Sims 4 [PC Game Review]

I was on the fence about buying this game.
The Sims and I have a love hate relationship. We always have.

Lots of customization.

I have this weird philosophical connection to the stupid game, but I'm not going to go into that here. I've even joked that I live a sims-life (yes, before the bumper sticker thing came out).

3 out of 5 stars

Let me start by saying this. One of the first things I do with any Sims game is to test the boundaries and see what social mores the game has failed to include. It actually does a pretty solid and average job. Nothing unexpected has really come up until recently when DNA failed. The game does not seem to have a setting for half-sibling. Yep.

Right now it appears that the relationship between the first child of my primary Sim, via her first husband has no relation to her second child via her second husband other than roommate. They both list her as mother, but their relation to each other is only roommate. This is not the first bug I've found.

I've also discovered the fun one where if your Sim is engaged and your Sim's betrothed dies, they are still engaged to their ghost and cannot become engaged to another Sim. Funtastic. They have a work around, but it is mildly irritating.


Oh, and the more dead Sims you know the less live you you can know. Try to not let anyone you know die... since this is the Sims and death is sudden and unexpected. Sadly I've yet to create a house to test how Sims die. Changing light bulbs seems gone, so the old trick of murdering plumbers seems to be gone. Remember that one? You get a broken light, and a bathroom that has a broken toilet so the floor is flooded and hire a sim to change the bulb. Dead sim.

I went and made the cast of Archer!

Right now I am testing out family longevity. I want to see how far I can take on genealogical tree. Once that is done, I plan to load up the family pictured just there to the right...

One of my Sim's houses & families.

Why wait? Because it seems that if you have two houses (even in different neighborhoods) they all age at the rate of the active house. Yep. I tested this out and watched as Sims died in houses I was not even actively playing. I consider this a bug. I might want to play with multiple families but not have them interact, which is what I was expecting from having two different neighborhoods. Nope.

Sterling Archer can be a secret agent in the game as well.

There are other missing features like pools, cars, and toddlers (which I honestly think is a good thing. Toddlers were merely an annoyance in the earlier games, much like real life). I hope that pools and pets and cars are added on soon. I'd also like to see more things like billiards tables, additional careers, and more ambitions added in.

There are new good features. The graphics are way better than the Sims 3, as one would expect. But the best, and I mean the best feature is multitasking. Now your Sim can eat, watch TV, and have a conversation all at the same time. Just like in real life. Or you can paint and talk to someone... a lot of it is allowing conversations to occur during other activity, but that makes sense. That is realistic and good. Best improvement of the game so far.

Here's the thing, I am complaining about the game, but at the same time I am still playing it (and probably will until Civilization Beyond Earth arrives). So there is that. Would I recommend it? I'd really say that it is up to you. If you enjoy the Sims franchise, then this is for you. If you are like me and have a love-hate relationship with it... then you need to ask yourself if you really want it. You can probably easily loose yourself in the game and blow hours and hours of time...