Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

EA fooled me with all the frustration that came along with SimCity and even to this day with Battlefield 4...yet I still purchased this game. I have played the Sims since Sims 2 was out. I've logged more hours playing the Sims than I care to admit because I love the Sims THAT much. This newest release, however, has left me extremely disappointed. What it feels like happened is that they spent all their time and money making the create-a-Sim an build-a-house features really, really cool. And then they ran out of time, money, or both and said just slap something together so we can get it out there and start making money! Now before I get to cranky, let me say what I like. The cartoonishness actually grew on me. I enjoy it. The build a Sim is very intuitive and has a lot more options for hair/better clothes (and tattoos!), however there are presets for hair and eye colors so no more customization there... House building is a lot of fun with a cool new option to add on 'pre-made rooms' EA built. You just pick the room you want and plop it onto your house, furnished and all. The job/school status tab is really neat looking now with lots going on. I actually don't mind that the game skips toddler mode, as I always just aged up anyway. The emotions are interesting, though I don't feel they should be the 'star' of the game, as it were. Now for my rant. One of my very favorite features was the family tree where you could look back at all the generations. That, however, is now gone. In my book that's grounds enough for not buying this game. Shame on me for not doing proper research. After several hours of playing it becomes clear that the family tree concept was forgotten altogether... I have a sim have a baby and it says the baby is her sister. I have a son being romantic with his mother...I mean it's a little ridiculous. Unfortunately that is not where the disappointments end. No longer is there a city that you can meander through at your leisure. There are 'sections' of the city (basically the whole city is split into suburbs and then a downtown strip) and you can only visit one section at a time - now, keep in mind, these sections are TINY. In the 'lower income' section there are maybe 5 or 6 houses...and that's it. The "downtown strip" section is TERRIBLE. There are only 4 or 5 city buildings and you have to go through a load screen EVERY time you want to enter a building. Oh...but don't worry, you won't want to enter any of them, because they picked the worst community properties to give us. There's a museum, a library, a bar and a gym and a park. No more city hall, no police, no hospital, no science center, no graveyards. I will literally never visit the 'city' again. There's nothing there for me and it's a pain. Some of the best careers are gone - replaced with some quirky ones that don't really make up for it (ie. the doctor field is gone). The money you make is minimal, and after working on a small family all day (real time) with two working adults in the household, it's been terribly hard for me to afford anything. I'm constantly at $0 and that's not even with buying a lot of stuff. Rent is just THAT expensive. Edge scrolling is painfully slow for whatever reason. Sometimes the keyboard commands work, sometimes they don't. Camera controls aren't intuitive. Just a mess. So with all that missing...there's just nothing to do in this new version of Sims. I don't know what's more painful: the release of this new game or the fact that I actually paid for another EA disaster. To be honest I've put in enough time with this game until they get their crap together. I'm going back to Sims 3.