Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am a realistic player and have been asking for more family content since day 1. This pack plus the toddlers patch have really scratched that itch, and I'm so happy they are listening to the fans. What's new with this pack? Character values: My biggest complaint for a while has been that gameplay doesn't really matter, there are no real consequences to anything so why bother? That has changed massively with this pack. There is a new character values system that tracks 5 values for your sims from toddler through teenhood. These are: manners, emotional control, responsibility, empathy and conflict resolution. How you discipline your kids will affect these values over time, and if your sim kids score very low or very high in any of these categories, they will grow up with a new trait... if you do the math, that is 10 new traits! You can't pick these traits, you have to earn them through parenting. You can choose to raise your kids poorly and enforce poor traits, especially if you already have those traits (hurrah for sandbox play!) BTW there are new random chance cards called Teachable Moments, where kids will ask parents for advise. This will present itself as a popup aka a regular chance card, except the answers you choose will affect the Character Values for the sim kid in question. You do not know how this will affect character values at first, but when you get to a high enough parenting skill level the game will tell you the exact results. Most of the time, the choices you make will result in a character value increasing, and another one decreasing (e.g. responsibility increases, but empathy decreases...that sort of thing). Parenting skills: All parents start off as inexperienced parents. The new parenting skill is a full skill with 10 levels. The higher level you are, the more you can do (more on that later). You can talk to you own parents and obtain parenting advise from them, you can read parenting forums (and risk getting a bad buff for having your parenting questioned by internet strangers), you can parent your own kids and read books to skill up. Parenting babies and reading forums is the easiest way to level up imo. Grounding/ Curfews: Your options for punishments will increase with the parenting skills but there is a new family bulletin board object, through which you can do things like set curfews or ground sim kids who are misbehaving. Grounding is really neat, it's not just forcing kids to stay home. You can do things like take away their phones, no TV, no friends over, etc. Sim kids can choose to break these punishments and they will see their character values decrease (usually responsibility). If they get caught they can also get in further trouble with the parents. School Projects: There are these new school project items that your sim kids can bring home from school, like dioramas, volcanoes, robots, rockets, etc. You can also buy these items from buy mode and work on them voluntarily if you wish. The sim kids have to start it on their own (and you can choose for them to do a good job or be sloppy, which will affect character values), but once they start you can have family members work on it with the kids or have mom finish the entire project for the kid. Multiply family members can work on these project items at the same time. Bagged lunches: Sims can now pack lunches for their kids (in a little brown paper bag just like when you were in school!). Anything can be a packed lunch. You can make it from scratch or use leftovers, and the kids will take it to school with them and eat it if they are hungry. There are specialized recipes for packed lunches like tuna sandwiches and pb&j sandwiches as well if you wish to use them. Grown up sims can also bring these packed lunches to work with them and eat it when they get hungry. If they do not eat the bagged lunches, the food will spoil in the sims inventory so keep an eye out for that to prevent bad moodlets. Phases: Sim kids and teens can go through phases randomly, there are different phases for kids vs teens. For example, a child sim can go through a picky eater phase and refuse to eat certain foods. They tend to prefer easy foods like mac and cheese, hot dogs as opposed to something very fancy like lobster thermidor. You won't really know what kind of foods they like as it can vary between picker eaters. Another example would be a teen sim going through a rebellious phase where they will argue all the time, swear, and do rebellious things. Oh yes, swearing is a thing now and you can yell and punish sim kids for swearing. Caregivers: You know how you can assign other sim caregiver status for toddlers? Now you can do it for kids and teens as well. Nothing big but it's nice, so divorced parents/ stepparents and grandparents can still have that caregiver status for all the sim children. New toys: There is a really cute doctors kit that involves a doll or a bear, and kids will play doctor with the toys. They have a cute little stethoscope and everything, and playing with the doctors kit will help a toddler learn empathy. There's also a fake lego kit, for building houses/castles etc, and a new activity table where kids can make macaroni/glitter art and paste it on the family bulletin board (so cute). There's a few others but I can't remember them off the top of my head. Sibling rivalry: That's a thing now, and you can punish kids/ teens for it if you wish. It's awesome. There is a new diary object that sims can hide under their bed, but siblings can steel the diary to read and mock their siblings for it. Sharts: So random, sims can fart and bleach on command, and they can now do so on other sims (even sleeping sims. However, if your sim has a low bladder, doing so can cause them to "follow through". Making a mess: Toddlers will autonomously make a mess like pour paint and chocolate powder all over the floor, just like real life. You can clean the mess up and reprimand them for doing so to affect their character values. Setting the dinner table: You can command kids to do chores, like set the dinner table. It's a full animation, and the table will be nicely set (there are different varieties). New CAS/ build/buy items: I love the new toddlers and kids outfits and even the grownup/teens outfits! Too bad there are no new toddler hairstyes, which are severely lacking at the moment even though they are all very cute. The biggest change is the reintroduction of acne, but this time it is a skin detail. It goes quite well with the braces teeth detail that was patched in not too long ago with the toddlers patch. It's too bad it's not like the Sims 2 where it can randomly appear. I'm sure I probably missed out on several details but there's so much for a $20 game pack. I highly recommend this, the impact on gameplay is similar or even better than the introduction of the clubs system in Get Together.