The Sims 4 (2014)

If The Sims 4 had two stars when I started doing my retrospective, now I wish I could give it les than one because a premium currency marketplace on top of the ungodly amount of paywalled and Early Access creator content is silly.

Not to mention that if a creator posts their stuff on the official marketplace and it has a silly price tag (like more than $10 bucks for one bed mesh), they can't resell it to their own Patreon or Payhip or whichever store they use because they signed an 'exclusivity' contract when posting the content to the marketplace.

And if you're thinking "well, at least the creators will profit from it", from a $1 purchase, they get .30c.

Coming back to Sims 4, which I guess I always do around holidays. My goal is to get the platinum trophy and then maybe do more creative or exploratory stuff when the mood hits.

So, this week I had a character experience all emotions within 24 hours (easy to do, tricky to prep for); survive five different spouses (she married Elders and then they swam themselves to death ☠️); now I'm playing a household that has to go 26 generations. The first offspring has just become a child after a few days, so this feels like it will take forever.

After that, I think most of the trophies have to do with ghost stuff?

This Time on Keeping Up With The BirdieSims... Romance! Drama! Ghosts?!

Lia, the eldest daughter of my current matriarch, was continuing to run her nonprofit UNTIL a beautiful sim entered the business... So now she has an employee. Much to my own dissapointment, this employee did pretty much nothing she was asked to do on either of her shifts. Despite this setback, Lia has continued to overachieve. The community learning center is reaching more people than ever, and lia is now at the top of the political career!

As I played her household more, I realised that it just doesn't feel like Lia's story is going to include parenting. Pets are an inevitability, and maybe she'll get married, but I just don't think she wants to have a kid. 'So what?' you ask. 'WELL,' I reply; Lia is part of a legacy save, which means gameplay gets passed down through generations. So, Lia not having kids means she won't be in the main household I play in the coming generation. No, it's okay! Don't cry! She'll be there as a fun and incredibly powerful auntie (her reward traits nearly fill the screen...).

So, realising that the buck is going to be passed to one of her siblings, I played a little of the eight-sim (well, 6 sims, a robot and a dog) household where four of those siblings live. And goddamn. Two parents with full time jobs and one stay-at-home servo bot are juuust about enough to look after a child, an infant and two newborns. I managed about three in-game days before I gave up.

I took a bit of respite in the form of my throuple household. I absolutely love this household - it's three sims: Nico, Soomin and Conrad. Aka: beautiful tattooed goth lady and her two boyfriends who are also in love. Oh! And a couple of little ones, of course. One infant and one newborn. Lucy, the eldest, just started learning how to crawl! This household is the ultimate feel-good family comedy for me. It's all just three people who love eachother and the kids they're doing their best to raise. Their biggest struggles are money and relationship satisfaction, but they are getting by!

I then got a little distracted by the sims devil on my shoulder who points out the vacant starter homes and suggests I make new households. So, now, Zachary exists! He's a macabre, proper, socially awkward man whose communication style so closely matches my own it's a little scary. Although, unlike myself, Zachary is obsessed with ghosts. He's finding it markedly hard to befriend them, however, on account of his social awkwardness. I really like the socially awkward trait - it's difficult to play with but so very worth it; it makes the social relationships that so succeed feel incredibly rewarding!

One such relationship Zachary found was with Alexandria Mallroy, a sim I've played since she was a runaway teen looking after her two younger siblings. Her and Zachary's friendship got a little bit flirtatious, but wholesomely so, up until Alexandria called to let him know that her and her long term partner were getting engaged. Still, they have been fairly unable to keep away from each other, with Zachary being asked to be Alexandria's man of honour. He accepted, of course. He's not going to squander a friendship that he worked so hard to find. Still, his feelings remain, and so do Alexandria's, it seems... I wonder what the future has in store for them?!

PSA: please ignore my sims ramblings if have an interest in ever thinking I'm cool ever

GAH!!! I need nasty sims because there's a whole dimension to the game which I constantly fail to explore by being Overachieving and Being Nice to Everyone All The Time. I don't hate playing nasty sims. It's fun! I just like them to have concrete non-superficial motivations and well... being a legacy file player... it feels like the only way to do this is to play them from birth. Confidence and character value traits are so important after all and give such dimension to interactions, so I resolve to raise some Absolute Assholes. I make some piece of shit parents, or mildly negligent parents, or fine but absent parents, or dead parents and I'm like sick, fantastic, this works. So, I managed to get two evil sims to have quadruplets. Fab. If I brace myself, I can deal with the seeing the children in a bad situation! I can wince and play the game (even though the baby crying noises absolutely kill me).

What it turns out I absolutely CANNOT do is look at any of these digital children and go 'you're going to be a piece of shit.' Realistically, a lot of them would turn out as pieces of shit. A lot of people do, even if they have all the good circumstances in the world. It's just, I'm a teacher. It's my job to believe in children. And, well, it turns out that when you're playing god in a world where you believe in all the children, your hand slips and the children turn out okay.

So, three dimensional POS sims may be a long way off for me. But we all have our quirks when playing. One of those kids is gonna be a cool tattoo artist. Yeah :) It's alright :)

In other news, I am really proud of the eldest daughter of my legacy family! She's running a small business not for profit with free facilities for use, funded by her high flying political career :] We've come such a long way from her scout badges! I love playing sims with large families, especially when the 'think about family member' action comes up, and when her teen brothers call for a chat. Her romantic life is kind of on hold, because she still has a crush on her dead high school best friend. This is a glitch I could very easily fix, but I like the aspect of her story.

I'm also loving the mentor/mentee interactions so far. Her mother (who I do adore) just suggested she go her own way as a mentee (she was learning to program from her) and it fit perfectly with their sliiightly distant relationship. I'm switching between playing my matriarch household (two wives, a servo, a dog, a child, an infant and two newborns), the eldest daughter household (young adult! no pets but we're working on it) and the various wayward young'uns I am trying to stomach raising poorly. If you are wondering where her teen brothers are, they're with her dad in San Myshuno. He annoys me (I saw this squeamish man freak out over nappies one too many times) and so I shamefully neglect my boys, but I've been meaning to play that household more. Anyway, I really like getting to switch between households and playstyles based on my mood, and it's always nice to take from gameplay and work on one of my in-progress builds (don't worry they're out the way in newcrest). Ahhh I will play this stupid game forever <3

No, don't worry, I won't do a single review of each of the stuff packs and kits.

I somehow both hate myself enough to review every major DLC but not enough to go over the affront that are the stuff packs and kits.

Most of them can be summed as either:

• Stuff packs: we could have introduced this new mechanic in the same DLC the other very similar or coherent features came in with, but we're gonna make you pay $9.99 for each of them to have the same experience.
• Kits: some features, mostly clothing and architecture that doesn't fit with any of the decor pre-existing in our game. Good luck making that 2000s butterfly top fit with anything other than a miniskirt.

I think the worst offenders to both are:

• Bust the Dust ($4.99) that adds a dust mechanic you cannot turn off and Laundry Day Stuff ($9.99) which adds a washing machine and the dirty clothing mechanic which happens only if you own a hamper. They're both functionally the same thing and could have been themed to be sold together as a Stuff Pack for $9.99, instead they decided to sell them separately so you can now pay a whopping $14.98 for both packs in order to have a bit more depth to your life at home.
• Cool Kitchen Stuff ($9.99) which adds new machines to your kitchen that are functional to make food, Home Chef Hustle ($9.99) which adds more recipes and more stuff functional to make more food that don't even go hand in hand with Dine Out ($19.99) that allows your Sim to open a restaurant. You can purchase all of these separately for the modicum price of $39.97 - and no, there's no bundle for them.
• Spooky Stuff ($9.99) that adds Halloween themed activities, Vampires ($19.99) that adds vampires, its related coffins and one new neighborhood with 4 or 5 housing plots, Werewolves ($19.99) that adds werewolves to the game and a new neighborhood with 4 housing plots, Realms of Magic ($39.99) that adds magic, spellcasting, a new realm you can only visit and a neighborhood with 4 to 5 plots, Life and Death ($39.99) that adds ghosts and other deathly themed activities, Island Living ($39.99) that adds mermaid and island spirits and a neighborhood with I believe 10-ish plots, Paranormal Stuff ($9.99) that adds one new active career option of Paranormal Investigator, items to make seances and invite ghosts, some new lot traits and challenges and a new plot you can put down plus ghosts that you cannot play as unless it's with cheats. You can get all the supernatural creatures plus some modicum of new space and uninteresting neighborhoods to place your newly themed creatures of the night at the modest sum of $179.93. Or you can buy their Halloween bundle which has Spooky Stuff, Werewolves and Vampires for the price of $29.99 - right now on discount from $49.99, (somehow ONE cent more than the base price of the three DLCs in the bundle?) - saving you a whole $2.98.
• Cats & Dogs ($39.99) adding a new active career for Veterinarian (another grindy wallop for your Sims, but this time you can do it as a family venture at least), a new neighborhood with 10-ish plots, cats, dogs and reskins of cats and dogs to make them look different but functional exactly the same and My First Pet ($9.99) for hamsters and reptiles and some very specific pets. You can buy them in a bundle with Parenthood ($19.99) for $39.99, saving you a whole whopping $0.68 as advertised on EA's bundle page.
• Horse Ranch ($39.99) adding horses, mini goats with no instrumental use other for exploitation in events and selling cheap milk, nectar making which I never understood the use for, wine stomping for events always related to the ranch and another animal that was just used for events in the ranch, a neighborhood with 5 to 6 plots and Cottage Living ($39.99) giving you cows, alpacas and chickens for use on a farm, a new neighborhood with 5 to 6 new plots maybe 10. No bundle for the farm life which could have been one singular DLC considering horses came bundled with cats, dogs and other critters in The Sims 3: Pets, so owning both will cost you $76.98.
• Parenthood ($19.99) which includes parenting skills to better teach your lil bundle of joy how to speak and potty, new clothes for them and yourself, new items for them and yourself but not the ones for infants, Growing Together ($39.99) adding the life stage infant and all the issues it brings, items related to them and nannies, First Fits ($4.99) that adds clothes for kids/teens and Little Campers ($4.99) that adds fun stuff for camping outside for kids but it's more meant to be one of those 'let's do it in our backyard' rather than working in tandem with Outdoor Retreat since you cannot stash away a number of those items in your inventory. No bundle for either of these and Parenthood is included only in the 'Pet Lovers' bundle in case you wanted to get it 'cheaper', so all of these items for toddlers, infants and kids are all priced as a nifty $69.96.

Now, the major DLCs I mentioned in the list above are lackluster, add nothing to the overall gameplay unless you're actively playing a lot themed around the expansion pack whilst in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 the additional character creation choices were all contained in extremely beefy packs, some that added cars, nightlife, outings, dates and entire new mechanics that seamlessly weaved with your gameplay. Yes, you might have paid for the pack roughly $34.99 at the time of their initial release (last updated price for The Sims 2 I have are my physical releases which are priced at EUR19.98 while for The Sims 3 you can still purchase them at the price of $19.99 each) but that release came with a lot of additional mechanics that worked and didn't require to theme a whole gameplay around the expansion pack to make it worth your money.

And no, we are NOT talking about the The Sims 3: Katy Perry's Sweet Treats DLC. >:(

In poor words: Stuff Packs and Kits are your generic way to shell out the minimum amount of content and the maximum price you can gauge it, with Stuff Packs pricing at $9.99 each and Kits pricing at $4.99. They're emblematic to understand why EA is moving forward with wishing to make The Sims 4-ever a reality.

Last info on The Sims 5 and The Sims 4.

the main reason behind this decision to not publish a fifth edition of the game was the concern that players (there are more than 80 million worldwide, per EA) would have to start all over again after a decade’s worth of gameplay in the existing “Sims 4.”

I can't overstate how out of touch this take from EA's Vice President and GM of 'The Sims' franchise Kate Gorman is: The Sims 4 suffers awfully from it being absolutely and understating-ly boring. The majority of users will log, do their challenge if they set themselves to do one, or make a Sim, build their house and then close the game.

The Sims used to be a game where you could have one family for generations upon generations and have absolute freedom of how to handle them or change families as easily as you'd change your clothes. The next installment used to be a moment of joy because you simply didn't know where they were going to take the franchise next, what DLCs could come up and starting over was never a big point of contention because you could simply remake the family from the old game to the new one, improved, with more stuff to do. To say they don't want to release a 5th installment due to fear that people "would have to start over" in a life simulation game where you handle multiple families in multiple saves doesn't strike me as someone who's ever been in touch with what the franchise is.

“The way to think about it is, historically, ‘The Sims’ franchise started with ‘Sims 1’ and then ‘Sims 2,’ ‘3’ and ‘4.’ And they were seen as replacements for the previous products,”

They could be but people kept playing the old ones because the community around them is dedicated. The Sims, The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 co-exist because of the community that still dearly loves them, all the franchise is played - albeit less than the Free To Play installment, of course - and if you don't want to move on The Sims 4, you simply don't have to.

[...] We’re only going to be adding to our universe. With that, you’ll see there are more ways to experience ‘The Sims’ on different platforms, different ways to play, transmedia, and lots of great offerings within this universe. So absolutely, we’re still continuing to support ‘TS4’ more than ever. Still continue to deliver expansion packs and updates and fixes. But what this is to say is, the way we’re going to do things going forward is a little different. And it’s really exciting and it’s really the most expansive iteration of ‘The Sims’ yet.

No, it's setting out to be the most expensive iteration of The Sims yet. The Sims 4 sorely suffers from boredom: your Sims do not struggle, your Sims do not 'advance' organically (you can change traits by doing one action multiple times, like cleaning, or letting your Sims free will squats for two in-game minutes...). A lot of long-time players have complained that they will open the game, make a Sim, make them a house and close the game and I am one of them. Every so often I'll re-install The Sims 4 and play for something like 30 minutes before growing bored and going to do something else. A lot of the stuff that comes from packs is overpriced for what it does, sometimes you only get some 2D modelled clothes that are almost taken from older iterations of the game (like the Goth Stuff pack) and slap a $5.00 price tag on it, sometimes they will add something cool that functionally your Sims never do (like nectars, fizzy drinks, making gnomes, crafts and etc...) because they just add nothing more to the game but it's something like a $40.00 price tag for maybe 5 more lots, all of which you can't choose in size and are firmly planted in one spot, and something more to use or buy that you usually don't ever bother with.

Lovestruck has been such a huge disappointment as well! In The Sims 3, your Sims used to cuddle automatically during the night if they had high affection or were married with high affection, now you have to click on the Sim, select the bed, get into the bed through the option "Cuddle with..." and then re-click on the Sim and select "Go to sleep cuddling". anyway, that's a review I'll be doing soon, as well as every DLC I had the (dis)pleasure to p(l)ay.

It's just sad that now EA sees everything as a "you need to play this title forever!" as an engagement tactic rather than simply moving forward and releasing a new title. It's becoming truly tiring.

I've been playing a Rags to Riches challenge on The Sims 4... it just lacks the challenge to it. It's simply a 'way to play' that doesn't involve picking a household from your bins and I guess the easiness of a challenge I have found averagely difficult in The Sims 2 and The Sims 3 left me a bit dour and unhappy.

The challenge is rife with 'necessary' bloat that makes the game not inherently harder but definitely much longer and more tedious such as:

• Paying 500 simoleon to build a house.
• Getting skills up because you're "building a house from ground up".
• Not being able to get a job until you make a house (which makes the challenge unnecessarily long and complicated, but varies from challenge to challenge, some don't even mention it).
• You have to have a college degree to have any job, which means you need to pay 1,000 simoleons or attend University Life (again, a very weird rule and not observed by many simmers).

These are all bloat: what they do is make you spend more unnecessary time being 'homeless' or getting a reliable way to get money so that the challenge can last longer. As a matter of fact, I applied the rules above and found out you literally don't need anything but:

• A camping cooler (150 simoleons for free snacks that you'd otherwise pay out of a fridge).
• A tent (any will do, cheapest goes for 750 simoleons and it gives you relaxation, entertainment and sleep).
• An easel (pay 100 simoleons for a canvas and hope your sim will make it back but by Creativity skill point 2 you will have no issues).

As far as community lots:

• A gym (there's one in one of the three starter neighborhoods and, differently from The Sims 2, it doesn't require you to pay stay on lot. Showers and clean toilets that won't provoke the Public Toilet moodlets are here - else you can go to any public park).
• A public park for the grill (choose the cheapest food option for 16 simoleons and you will have a party/family serving that you can keep on you for 8 hours).
• Any lot that has any of the dumpsters you can dive for deals or meals in (this makes the challenge a lot easier since you can scavenge all manners of items and you really just ever need to wait around the dumpster to refill if someone got there before you - which they will because for some reason even sims with a mansion dumpster dive).

In The Sims 2 you were following easier digestible rules that weren't all based on gaining an ungodly amount of money to pad the challenge's runtime. It was hard to keep your Sims' health and mood up and events such as the Social Bunny or The Shrink for low social motives or aspiration crises were almost at the order of the day since your sim had wants and fears - something The Sims 4 does not have.

All in all, even challenges appear pale in comparison to the older game of the series... EA really fumbled the bag hard and this game is supposed to run for some more years, making it the most milked and longest running game of the franchise. Too bad it just makes me want to play The Sims 2 and The Sims 3.

Haven't touched The Sims in a long time due to their lack of quality of life updates and egregious DLC splitting / pricing. I'm still waiting for Para Lives to release on steam actually!

Sims have got quite a big sale on at the moment though and I've got an urge to recreate some Skyrim buildings so I've given my money to the devil and picked up the 'Cottage Living' and 'Get Together' expansions. They've got some pretty nice ye' olde looking building items so I'm excited to have a play when I get back to my PC on the weekend!

I finally finished the million simoleons "scenario". I decided to do this with an eight person household. For whatever reason, it took FOREVER. One of the characters quickly became the stay at home and cook and clean person (but also garden and write books for royalties and become a five star celebrity too?) It took 70 in game days. I had the idea to make everyone a kleptomaniac to be able to steal, but you need high mischief to steal anything of value so I just wound up with seven people frustrated they haven't stolen stuff all the time, and one theiving celebrity stealing computers from libraries at night.

Okay, onto the rest of my list that I likely won't finish over break now...