bedding separately.
There's a good variety of objects, though, and in total TS4 ships with more than any other basegame before. Lots of decorative objects, some of which are exclusive to individual careers and get unlocked when you reach a certain career level. I've never been into the criminal career before, but some of the stuff I saw in buy mode looks so cool (a stolen atm machine, a duffel full of cash...) that I'll give it a shot in the future. ;)
I haven't spent nearly enough time in there to come to a final conclusion. So far, I really like it, and the following is just about my first impressions.
The emotions seem well balanced. You'll really have to go out of your way to make Sims die from them; I'm not worried about accidental deaths from one too many jokes or stuff like that. The E3 gameplay video seems to be rather misleading in that regard.
I also like the way emotions influence your Sim's whims. My loner Sim would be just fine by herself, but when she was happy, she'd sometimes want to socialise (call somebody on the phone, hug someone - stuff like that) or dance. When she'd accomplish something - level up a skill, finish a painting etc. - and become confident, she'd also occasionally want to do stuff like going to a bar or make a friend. And being inspired let her have whims like "talk about dreams" etc. It really gives the Sims more depth, since a lot of the things they want to do now actually are rooted in their emotional experiences.
Need management is better balanced than in previous games, too. Usually, my Sim would wake up hungry and with a full bladder, and the same scenario would repeat around dinner time, but in between they were fine. Time passes a little slowlier in Sims 4, so that they don't spend a whole hour showering anymore, and I found that I could go about my day without having to constantly monitor their needs. They were just present enough to structure the day in a somewhat realistic fashion.
The animations are awesome! Very fluid movements, great facial expressions, and generally lots of quirky humour. Love some of the new little details - for example, my Sim and one of her friends sat down on the side of her bed while talking. Took only 14 years for that to happen. :P
Multitasking is working really well in my game. I've seen it numerous times in the playthroughs, but was still blown away when I queued up "send text message" while she was eating dinner, and instead of finishing dinner first and then texting her friend, she whipped out the mobile phone between two bites, typed for two Sim-minutes, and then put the phone away and proceeded to eat - without any observable pause or getting up from the table! They can have conversations while doing pretty much anything else except for sleeping: while cooking, painting, watching TV, dancing, eating...
Through the demo we all know what it's like. There are a lot more clothing options than in the demo, though, and some of the items from the demo have more colour versions in the full game. Again, a really ample supply for a basegame, and I personally also think that most of the stuff is really nice. Love that all female adult clothing is now maternity enabled.
The variety of hairstyles is good, though I'd like a few more. Especially curly and afro-textured hair. Some of the hais are a little too cartoony for my taste, and I could have done with a couple more realistic hair colours. I like the dark ones, but the blondes could be improved. Hair is where I miss CASt the most when it comes to the Sims themselves; I can usually live with the colours provided for the clothes.
I'd also like more skintones. Not very fond of the darkest tones provided, they look too grey / desaturated in my opinion, and some even darker choices would have been nice. I think that's an issue which will be fixed through CC rather than EA for me, though.
Other than in TS3, the Sims in game look pretty much like in CAS.
In my opinion, this is the first time children look cute in game since TS1. Almost all of my TS2 children had deformed faces that would only grow out when reaching adulthood, and in TS3 pretty much the opposite was happening, with children's pudding faces being very much alike for lack of details. TS4 finds a good compromise between the two extremes.
The new way to mould your Sims' faces has its advantages and disadvantages. Generally, I like it a lot - the names of some of the TS3 sliders were somewhat arcane at times and I could only find out what they did by dragging them around. The downside is that you need to learn where all the manipulation points sit - 80 %of them are pretty intuitive, but there were a few I had to "discover" first. Generally, I would like a couple more manipulation points, for example one for philtrum width, one for cupid's bow width and depth, and one which makes the ala of the nose longer (just those I missed most recently, I am sure there are more I would like to see in game).
Loading times, game performance, etc.:
Loading times are ok. Not as short as they were in the official playthroughs or for lots of test players. I haven't timed them yet, but my guess would be 15 - 20 seconds, my laptop's CPU being the limiting factor. However, I'm still able to play the game on the highest graphics settings without any lag whatsoever, so TS4 definitely features a massive performance boost compared to TS3.
Bugs:
In about 6 hours of Live Mode playing, I experienced the following bugs:
Twice a paintbrush got stuck to my Sim's hand, and once a violin.
Once my Sim didn't get dressed after showering. She just stood naked in front of the easel, still censor blurred. Changing outfits didn't help, so I sent her showering again - with the result that suddenly she stood in the shower fully clothed. When she got out, she spun around, and the issue was fixed.
None of them were permanent. One of the brushes was a bit harder to remove and wouldn't go until the second time I sent her painting, after washing hands and other actions had no effect.
Other than that, no problems so far.
Conclusion:
The Sims 4 is a worthy member of the franchise. It's not perfect, but shows a lot of innovations and improvements in gameplay and on the finer levels of building, and definitely has me curious about where future expansion packs will take it. Currently, I'm having lots of fun playing it despite all the negative points mentioned above!
I'm rating it a 8/10 - I'd give it a 9/10 if toddlers were included.
