Sims 4 - First Impressions

[Dellena]

Check for an autosave.

[Ellenser]

Really loving how alive the children have become in this game. Sure, I do miss a toddler stage a bit, though it's not that big of a deal to me because there really is quite a lot to do with children.

I wish there was a family tree (maybe there is, haven't found it) and also a clock displaying what week you're on. Both things that could easily be patched in..

I like the autosave feature, very handy to have. 

I think I've gotten over my annoyance when something I COULD do in 3 I can't do in 4.  I don't think I will get over not being able to tilt up or down though.  Zooming in and out just doesn't do it and neither does birds eye view.  You really have to fiddle around a lot to get the exact view you want in order to place objects.

If you go in the options menu, under the camera options there is a choice to switch it back to the Sims 3 camera controls. Tilt away to your hearts' content!

[saltpastillen]

Love the fun interactions the sims have. Like the overall flow of the game.

Not so keen on there not being any story progression, but since the game will generate new townies when the old ones die off (at least the ones not in houses) it won't become a wasteland and that's good.

I also wish there was a family tree, and way to tell time! And maybe more realistic eyelashes on sims (yes I have weird priorities ).

Anyway, I love the way the sims suck you in with their new wants and whims. My sim wasn't intended to try out a family, now she just gave birth to twins and her townie spouse is in a state of pre-parental panic! I think she needs to talk him down before they crash to bed...

+ isn't it great that sims can bring in some hard cash now when moving in? (as long as they are living on their own anyway).

[saltpastillen]

One thing I really dislike about the new UI is that I can't use the enter key to agree to a popup anymore. That would have been a great thing to keep from the sims 3, since they seem to have moved towards a more integrated use of keyboard keys in the rest of the game.

[slightlyaddicted]

This game is a mixture of good and bad. I love the fact that startup and saving is much faster than sims 3. This game also seems to run better on my laptop than sims 3. I like the emotion system but it is a little hard to figure out. I like that it is much faster to build up skills. The new build mode and CAS are also much better than sims 3. I also love the way you can search for specific items.
But the game also has a lot of bad. There are no pools, toddlers, create a style, or cars (and those are just the things I've noticed missing so far).The furniture is very limited and badly organized. At first I thought there was only one dining table because they put one dining table in the misc section of the surfaces and the rest in its own spot that I didn't notice right away. The towns are also too tiny. I am taking into account that in sims 3 the towns also held the workplaces and sims 4 does not. But there are still not enough lots to build houses on. I am also dissappointed that there is no longer a way to tilt the camera.
Overall, if I had gotten a full preview of the game, I would not have paid the money I did for it. I am acctually tempted to stop playing it and going back to sims 3 until they come out with some expansion packs.

[DragonSim6789]

I am also dissappointed that there is no longer a way to tilt the camera.

Actually if you click and hold the mouse wheel you can tilt the camera not sure if enable Sims 3 controls in the options needs to be enabled.

[Cillasi]

You can edge-scroll at the bottom of the screen.  You just have to make sure you keep your cursor in the screen.  Once you move beyond the edge, it stops moving. 

I've been doing an 8-person household in Sims 3 and then this morning in Sims 4 for comparison.

8 people in Sims 3 get $30,500 to begin with; in TS4 it's $34,000.
A 50x50 lot in TS3 is $5000; in TS4, a 40x30 lot (the largest empty lot I could find; it was in Oasis Springs) is $5500.
I used blueprints in TS3; the cheapest bathroom, 2nd cheapest kitchen, and 3 of the 2nd cheapest bedrooms came to $19,268.
In TS4, I used 2 of the cheapest bathroom, the 2nd cheapest kitchen, 2 of the 2nd cheapest bedrooms, 2 of the cheapest bedrooms, and the cheapest living room and put together a house that cost $25,136.

I still haven't put a roof on. When I tried, I screwed up the interior of the house somehow. I don't know if that's a glitch or my ineptitude. I'm getting used to the camera; the most annoying thing is that you can't edge-scroll at the bottom of the screen. Putting siding on the outside is a mixed bag. You can have it automatically finish off the corners, but holding down the shift button only covers the exterior of a room rather than the whole house.

Being able to put a foundation underneath is wonderful; so is being able to move the whole house. I think I'll like being able to rotate objects by using the . and , once I get used to doing that; it works much better than what I used in TS3. (Now if I can just figure out the roof...)

I've put each of my sims in each of the 8 career tracks. They pick up skills very quickly, mainly because you're notified of that as soon as they start working on one. In my TS3 game, it took me until 5:30 pm to get everyone employed (the self-employed painter and writer had to get their skill points). In TS4, everyone was employed by noon. In TS3, I gave them a computer, an easel, a chess set, a treadmill and a gnubb set. In TS4, they have a computer, an easel, a chess set, a punching bag, and an observatory.

Sims get focused by using the observatory. My painter sim has the perfectionist trait, and he got embarrassed by how awful his first painting was (it was only okay) and had to go hide under the covers. I gave him a pep talk at the mirror, though, and he's fine now. It costs money now to paint -- $50 for a small, $75 for a medium, and $100 for a large. On the other hand, my sim's first painting sold for $74, for a profit of $24.

I really like the look of the game, and I'm going to enjoy playing with emotions. Are they smarter? Apparently they don't react to fights or deaths in their vicinity, and someone reported that a woman walked in on her cheating husband without reacting either. On the other hand, last night when my sim started a conversation with a woman in the museum's bathroom and several other people walked in as well, making it quite crowded, my sim and the person she was talking to exited on their own. There might have been some clipping; I didn't notice because I was so surprised.

[Jocboos]

Oh my gosh!! I got Sims 4 today and woah, its awesome. I am spending a lot of time on CAS, so I expect I will spend twice as much time on Build Mode.  . Dying of mind blown.

[MischaMusic]

I finally have had time to play, and I'm really enjoying it. My favorite thing this evening was my Sim brewing a pot of coffee. He then grabbed a cup and walked all over the house with it, conversing, sitting, watching TV... It is so fun to discover all the multi tasking the Sims can do. It was what I was really missing in TS3.

I wish everyone was able to set aside their love and attachment to TS3 in order to really explore and enjoy TS4. It's not perfect, but if it were perfect, it wouldn't be The Sims! If you are a true Sims fan, you will really want to have TS4 in your collection!

[KhaineGB]

Had time to play around some more.

I still wish the neighbourhoods were bigger, but there are a LOT of sims around, so that's less of an issue. It would be nice if Maxis gave us the option to pre-load surrounding area's into the system RAM. You'd likely still have to travel, but at least it's there.

LOVE the multitasking! One of my sims grabbed a drink and came to sit on her brother's bed while he was playing video games so they could chat. That is... just awesome beyond words.

And I think I might be in love with the programming skill... >_>

[saltpastillen]

I had my first sim kids yesterday and wow was that a step up from sims 3. My favorite thing was when the dad was socializing with one of them and they sat on the bed chatting, you could choose cuddle as an interaction. It was so cute !

[KhaineGB]

Found my first bug.

Got a gnome from a time capsule and tried to put it on the dresser. The dresser highlighted white and the gnome disappeared from the inventory. Sooo... I think my sim put it IN the dresser, except there's no Open option.

EDIT: Found the gnome... so minor crisis averted.

I also just noticed that we don't have to make beds anymore, and laundry is gone!

[Playalot]

After my second day of play I am starting to really enjoy TS4. Today I have been taking my chef sim around the townies houses. She has the reward that allows her to be welcome at others houses, which basically works like the sim3 'inappropriate in a good way' reward. So she has been cooking everyone meals and making friends. The sims all socialize and multi-task brilliantly. I was able to make new friends today much faster then yesterday.

 I just love the facial expressions. I haven't sped up the game play today so I could really see what was going on, it really is good. At one point she was playing chess by herself (in pancake Bob's house) and she obviously cheated on herself - her expression was priceless and my son who was watching me play laughed out loud and said 'she's cheating on herself!'.

I extended their little starter house and found myself fiddling around moving baths and walls trying to make a new toilet fit in when I realized I could just pick up the existing bathroom and reposition it down the other end of the house. So easy!  So now I really appreciate the new building system.

[Carmella]

Basically there's soo much wrong with it, I knew that it had bad reviews but thought I'd give it a try, create a sim is much cooler with a better range of body options, but isn't customizable (so you might get a t shirt in five colours but you can't change anything about it other than pick one of the pre-made colour combinations). The controls are a total nightmare, the edge scrolling works really slowly so I can't imagine being able to manage a busy household with more than one or two people, I can't see even with googling how to rotate the camera other than tabbing and then repositioning, and the edge scrolling doesn't even work on all edges, I can't scroll downwards, you have to move it to like a millimetre from the edge and then hold it there to move down which is a fine motor skill you really shouldn't need to move the camera down lol. The neighbourhood isn't open anymore, you have to wait for a loading screen for them to go ANYWHERE, you don't even see them go to work they just leave the lot and are then unclickable until they come back, you can't see what their needs are or how their job career progression is doing. I didn't play it long enough for kids but apparently the babies are just objects, and there's no toddlers (or pools).

One cool thing is now you can have a Sim who is 100% in their romantic bar but only like 20% in a friendship bar, so you can have a relationship that is all about romantic interactions with no friendship underneath, or you can have best friends that still take some time to reach full romance rather than one kiss turning them into 100% romantic dimension. Dates are now more like minigames where you have to fulfil a certain number of things like 'speak to date twice, passionate kiss date twice, sit and talk to date once' which in a way is kinda cool (I used to love the private school headmaster challenge in TS2) but also completely gets rid of any fun of a date because you feel like you're failing if you just want them to chill or do anything other than the prescribed interactions.

The emotions system is way too complicated, it's a nice idea but with more than one sim to control it would be impossible to manage ('Sarah is feeling flirty' and then she gets wants based on that, but it only lasts a certain time and then she's back to normal and you lose those 'whims' to fulfil). I've been playing TS3 solidly for five entire years and STILL love it and once you get a new game with new features it's super difficult to go back to a previous game even if you liked it until the new one because of the features you're now missing, so I've just sold it and will stick to TS3, which I think pretty much everyone who has played all of them will agree is the best in the series by a sqillion miles xx

[grimsoul]

I also just noticed that we don't have to make beds anymore, and laundry is gone!

I like how they slide out of bed and put the covers back down and the beds good as new.
Sims 3 didn't have laundry either until the Ambitions expansion. So laundry might make a come back in Sims 4 with an expansion also.