The Sims series reigns king of its genre and if you haven’t heard or played any of the games, you might just be living under a rock.
Developed by Maxis and published under Electronic Arts, The Sims 4 is a life simulation video game that like its predecessors, is popular all over the world.
You begin by creating your own unique characters called ‘Sims’ in the create a sim page where you use the customization features to change their appearance, give them aspirations and a personality and more. The spaces where the Sims homes will be are called lots, and after choosing a lot, you can choose to move into a home that already exists on the lot, or you can create an entirely new home from scratch in the build mode.
If you’re a big fan of The Sims and want a little more than what came with the base game, you can also purchase Expansion Packs, which give you a new world that your Sims can live in.
The most recent Expansion, Island Living, takes place on an Island Called Sulani and for the first time, you’re able to play as a mermaid.
In the City Living Expansion pack, apartments were introduced and you could edit and customize those as well. You can make each Sim like a real person by giving them families, pets, and careers where they can earn Simoleons to further add to their livelihood.
What’s new for The Sims
On July 12, the Sims developers hosted their Maxis Monthly live stream and announced some new features that were coming to the game. The new features included a brand new loading screen, a new main menu, an updated look to the famous Plumbob, updated cover art for the Expansion Packs, Game Packs, and Stuff Packs, a new mode in Create a Sim called the “Create a Sim Story,” and a lot of new items like clothing and hairstyles were added.
Although the fanbase for the Sims games is collectively excited whenever there’s another update, this time, it seems as though everyone the general consensus was that all of this effort could have been used elsewhere, for things that players had actually asked for.
The main loading screen, which was grey and white before is now a bright blue, and the plumbob’s green palette was made a little brighter and looks more like a shiny gem. Some players said that the color combo was giving them headaches.
As of this morning, the Global Community Manager for the game announced that the developers had heard players’ concerns and were changing the color to something that didn’t clash as much.
Simmers, we heard your feedback regarding the colour usage on our loading screen and are making adjustments. Below is the current loading screen and underneath is the new loading screen which will go live in our August patch. pic.twitter.com/0ZlX0QA7ah
— SimGuFrost⛄️ (@SimGuruFrost) July 17, 2019
Next, the main menu. The new menu sports the same blue as the loading screen, and all of the pack icons not only changed style, but color. The issue here is that a lot of players liked that each icon was the same color as the corresponding pack that it came from, but now they were all the same color and less easily identifiable.
Lastly, the create a sim story is a mode that is much different from what players are used to. Instead of choosing every aspect of the Sim’s appearance and personality yourself, you’re shown a few multiple-choice questions and at the end, a brand new Sim is created, aspirations included, from your answers. There are also short explanations under each aspiration that go in-depth into what the choice will mean for your Sim.
Even with these new additions to the game, we can’t help but be a bit disappointed. Sure, the create a sim story is kind of cool, but with all the hype, we were expecting a little bit more and at least an update on the level of a new Expansion Pack.
What do you think of the new patch? Let us know!
