Some good things about The Sims 4

Some good things about The Sims 4

I usually don’t talk about my computer gaming experience, aside from the ones I mentioned in my profile.  Usually, games are a sideline, a diversion from boredom when I’m not working or trying to sleep. Well, my internet service has been down this week, and it has given me time to reflect on a few things. Among them is the computer game The Sims 4™, by EA Games subsidiary Maxis.   The game itself is fairly smooth, although it has some bugs that can make playing it annoying. But let’s handle the good things first.

            The first good thing about the Sims4 is that children can play, run around all day and into the night, go to the park alone, and even talk to strange adults, all without worrying about being abducted, molested, killed, or trafficked. Hooray for that. Want your adult sims to have a few hours alone? send the kids down to the park, or over to those nice, friendly Goths up the street. Bella and Mortimer won’t mind much. Of course, this can be overdone – don’t let the kids miss too much school!

Further, you can always cook a meal, so long as you have a few simoleans (the in-game currency) to purchase food. My sims have never been totally broke, but low enough. Oh, and remember, you can also burn the house down trying to cook if your Sims are tired or sick.

Moreover, Sims can be set up to never age, and if one dies and you don’t like it, you can always quit without saving and start over. No doing that in real life. Then we have the fact that Sims seem to be mostly bisexual. They don’t seem to mind being romanced by the same or opposite sex. I hear that there may be a transgender system in the works, although it is already possible to do gender changes by using cheat codes and going into the creation system to re-make Sims you had decided, or perhaps their antics helped you decide were more suited to the opposite sex. However, it should be noted that no Sims (without external mods) have actual genetalia, so their reproduction is rather a mystery. You “Try for Baby” in a location approved for that activity and your female Sim has a random chance to become pregnant. I have heard that male Sims can be abducted by aliens and probed, but I have never seen it in the game. 

The bad things are, the game can be a frustrating experience watching the Sims goof up, blow themselves up or otherwise ruin their day. It's really bothersome to bring to sims together only to have one of them set themselves on fire and then electrocute themselves. Then there's the bugs. Sims tend to not path well. If object collision can happen, it will happen, at the worst time. They will walk themselves completely out of the house in order to hug, when all they had to do was turn around.

If it weren't so obviously programming glitches, it would almost seem human.