The Sims 4 Standard Edition PS4 |VideoGame |English

4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad but not great either…
Being a huge Sims fan, I was super excited about this new edition, as frankly, I found The Sims 3 to be a little too serious and was looking forward to a return of the slightly less serious world of The Sims 2.
Since we have gone from having literally everything in TS3 and its expansion packs right back to a base game so it is going to seem like a little bit of stuff is lacking. However, I think there really is a lot of stuff to play with here.
Create a Sim is probably my favourite part of the whole game – creating specific Sims by pulling body parts is just amazing and so easy, as you can take a randomised Sim and make them look totally different by pulling a few features around. No two Sims look the same and that is definitely a bonus. There seems to be a pretty good choice of hairstyles, although I do miss the colour wheel and being able to create amazing colours for your Sim’s hair, but they have given some nice blues and pinks to work with. There is a good choice of clothing, too, and accessories, but I am sure there will be more in the expansion packs.
I also think that the loading screen thing is not much of an issue either. As for me I found that having one huge, cohesive neighbourhood really made the gameplay lag, so it is much speedier with a two second loading screen here and there.
The graphics are amazing – not too cartoonish, but not so hyper-realistic as they were in TS3. The world itself is just beautiful, with little details like ducks on ponds that just make it extra nice.
The new build-mode and camera does take a bit of getting used to, but once you have figured it out, building houses is so much easier! The new room shapes that you can just dump right in are much easier than trying to create an octagonal wall with little individual walls. Again, this ease means that it is a lot easier to create unique houses, just like it is in CAS. There seems to be some good furniture, although not quite the wide choice as we had even in the base game of TS3, but I am sure there will be stuff packs to come soon. I do love the new clutter section, as it makes the houses look a lot more like people actually live in them!!
As for the gameplay itself, I think it is actually a lot more intense than TS3. The new whims that Sims get mean that there is literally always something to do, and the high levels of free will mean that your Sims will often get obsessed with doing things that you do not necessarily want them to do (mine kept washing dishes constantly even though I had a housekeeper hired?!?) which does add to the free-wheeling feel of the game. The interactions are pretty fun, like “tickle mercilessly” but, depending on a Sim’s mood, they take each action differently, which makes it really interesting. The multi-tasking feature is also really fun – say a Sim was stressed and felt lonely they could talk whilst playing on the computer and fill two mood bars at onc which is easier. Although it is a bit weird to see them eating food and chatting in the bathroom, purely because they want to find someone who happens to be in there…
It is also nice to see different careers, such as painter, writer and entertainer, but it is also a bit sad to miss out on more traditional jobs such as doctor or businessperson. But I guess it is fun to have more fun jobs, but TS2 managed to balance that with normal circumstances.
However, I do think that the lack of public lots is probably my only major problem with the game. It seems weird to me that they do not even have a school that you can see, not even as a rabbit hole, and no hospital or restaurant. Cars are not in it, even though you could have cars in TS2, which still employed the loading screen system, so that is a little odd. There just does not seem to be much to do outside of your lot which is annoying. I thought that the stuff would be spread out over three worlds, but it is not, you have pretty much the same stuff in each world, so it is not particularly varied.
Despite this, it is still a really awesome game and is great fun to play and while away an afternoon. I am really looking forward to seeing what the rest of the expansion packs will bring – maybe a specific ‘schools’ one, like we had University Life, or a cars stuff pack, or a pool pack with huge water slides….