Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After reading a lot of the reviews, I was going to wait for a price drop, but since Origin has it's Great Game Guarantee, I decided to try it out anyway. Needless to say after 13 hours of gameplay, I will be taking advantage of that return policy. Pros: Graphics are great, if a little cartoonish. Game runs much more smoothly since it's only running a portion of the world at any given moment instead of all of it, which is a great plus for anyone who doesn't have the latest in gaming specs. Sims can now multi-task, i.e. reading a book on the can, eating your breakfast while paying the bills, socializing while performing other tasks like writing, painting, playing computer games, etc. You can even make out with the grim reaper and still write a romance story about it at the same time, pretty cool stuff. New emotions provide a new dynamic we haven't seen before, although it can be a little difficult to get the hang of it. Create-a-Sim system is so much better than Sims 3. It takes a few tries, but once you wrap your head around the mechanics of it, it's a lot of fun. And that's it. That's all I actually liked about this game. CONS: -The worlds are ridiculously small. As in around 20 lots, and 3/4 of those lots are residential homes. I think they tried to bandaid this by giving you two worlds and you can bounce back and forth between them, but the lots are essentially the same. A bunch of homes, a gym, a library, a lounge/nightclub, a park and a few other lots. That's it. And anytime you want to go anywhere aside from your neighbor's house, expect a loading screen. No more driving, no more taxis, no more carpooling, no more public transportation. You just use your cell phone and you're magically transported. -The careers. Oh my gosh, I think someone was on acid when they made these careers. I was actually one of the people who defended EA when they announced the new careers minus the old standbys like medicine, business etc. I fully expected to be blown out of the water by these new career paths. But instead, I was bored, almost to tears really. I tried out each path, but never made it past level 6 on any of them, because I just didn't care. Which is so weird because in every Sims game I have, which is pretty much everything, I've always been career driven and had to try them all out. But if it weren't for the fact that my sims needed money, I would have just quit and spent all my time socializing with other sims. You can still choose how you work, working hard, taking it easy etc. There's even a new option to leave early if you want, but you can't keep track of your sims emotions, needs or progress while they're working, it's all grayed out and I'm not happy about that. -The user interface does not make me a happy simmer. In each successive game, I've always been more than thrilled with the changes they made. But this time, it doesn't feel fluid, it's difficult to get the hang of, and there's really no logical sense to it. And the tutorial is the worst part, not only is it not helpful it's annoying. After it shows you the basics, it disappears and then magically reappears whenever it darn well feels like. I was on my third house, about nine hours into the game, by the time I got a tutorial bubble explaining emotions, which didn't even explain anything anyway. And I have yet to find an option to turn it off. -Emotions. You have a range of them, from happy, sad, tense, uncomfortable, angry and playful, to inspired, flirty, focused and energized. I think there's one I'm forgetting but whatever. Despite EA's claims of giving the sims emotional depth, this proved to just be mostly mechanical. As in if you're inspired, you can make better paintings faster, learn creative skills faster etc. And there's some corresponding reaction from your sim, if you're tired you'll slouch, if you really have to pee, you'll walk like a duck or whatever. But it's still not the emotional experience I was looking for. And you only get three personality traits. That's all, and there's really not much to choose from. Sims 3 had more emotional depth than this game does. -The content, or the lack thereof really. I was one of the few people who didn't think I'd mind the lack of a create-a-style mechanic in game. I never really spent that much time decorating anyway. But while I was creating my sims, I was really disappointed by the limited hair and skin color options. Plus, I wasn't too thrilled with some of the color schemes of the clothes, and the fabric choices made a lot of them seem washed out. I also didn't think I'd miss toddlers. I dreaded that childhood stage in Sims 3, and couldn't wait until they aged out of it, but after watching a couple of babies pop out of their bassinet and magically become children, I couldn't help but be disappointed, not to mention I was flashing back to the original Sims game. The toddler stage added a depth to a sims growth period that was lacking before and I didn't realize it until I lost it. In conclusion, I will probably purchase this game again in the future, after a major price drop, and after a few expansion packs have been released, and it's on sale. It's not a bad game, but I've played Sims from the very beginning and EA has set the bar pretty high, and they fell short this time, and when I say short I mean, they didn't even get anywhere near the bar, in fact I think they aimed for someone else's bar. The content you're given does not equal a 60/70 dollar price tag. It doesn't even rate 50, honestly I wouldn't buy this game for any more than 35 bucks, and I'd have to be in a pretty good mood. I remember purchasing Sims 3 at launch and I could not stop playing for days, literally, I actually called into work sick one day because I stayed up until 5am playing it. I played this for a few hours and I had to force myself to keep playing because I kept hoping it would get better. Yeah, it didn't. This game feels like they took Sims 2, redid the graphics and UI and tweaked the aspiration system, and slapped a Sims 4 sticker on it. This is not the game I waited 5 years for. Guess I'll have to wait another five years for Sims 5 and content myself with Sims 3.