Everyone wishes they could live their dream life and suffer no consequences for wrong decisions and the Sims lets a person do that and more. The Sims 4 is the latest installment by EA games in the series and it almost comes up short of the status it usually brings.

For anyone else who doesn’t know what the Sims is it’s a game that has the player create people referred to as, surprisingly, Sims. The players goal is then to live your Sim’s lives, try not to let them perish or ruin their lives all while managing the household funds, and trying to better them in any way possible. The player has to pay attention to their needs and wants and queue the Sims to do things to accomplish what needs to be done, Sims will also do things on their own but not as efficiently as if the player tells them to do it. There are also tons of things to do like progressing your Sim through a career path, buying/running your own business, working from home and selling things you make from home, or not having a job and just bettering your Sim in a wide variety of different skills they can learn. Some skills in this game include gaming, athletic, charisma, gardening, and handiness and those are just some of the things you can spend time learning. Players also have to take care of the home and upgrade it as your Sim moves up in the world, like building new rooms or new floors, or buying, selling, and replacing new or old furniture. It’s overall categorized as a simulation game and it really is a “real life simulator”.

I’ve played every single Sims game that has ever come out and I have never been disappointed. Granted the first Sims came out in 2000 and I was only four years old so everything was fun but I still enjoyed it. Sims 4 though  is almost a let down and falls a bit short of the name and status the game has made. The Sims has always had a very user friendly setup that let the player change camera orientation, control their Sims, and buy and build things but that isn’t as true as it should be for this game. They’ve taken the classic way of the setup and changed it entirely making it somewhat confusing since I was so used to playing the game a certain way.

The graphics of The Sims games were never really anything special because in reality there isn’t any need for good graphics but this game seems to be a step backwards in that department it looks more cartoonish and blocky then its predecessor. They’ve also taken away the use of multiple saves so if you want to play multiple households they all have to be in the same town. In previous Sims games a person could make their household place it on the world and have fun, then start a new family in the same town and everything you did with your previous Sims wouldnt even be there, in Sims 4 they don’t have that every one of the households you make have to be in the same world.

They have also really slimmed down the different skills you can learn in this game, in previous games there were tons of skills to learn and multiple ways to learn each skill. Now a lot of skills revolve around speech and there’s a new need for social interaction on a higher level. Time in game has also been changed to take longer and be more realistic and that leads to it feeling to much different from previous Sims games. They did add two major changes that work really well though, first is the premade room system. A person can buy pre-furnished rooms and then just plop them right into your homes so there isn’t any hassle at all over trying to make your home look nice. The second change is a mood system, Sims now actually have moods and depending on how they’re feeling they can act different ways or do different things which leads to a lot of funny random moments.

Overall this game had some good features but could have, and should have, been better than what it was. I’d recommend this game for any person that has played the Sims series before and is looking for a change of pace, and anyone looking for a funny random game where anything is possible.