MadCap's Game Reviews - "The Sims 4"

So...I was bound to get dragged into it eventually, if only tangentially. My friends have been split right down the middle about The Sims series - they either love it or hate it beyond the capacity for rational thought. A lot of that boils down to the ownership of the franchise by Electronic Arts and the changes that have been made between the entries in the series. One thing I will immediately agree on is that EA is really taking the micro-transactions and downloadable content way too far. How do I know?

Right after the start menu (after taking an absurd amount of time to load up), your options for loading the game and changing your profile have six expansion packs, five game packs, and thirteen "stuff packs" that range anywhere from $9.99 to $39.99 USD.

That's a bit excessive for some shiny new coats of paint, EA.


But what is The Sims? Well, it's all there in the name dear reader - a simulator. A simulator of life and all that entails...provided you have all the necessary DLC. Without it, there's actually precious little you can do. You start off with a nice hovel built just for one and from there you have whatever's left of your $20,000 to live off of until you get all your utilities shut off, you lazy bum!

Only joking! Mostly.

But yes, the Sims is just that - a life simulator. You can do just about anything within reason. I say "within reason" because of two things - namely the limitations that are unlocked with the various DLC and the fact that "actual freedom" is something that is eventually locked off by the limitation of programming. For example, you can get a job as a criminal and - besides being incredibly rude and/or vulgar to other Sims - that's all you can really do.

There's no bank heist option in the vanilla game or any way to go around as a Sims serial killer or anything of the sort. For the record, I do try - whenever it's possible - to play two morally opposing characters.

My "good" (for lack of a better term) character was a young would be writer. My evil (and he definitely was, given I picked that trait for him) character was a gibbering insane, highly logical and charismatic individual who was involved in organized crime. Given my previous statement on the limitations, you probably know which one I ended up enjoying more.

Not that I hated being a gibbering insane maniac, mind you.

But yes, your character can get a job from the time they're a teenager (at significantly reduced hours) or a young adult all the way up until they become an elder, upon which time they can retire and draw a pension - presumably because the Sims exists in some kind of parallel reality where Social Security doesn't collapse into the abyss in a few years' time.

I could go on for hours about the different little bits of micromanagement you can do with how your Sim works (and how that can affect them for good and for ill) or the ways to build your stats and the bonuses you can get for doing certain things or literally an infinite multitude of other things. Why? Because I've seen pretty much everything the vanilla game has to offer, literally from birth to death for Sims. Why? Because this game will suck you in and you'll have such a time that you'll honestly forget yourself.

Liana Kerzner (@redlianak on Twitter) is a known opponent of The Sims series and what it represents, mostly people using the excuse to be dicks to...well, be dicks. Concocting situations where they can murder their Sims in hilarious or not so hilarious fashions. That sort of thing. Well, Mrs. Kerzner, you'll be happy to know that I actually have managed (at the time of this writing) to get through three generations of Sims while working on a fourth while not having a single bit of visible dick about the entire thing. And when it comes to the babymaking mechanics, I actually mean that.

While the game puts up a hilarious censor blur whenever your Sim is taking a shower/bath, on the toilet, or changing clothes, there is an absolutely bizarre design choice that comes with sex (referred to as "Woohoo" by the game in a hilariously campy bit of Sim-speak). Both partners hop into bed together and then are completely covered by the sheets...except for bits where the mattress creaks and occasionally a head or a limb pops out for a split second while the no-pants dance goes on.

I only bring it up because it's utterly bizarre and disjointed from the rest of the censoring. Sure, the blanket does most of the work, but what is it you're trying to say, EA? A censored version of my Sim taking a jopy in the morning stew is perfectly fine, but sex is something that deserves a full on cover because of the poor innocent eyes of the children who, playing this, would have just watched me soak in a bubble bath or - again - file a report with the great, white, round one?

I will say though, that I agree with Liana in one sense - namely that the Sims are completely evil...but I don't agree for the same reason. Like a lot of games, this falls firmly into the category of "time eater". Those games that you pop into your PC or console and get sucked into with the bright colors and the music that blares triumphantly when you achieve something, spurring that response from the brain where you immediately go after the next objective because you're hardwired to get to the next milestone even if it ultimately leads nowhere.

And don't even get me started on the interface...although I can't really go too far on that, considering the Xbox One version is a port of the original PC release. Though nothing was done to try to make it any more accessible to console players...almost as though the game wasn't intended to be on PC, but EA couldn't see the forest for the trees...of money.

Given that the game has just now gotten a console port, and has sold very well indeed, it's not exactly a surprise that it worked for them at any rate.

But let's swing back to the endless drive that is the game itself. In my particular case, referencing the "good" writer, my first play session was about four hours long. In that time, I went from being a single young man living in a shotgun shack to getting married to a beautiful blonde, having four children, moving in my brother-in-law to help with said children, and cultivating a successful career as a novelist and I actually had to be told by someone that four hours had actually gone by before I finally managed to pull myself away.

It's a rather seductive game, but to misquote a movie I reviewed that nobody apparently realized was an April Fools' joke, "The Sims like train without wheels. Very soon get nowhere!" And that's the main problem. Yes, you have the color and the bright and cheery music and some of the frankly batshit insane conventions (such as Death and ghosts being real - and that's the normal things) that make it somewhat entertaining, but The Sims really strikes me as one of those more "you make the story" games. In fact, that seems to be the intended purpose by EA's own admission.

It's a life simulator in the Lego toy chest variety. You have all these little pieces that you can mix and match and arrange however you like, but there's ultimately no reward for it all and while it make look very pretty and you put a lot of hard work into making all the little bricks go into exactly the right place for the desired effect...it's utterly pointless and, with the ticking of the clock it shall eventually crumble into dust just for you to start it all over again in an endless cycle that you'll eventually run out of variations on and start doing things like finding off hilarious ways to kill your Sims just to cut down on the utter monotony of it all.

I know it'll come eventually, but I'm trying to avoid it as long as I can...

...

...okay, fine, Liana! You were right!

The Sims 4 is now available from Maxis and Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Xbox One, and Playstation 4.

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