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PC Gamer's article by Chris Thursten about the sims 4
jimmysnan
Posts: 8,303 Member
Since we are all hungry for information on the Sims 4 I took my grandson's copy of PC Gamer as I saw on the cover Sims 4 and I read the article by Chris Thursten. It is a pretty positive article, but has a drawback. I will bullet and summarize the article for you all here.
-Building tools: "Trying to make yourself or your house with any accuracy in the Sims3 has been a trial and error affair." "I'm very impressed with the number of these trials that Maxis has done away with--and, in particular, with how much easier it is to recreate familiar places and faces."
-"Character creation is based on a single, intuitive-but fairly deep- "molding" system where you tweak your sims appearance by clicking and tugging on various parts of their body." "The number of tweak-able areas is impressive, extending as far as eyelids and the exact orientation of a person's ears." "The only strict limitation is character height--every sim in any given age bracket is approximately the same size, a restriction imposed by the animation system."
-"This freeform method is supported by an extensive range of presets,, filters and randomization setting." " You can "lock" particular parts of your appearance and randomize the rest, in which case the game will do its best to pick complementary body shapes and coherent fashions."
-"If you are struggling to pick an outfit, the developers will be providing a rotating selection of pre-designed and color coordinated styles for you to pick from, with new options streaming into your game if you're playing online." "The only sliders you'll need to adjust affect your sims weight and musculature, variables that will also be affected by the activities you choose to pursue in the game itself." "These don't just change the dimensions of your character, but the textures they're actually drawn with--a fitness--crazed sim will look more muscular than an otherwise-healthy sim of the same shape who does not work out."
-"I appreciated the new sorting filters; you can filter the catalog by style and color. "Pick "red" for example, and the game will display every piece of clothing with red in it--from dinner jackets to argyle sweaters." "This system is also used when you are picking wallpaper and flooring options. Across the board it's much easier to pull together a look that your're happy with."
-"Once you've created a single sim in a household, it's now possible to genetically derive their relatives. You can do this up or down the family tree." "Unlike the sims 3, where you could only derive children from their parents, you can now derive parents from children and brothers from sisters and so on."
-"The new building tools are similarly efficient. While they resemble the old set on the surface--your still painting walls and floor plans into a grid-based lot--it's far easier to correct mistakes and have the game intelligently work around what you are trying to achieve. The grid-based structure has always made it tricky to recreate the fiddly details of modern houses--particularly the smaller ones--that sometimes meant compensating with larger spaces that could end up throwing off the proportions of familiar places."
-"The possibility to drag and rearrange rooms on the fly with furniture automatically moving out of the way to account for the changes."
-"The game now recognizes rooms as distinct entities." "You can also adjust wall height, arrange windows at different vertical alignments, and tweak the angle and style of rooftops to a substantial degree."
-"Online sharing of sims house and rooms is now integrated into the game proper, enabling players with an internet connection to upload their own designs and download ideas from other people. You can also store local copies of anything you've made for later use, which is both a handy convenience feature and a sign that Maxis has learned an important lesson regarding players who want to play without an internet connection."
- sims now intelligently follow routes you lay out for them in outdoor areas and gardens--previously, laying out a scenic garden path was a cosmetic choice, something that the AI would ignore in favor of trampling over your lawn. Now their aware enough of their surroundings to take the route that you intend."
-"The houses you build will occupy plots in several neighborhoods, each with a different purpose. At first, this seems like a technological step backwards. The sims 3 took place on large, open world maps, with scattered residential areas and large central commercial districts for sims to visit. Now, you'll live in one area and use a menu-driven fast travel system to warp to others. Technology is part of the reason, but the thinking behind the change is also grounded in the sims 4 specific mechanics."
-"You'll be able to decide which buildings appear in each neighborhood, so if you want to re purpose a museum into a home that will be an option."
-"Ambitions and traits both return from the sims 3, but they've been reworked to play into the new game's emotion system. One of the sims 4 most interesting ideas is the notion of making this system less binary-making the game less about making everybody happy and more about toying with the positive and negative effects that can be derived from the entire span of the emotional spectrum."
-" In the sims 4 ambitions are fairly fluid: they'll still earn a lot of happiness when you complete one, but you can swap them in and out at any time. The things that drive sims as children don't necessarily carry over into adulthood.
-"I was worried that despite the variety of emotional responses on offer, sims would be essentially similar in their preferences--that the world would be built of absolute emotional correlations. Traits upset that." "Despite having performed the same action, each character's underlying traits fundamentally changed the nature of the action that followed."
-"I like the idea that I will be able to create sims that clash with one another, that don't all need to do the same things in order to fulfill their needs--because that's how people really are."
-"If there's an upside to the neighborhood system, its that you'll see these traits interactions between other sims with more frequency."
-"The only thing dampening my enthusiam for th game in the months before the release is concern about its stability. The version I was shown was alpha software, so problems are to be expected--but there were none the less prominent crashes and the odd overlong loading screen."
-"The game seems remarkably complete, content wise--Maxis promises more stuff to do on day one than any prior Sims launch--so perhaps there's time to get on top of the issues I saw. I hope so, because what I've seen of the sims 4 has rekindled my affection for the series."
This is what I thought was interesting about the article. I know that some of the things I have mentioned here we already know, but I think since the author played the alpha stage of the game that this was good to post here.
-Building tools: "Trying to make yourself or your house with any accuracy in the Sims3 has been a trial and error affair." "I'm very impressed with the number of these trials that Maxis has done away with--and, in particular, with how much easier it is to recreate familiar places and faces."
-"Character creation is based on a single, intuitive-but fairly deep- "molding" system where you tweak your sims appearance by clicking and tugging on various parts of their body." "The number of tweak-able areas is impressive, extending as far as eyelids and the exact orientation of a person's ears." "The only strict limitation is character height--every sim in any given age bracket is approximately the same size, a restriction imposed by the animation system."
-"This freeform method is supported by an extensive range of presets,, filters and randomization setting." " You can "lock" particular parts of your appearance and randomize the rest, in which case the game will do its best to pick complementary body shapes and coherent fashions."
-"If you are struggling to pick an outfit, the developers will be providing a rotating selection of pre-designed and color coordinated styles for you to pick from, with new options streaming into your game if you're playing online." "The only sliders you'll need to adjust affect your sims weight and musculature, variables that will also be affected by the activities you choose to pursue in the game itself." "These don't just change the dimensions of your character, but the textures they're actually drawn with--a fitness--crazed sim will look more muscular than an otherwise-healthy sim of the same shape who does not work out."
-"I appreciated the new sorting filters; you can filter the catalog by style and color. "Pick "red" for example, and the game will display every piece of clothing with red in it--from dinner jackets to argyle sweaters." "This system is also used when you are picking wallpaper and flooring options. Across the board it's much easier to pull together a look that your're happy with."
-"Once you've created a single sim in a household, it's now possible to genetically derive their relatives. You can do this up or down the family tree." "Unlike the sims 3, where you could only derive children from their parents, you can now derive parents from children and brothers from sisters and so on."
-"The new building tools are similarly efficient. While they resemble the old set on the surface--your still painting walls and floor plans into a grid-based lot--it's far easier to correct mistakes and have the game intelligently work around what you are trying to achieve. The grid-based structure has always made it tricky to recreate the fiddly details of modern houses--particularly the smaller ones--that sometimes meant compensating with larger spaces that could end up throwing off the proportions of familiar places."
-"The possibility to drag and rearrange rooms on the fly with furniture automatically moving out of the way to account for the changes."
-"The game now recognizes rooms as distinct entities." "You can also adjust wall height, arrange windows at different vertical alignments, and tweak the angle and style of rooftops to a substantial degree."
-"Online sharing of sims house and rooms is now integrated into the game proper, enabling players with an internet connection to upload their own designs and download ideas from other people. You can also store local copies of anything you've made for later use, which is both a handy convenience feature and a sign that Maxis has learned an important lesson regarding players who want to play without an internet connection."
- sims now intelligently follow routes you lay out for them in outdoor areas and gardens--previously, laying out a scenic garden path was a cosmetic choice, something that the AI would ignore in favor of trampling over your lawn. Now their aware enough of their surroundings to take the route that you intend."
-"The houses you build will occupy plots in several neighborhoods, each with a different purpose. At first, this seems like a technological step backwards. The sims 3 took place on large, open world maps, with scattered residential areas and large central commercial districts for sims to visit. Now, you'll live in one area and use a menu-driven fast travel system to warp to others. Technology is part of the reason, but the thinking behind the change is also grounded in the sims 4 specific mechanics."
-"You'll be able to decide which buildings appear in each neighborhood, so if you want to re purpose a museum into a home that will be an option."
-"Ambitions and traits both return from the sims 3, but they've been reworked to play into the new game's emotion system. One of the sims 4 most interesting ideas is the notion of making this system less binary-making the game less about making everybody happy and more about toying with the positive and negative effects that can be derived from the entire span of the emotional spectrum."
-" In the sims 4 ambitions are fairly fluid: they'll still earn a lot of happiness when you complete one, but you can swap them in and out at any time. The things that drive sims as children don't necessarily carry over into adulthood.
-"I was worried that despite the variety of emotional responses on offer, sims would be essentially similar in their preferences--that the world would be built of absolute emotional correlations. Traits upset that." "Despite having performed the same action, each character's underlying traits fundamentally changed the nature of the action that followed."
-"I like the idea that I will be able to create sims that clash with one another, that don't all need to do the same things in order to fulfill their needs--because that's how people really are."
-"If there's an upside to the neighborhood system, its that you'll see these traits interactions between other sims with more frequency."
-"The only thing dampening my enthusiam for th game in the months before the release is concern about its stability. The version I was shown was alpha software, so problems are to be expected--but there were none the less prominent crashes and the odd overlong loading screen."
-"The game seems remarkably complete, content wise--Maxis promises more stuff to do on day one than any prior Sims launch--so perhaps there's time to get on top of the issues I saw. I hope so, because what I've seen of the sims 4 has rekindled my affection for the series."
This is what I thought was interesting about the article. I know that some of the things I have mentioned here we already know, but I think since the author played the alpha stage of the game that this was good to post here.
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I do not know CLP It was an article in the PC GAmer magazine, they tested the game in alpha stage. Since it is not to my knowledge in beta yet, they could be working on them, I too hope so. Thanks for reading this long post, my hands are really tired from typing it.
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At the moment I havnt been able to touch the sism 3 for 6months. It will not stop crashing no matter what.
One thing to keep in mind, though, is that because of editorial deadlines, this article was probably written months ago. The SimGurus have confirmed some things in the last few days that are very disappointing to many Simmers.
Sounds like it will be excellent for story progression generated and inactive sims. Those goofy or clashing clothes the Sims 3 sometimes aged up into detracted from the game, IMO.
Do you have any mods?
Any cc?
Glad to be of help. I too hope for more articles and for simmers to share what they know about the game as it comes out, as some have been doing already. I have been hesitating buying this game and I wonder why as I was very excited with sims 1, 2 and 3, but was disappointed in the way the sims 3 ran on even high end computers, so that could be my hesitation. I hope to make an educated decision on what I find interesting in the game and not be swayed by either positive or negative posts on the game.
Same here. I've uninstalled and reinstalled a million times and still can't get it to work. I keep hoping they'll release an early CAS demo to satisfy my simming needs.
Lets make this a reality!
I too want this, we can only hope!
I interned at a magazine once. You might want to know that articles for magazines are written MONTHS before they actually make it to a published magazine. It's very common for magazines to publish articles they'd received four-to-six months before publication. So I wouldn't be too worried about the fact the reviewer saw an alpha version of the game, and had crashing. Just sayin'.
Thanks for this info. I just posted what was in the article. I am neither pro nor con right now as I do not have enough to go on to be either, just passing on what I read.
Your welcome. I know we are clamoring for information, so I just thought that this was relevant. Glad you got something out of it.
This is some great info, and yes, the stabilization has no doubt gotten better than when the writer had his preview.
It sounded like a really well informed and impartial article. I wouldn't mind getting a hold of it to read for myself, if I can.
I'm 95% tempted to pre-order now, but still not sure without seeing some live gameplay. Hmm...
From what i understood they showed him an alpha version of the game i wonder has the game reached beta yet. I am concerned about the long loading screen as well.