What is an imperfect gamer? It's a term I created to describe a person who plays a video game for fun, not to achieve everything possible in the game. You're there to experience the story and gameplay without aiming for trophies or achievements. The poster child game for imperfect gaming is of course the Sims. There is no definite end to the game and it's nearly impossible to achieve EVERYTHING in the game. The possibilities are endless and there are virtually no impossible blockades to playing the game the way that you want. That being said, it only seems right that my first post be about that very game.
The Sims 4 is the upcoming game in the Sims Franchise. It is set to come out on September 2nd, only a few months away. Recently, the Sims team posted something about having the Sims 4 CAS Demo up, but I was still fairly surprised to see the demo in my Origin library. I wasn't expecting it so soon. It didn't take too long to download and within an hour or so, I was ready to jump into the demo.
My biggest critique prior to the release of the demo was the graphics. They just seemed too cartoonish for me. I'm used to having custom content in my game that give my sims a more realistic look, so I was already iffy on that aspect.
The first thing that drew my attention was the top left corner. This is essentially the basics tab that we have in the Sims 3. The first thing I did was change the gender to female, because for this tutorial I'm focusing on the female sims. For the demo, all of the other life stages except for young adult is blacked out. "Hello my name is...." is clickable and where you enter your sim's name. The bottom left box, highlighted in white is the sim
s walk style which I will get into later.
Dragging to change the sim's features is incredibly fun. By clicking on detailed mode, you are brought to a close up of your sim in which you can change the nose, lips, eyebrows, ears, eyes and even the eyeballs. Yupp, you can enlarge or shrink your sim's eyeballs!
There were some pretty awesome hairstyles. I've always hated the base game hairstyles in Sims 3. I think of all the custom content I have installed in the Sims 3, the most is hair. The first hairstyle in the upper left corner, I wasn't too excited about. I included it to show you the cartoony, choppy look that I was talking about earlier. The highlighted braid also came with no highlights. I couldn't change the highlight color, or at least I couldn't figure out how to. There wasn't that many colors for hair to choose from. Theres 18, the "weird" colors being pink, dark blue, aqua/teal, and green. There is so much more customization to the hair color in Sims 3. You can't change highlights, tips or roots in this demo.
A pro for this demo is the hats. You can place hats on any hairstyle! Thats right, no separate "hair with hats" section. Theres was always that cool hat that you couldn't use for your sims because the hair under it was hideous. Theres only 7 hats to choose from now, but its a start.
This picture shows some of the accessories to choose from for the head. If you look at the box with the white sunglasses, you can see a drop box with colors. These are the colors that the sunglasses come in. Thats right, not any color that you want, but preset colors. You cannot edit the colors as extensively as in the sims 3. That goes for changing the fabric as well. The accessories are categorized as follows: Earrings, Necklaces and Glasses.
This is the fat morph for the game. You have to drag the sliders on the left to how muscular and fat/skinny you want your sim to be and then drag your sim accordingly.
I decided to change my girl's skin tone to blue. Why not? The only "berry" skin tones available are blue or green. To the right you can see the preset body types. There are 15 to choose from.
I absolutely adore the tattoos in this game! They're already placed on the body part. Its much easier than the last game, but that also leaves less customization. You can change colors but if theres a tattoo you like on the left arm, you cannot switch it to the right arm. They're all preset. But they look pretty good.
There are five fully made outfits you can make your sim wear. These are pretty cool because they're like suggested outfits. Almost like you're seeing an outfit on a mannequin. You can choose one of the five if you don't feel like spending the extra time on your sim's outfit. Above, four of them are pictured.
There are 7 different shirt categories. They are as follows: Jackets, T-Shirts, Sweaters, Tanks, Suit Jackets, Brassiers and Vests. You can walk around town in just a bra if you choose. Despite the title jacket, it isn't like the Sims 2 for console. You don't get to place a jacket over a shirt like the hats. They're just a type of shirt. Its much easier to find what you're looking for this way. Similar to with the accessories, you can not customize the clothes. You can only change the color to one that is given. There are currently 20 shirts to choose from.
There are 15 full outfits to choose from (dresses, one pieces and top and pants combos). Yes, you can wear a bath robe as your everyday outfit! The sweater dress on the right is really pretty. I'm happy with the quality of the clothes.
Next up is pants. They finally have perfect skinny jeans for the girls! FINALLY. I say this because some of the ones in the expansion packs for Sims 3 are straight leg, but they aren't like the pants you see people wearing outside. The floral skinny jeans also come in plain colors. They are just so cute. There are 18 pants/skirts/shorts to choose from. Next up is accesories. Yes, they come up before shoes, I don't know why. Accessories come as bracelets, socks, rings and leggings. I wish our sims could hold purses and tote bags. That would be pretty cool. There are eight categories for shoes. Sandals, flats, loafers, slippers, heels, wedges, sneakers, boots. There are five outfit categories. Everyday, Formal, Athletic, Sleep and Party. Party clothes get their own category? I'm very excited about this. I hate having to have two types of formal outfits in the Sims 3 for parties. A dress you wear to a wedding and one you wear to a party are starkly different. I'm upset about the no swimwear/ no pool thing, but what can you do. There are no full outfits for athletic wear. I'm a little disappointed that there aren't sweat suits or anything like that.
Now on to the basics panel. The first thing I went to was walk. In the demo version, these were available: Perky, snooty, swagger, feminine, tough, goofy (which resembled a gorilla to me), sluggish and bouncy. I chose feminine. Next was the voice of your sim. That section is located right next to the sim walk button. There is a picture of candy (the sweet voice), a music note (melodious voice), and a bird (lifted voice). Lifted, to the highest pitch sounded kind of like a valley girl voice to me. I ended up choosing melodious to the highest pitch.
First you get to choose your aspiration. There are ten, each with two or three options. These aspirations are basically lifetime wishes. Most are familiar from Sims 3. Others are completely new like becoming a famous comedian, owning a mansion, taking the devious root and becoming a prankster (the other option would be to become a criminal) and finding "the one" and living a rewarding life. All of these sound so fun to play. Once you choose your aspiration, you get to choose three traits from 35 available. Similar to the aspirations, some are the same from Sims 3 while others are completely new. Some notable ones are: Bro [your sim gets boosts from watching sports and the bro hug becomes available], glutton [your sim gets more negative impacts from hunger than other sims], materialistic, foodie, cheerful, gloomy, self assured and goofball. I decided to name my sim last. I randomized both first and last name and got Dorothy Harper, a pretty simple name.
When I finished, I clicked the check mark in the right hand corner to see what would happen. In the full game obviously it would lead you to the game. It brought me to this where I could enter a description about my sim and even upload it to facebook (which was fully functionable once I saved her to my gallery, which was pretty cool). The right is for connecting to the Sims 4 community.
All in all, I was happy with the create a sim for the sims 4. There wasn't nearly as many customization options as in the sims 3. For most of the options, you can only choose colors from a given batch. You can not tweak outfits and hair passed that in this demo which is pretty disappointing considering the vast amount of clothes and customization options we were given in the sims 3 base game. The clothes and hairstyles are way better than those in the Sims 3 base game and I am extremely impressed. Dragging to create your perfect sim is amazing and I love the new life time wishes and traits as well as the walk your sim has. It is pretty upsetting that we won't have toddlers or pools in the base game but I am pleased with the separate slot for party outfits. While I was creating my character, I didn't feel like I was playing the sims. I know that feature wise your sims all have the potential to look different, but I feel like the clothes are going to get old fast. Hopefully there are more than are shown in the demo. It felt like a souped up version of creating your avatar for some online game. It would be perfect with the same color customization we have in the Sims 3.
Thank you for reading. The next Sims installment will be about the Sims 4 CAS for the male sims. Follow this blog for more from an imperfect gamer!
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