I haven't bought Sims 4, these are just my first impressions from having played the free trial. According to Origin I played 24 hours out of the 48, enough to get a first impression I would say.
I started writing my thoughts down and stuff just kept pouring out so this is long and could have been much longer to be truthful, if you don't want to read it all there's a conclusion at the end, if you do read it all then yay! and thank you
Okay starting at the beginning.
Loading into the game is very quick, which is a plus, having a big advert for Outdoor Retreat on it is not so great but it's quickly bypassed.
CASI already tried the CAS demo when that came out so I loaded two of the sims I had made back then (Sims 4 versions of my avatar pair) tweaked them slightly then carried on.
The push pull manipulation is fun but the limits on some parts frustrate me, I would like to be able to alter the forehead size but have never found a way to do so without altering the length of the face area as a whole.
Some of the clothing is nice, I was disappointed when they removed CAST and went back to presets, I didn't mind them in Sims 2 but now I'd had a taste of that creative freedom I missed it a lot, I have a thing about co-ordination and not being able to bugs me, same goes for in build mode.
I hate the hair, have done since the first moment I saw it and still do, I understand they went for a particular art style and that's fine but a lot of it sits so poorly on the head and the textures on them are inconsistent, some are not bad, nice and smooth and a good shine, others are grainy and smudged. Of course this is my own opinion of it and as my boyfriend says I am obsessed when it comes to hair but it was my profession for over 20 years so that might be part of it.
This is another reason for me wanting a way to manipulate foreheads, If that could be lowered some of those hairs might look better situated instead of being too high in relation to where a natural hairline would start. Or alternatively the ability to raise or lower the whole hair within a small range.
It's nice to be able to manipulate body shapes now as well, you can make unique looking sims but unfortunately the facial animations, all the eyebrow waggling and grins, end up making them look rather similar in the end. When they stand still though they look quite good.
WorldsI knew what to expect here, seen enough pictures and videos of them, they are small but I felt less enclosed than sims 2 because of the open space around the houses although I still prefer totally open worlds, a compromise of open neighbourhoods might have been nice seeing as there are only five lots per area.
The overall art style of this game is nicely consistent but I'm not a big fan of it, of the two worlds I preferred Oasis Springs visually, Willow Creek is very oversaturated, I went to the hidden lot and it reminded me of the old Nintendo games I used to play on my SNES years ago with its bright gaudy colours.
While the sims has never been a super realistic looking game it always had the balance right so you could make it more or less cartoony if you wished, not so sure about Sims 4 when it comes to that, those super realistic CC sims must stick out like sore thumbs here whereas in the previous games no matter how cartoony the sims were the world was realistic enough for them to be altered with CC and not look too out of place.
Texture detail is hit and miss, there isn't much texture on some things, a low poly mesh can be made to look much better just by texturing alone, it doesn't have to be a super high resolution thing but detailing makes a lot of difference so does bump mapping and specular, once again a lot of this is down to the art style but I found many textures flat and bland, woods don't look much like wood but instead remind me of plastic wood as seen on childrens toys, and the grass is almost a flood fill of green with very little detail on it at all. As someone who has dabbled in this sort of thing over the years I find it a little disappointing but overall it looks consistent together so I was easily able to live with it.
Loading Screens are a bit of an issue, not because they exist although that is disappointing in itself, they are far too bright and as somebody who is prone to migraines they can became a real hassle, I closed my eyes if I had to travel but even so they came up so fast I wasn't always quick enough, the green plumbob in the middle isn't that bad, I rather liked the animated texture on it but the white background needs toning down, ironically the white textures on everything else look grey even a white cake my sim made looked a really unappetizing grey colour but the loading screens are dazzling white.
The overall idea of connected worlds is a good one I feel, kind of like the sub hoods of Sims 2, that has potential, just a shame that each world is so small and with so few lots available, I didn't visit every community lot but I went to a few, I got the bartender glitch so that was annoying but I was forewarned about it and almost expected it, other than one of my sims getting stuck in a constant 'use the toilet, wash hands, use the toilet' loop for a while I had no other bugs.
Build Mode I poked about in this, the styled rooms are a nice idea, the picking up rooms and the whole house is good, so is the roof tool, I did not do an awful lot in it so can't really comment too much.
GameplayIf I had to describe my gameplay style then I would class it as hopeless romantic/family oriented on the whole, ever since I first played Sims 2 I have generally started with a single female sim who's main goal in life has been to find her soulmate, get married and start a family. Playing dynasties suits me a lot as each generation is doing exactly what I like to do, just with added goals in between the romance.
As such I wanted to test how my usual gameplay would work in Sims 4 so taking my avatar pair, who have finished two dynasties for me in Sims 3 and who I class as true soulmates, I put them in a house together and with free will on high watched it unfold.
I picked what traits I could that they have in Sims 3 so Dallas was still evil, romantic( flirty), and I chose self assured for the third as there is no more kleptos, and great kisser I saw is now a reward, Tracey was a bookworm, clumsy and family oriented as there is only romantic and not a hopeless one, both had the soulmate aspiration. I would have loved more traits, at least 5 as in Sims 3, it seems very limited to me but then I found they didn't seem to actually matter that much when I started playing, as they are ruled by their emotions now more than their traits.
Emotions seem very unstable to me, they change too fast, just as I'm about to fulfill a whim related to it it's changed and gone, also the whims were very vague and repetitive, my sims spent a lot of time feeling flirty as I was trying to fulfill the aspiration and so they had a lot of whims related to that but before they would have been a little more specific than kiss 'someone', hug 'someone', woohoo with 'someone' it seems anybody will do doesn't really matter, before it would have been kiss their partner etc, there were a few of those but very few.
Some of the romantic socials animations are nice, the look deeply into eyes one was quite sweet, some I felt seemed rather chaste and a little too fast like the embrace, it was grab, hug, let go. I didn't feel the love but that may just be me. Also their lips rarely met during kisses unless they pulled a duck face, then they almost did.
I didn't bother getting them jobs, I didn't want them out of the house for hours at a time, I was more interested in testing out the social aspects of family play than careers, they talk a lot, all the time, multitasking to me seemed mostly talking while doing something, or rather stopping to talk then resuming instead of concurrently doing both actions. Is it just me or do showers take forever? a lot of actions seem to take a long time to do and there was a fair bit of just standing about before doing the queued action as well like the AI was lagging although the game never did.
I eventually got them married and they had a baby, the pregnancy was good, I like the fact all clothes work, she got huge though which looked a bit over the top, I bought a bassinet for the baby so I could place it myself she went into that room to give birth and surprisingly Dallas came in too and stood there waiting, as soon as she put the baby down he picked it up and cuddled it, that was nice and spontaneous. The baby interactions are cute, the putting it back after each one is irritating, it is an object though and it felt like one particularly when my sims were gaining relationship with it's crib not the baby in their arms, they could have at least put the ++ over the baby not the bassinet.
Aging it to a child was very jarring, I missed the toddler stage a lot, kids are great but the bond that I as the player form with them as a toddler was missing, I realise now that is when they become a little person to me, a new part of my family and my sim, it was missing and I felt little connection to this child.
So now with my time running out I concentrated on the Soulmate aspiration again, I have nothing against the lifetime wishes of previous games, they have goals I pick them to suit the sim in question or just to try them out, but how I go about achieving them is my choice, this feels very scripted, they had to go on several dates because of it and I really didn't enjoy being told to 'socialize 10 times, flirt 5 times, sit down and talk' and so on, it's just not how I play, for me these checklists are taking away from my freedom to roleplay their date the way I want to. I guess under other circumstances you can ignore them but as I had an aspiration goal of getting a particular medal I had little choice.
At the end they gained two spouse specific socials, offer emotional support and share burdens, my sims got some satisfaction points out of it but can't say that I did.
ConclusionIt's okay, but that's about it for me, I did not find it as engaging as the last two games, I actually felt I was forcing myself to play because I had limited time to do so, I did not enjoy the scripted linear play of it, I like to do things my own way even if it's not the way another player would do it, getting to the goal by many paths is preferable to me than only having one. I can't see the replayabilty factor of it, it will get old fast having to do the same thing over and over.
I'm very glad I had the chance to try it for myself and draw my own conclusions, it did not change my mind though, this game as it stands right now is just not for me.
