Looking all the way back to the original installment of The Sims franchise, we recall spending hours building our homes, creating our Sims, then leveling up their skills. Our adventures often ended with someone drowning in a ladder-less pool, or dying in a misbegotten midnight barbecuing adventure, but that didn’t stop us from starting the process all over again.
With The Sims 4, Maxis hopes to retain the core gameplay features that make the series what is, but at the same time evolve and improve on what is an older (albeit solid) model. Although some of these features might look familiar, here are five reasons The Sims 4 should be on your video game shopping list.
Streamlined Build Mode
Just as we mentioned previously, we used to spend hours building our house, adjusting windows and doors and generally just making sure that the smallest architectural details were spot on. Although fun, this was a very tedious process where one mistake often caused you to lose 30 minutes of work.
In The Sims 4, the Build Mode was revamped to eliminate some of the more frustrating situations. Whether you need to move a whole room or even your entire house, that is now an option that didn’t exist before. In fact, you can even adjust your room’s dimensions without messing up the existing decor. Have a look at the Build Mode trailer below to see its ease-of-use in action.
Click-and-Drag + Create-a-Sim
Where the Build Mode might consume less of your time in The Sims 4, Create-a-Sim could actually take more, but still promises to be an easier system than previous iterations of the game. That is to say, you’ll spend more time because you’re having fun, rather than because the controls are clunky.
Gone are the endless sliders that were used to adjust everything about your Sim. That has been replaced with a more intuitive click-and-drag system called Direction Manipulation, and even features a Detail Mode that allows players to adjust even the smallest features of your Sim’s appearance. Take a look at the Create-a-Sim video below that showcases Bella and Mortimer Goth, as well as several of the developers from Maxis.
Custom In-Game Gallery and Content
One of the staples of The Sims franchise has always been discovering custom content that was made by the community. As great as the developers are, you can’t top the passion and imagination of millions of players, and Maxis knows this.
In The Sims 3, you could add all the custom content to your game that you wanted, but the process, like many of the features in previous installments, was less than simple. Players would have to search the official site for what they wanted, load it into their game files, then launch their game again in order to access it. With The Sims 4, the built in Gallery will allow players to browse content while the game is launched, then seamlessly add it to their experience.
Persistent Worlds & Neighborhoods
Just like everything else in The Sims 4, veteran gamers will be familiar with the concept of worlds and neighborhoods, but it’s another feature that was vastly improved from previous versions.
When leaving your neighborhood in past Sims titles, you character wouldn’t be able to build on their skills or retain the relationships they developed. The Same thing went for worlds. In The Sims 4, no matter where you go or what you do, your Sim will hold that with them when they return home. In fact, travelling to different neighborhoods is an essential part of the experience, allowing your character to build their skills in a local gym, or even socialize while spending the afternoon in a park. Although the video is quite long, the first several minutes of this developer game play will illustrate how easy it is to move from one location to another.
Emotionally Driven Activities
Have you ever found yourself fired up with no way to burn off your excess energy? Of course you have, and the same thing applies to the Sim that you’re going to control. If they don’t have a means of expelling all of that jacked up rage, they are likely to take it out on other Sims around them. Since you can’t have that, why not try to turn a negative into a positive?
Perhaps your fitness obsessed Sim is angry. Why not use this emotion to bang out a few intense push-ups or sit-ups? While working out at any time is a benefit, the angry energy that you’re using to fuel that workout will actually improve its results, not to mention work to calm your character down in the long run.
The Sims 4 will be released exclusively on the PC this September 2nd. Don’t forget to check back often for all the news and strategy you’ll need.
Published: Aug 18, 2014 05:53 pm