GameMaster Preview

The Sims 4





Full-Sized Images: Cover | Page 46

Instant Reaction

+ Positive

Proper emotions make Sims more believable than they’ve been before and open up much more varied possibilities.

– Negative

The build we saw was unstable – there are several months to go before release, but it needs to sharpen up.

THRILL-O-METER

A smart reworking of the formula, fans will love the new building tools.

Once more with feeling: the world’s most popular second life returns

This is the best-selling game series of all time on the PC. It’s gotten that far by offering a fantasy that a lot of people want a part of – the notion that you could simulate your life and tug at the strings until it fits the pattern that you’d like it to. The Sims 4 doesn’t change that fantasy, but it promises to deliver on the details in a way that exceeds its predecessors and their seventy billion expansions.



In previous games, Sims had a binary reaction to anything that happened to them – they either became happy or sad based on the fulfilment of their needs. In The Sims 4, different events can trigger various emotional states, from happy to sad, inspired, depressed, romantic, tense or angry.



More than a feeling

Emotions are visible in the way a character walks, talks and performs actions, and being in an emotional state triggers new interactions in the environment. A depressed Sim can paint haunting paintings, for example, while an angry Sim might burn off that anger – and a lot of excess fat – with an extra-intense workout. Even negative emotions have positive traits, so players who treat the Sims as a time management game will be encouraged to explore new options.



The Sims 3 took place on sprawling islands with lots of empty space. This time, though, the world is broken up into distinct neighbourhoods with specific purposes – residential, commercial and so on, with fast-travel between each of them at any time.



The character creation and house-building tools have been overhauled, too. The former now works entirely without sliders or menus, allowing you to grab and tug on any part of your character’s body to change their shape. You can also derive parents, siblings, and children from a single original Sim, allowing you to create a family from a genetic template.



Building blocks

The construction tool now recognises rooms as single entities that can be picked up, moved and resized as you like. This is a huge change – previously, players had to rebuild whole houses if they wanted to make space for a new bedroom. With a fanbase this large, the promise of better tools is perhaps the game’s biggest draw – this is the era of

player-generated content on PC, and it’s about time The Sims got on board. –Chris Thursten, GameMaster





Update 6-20-2014 Trevor Lindsey tells us The Sims 4 is 98.5% done – not the 70% the article states. No mention was made about the stability of the game.

Must be a rounding error in their math. I think we’re more like 98.5% done. :) –Trevor Lindsey

Update #2 98.5% done was sarcasm not information.

I was just being sarcastic. There is no such thing as a completion percentage for a game. Ship dates don’t lie, though. :P –Trevor Lindsey

Honeywell’s Sims 4 News | Magazines | Previews 2014