But while they're clever, and certainly well executed, they're not always compelling. The Sims 4 introduces several clever new concepts, new elements that change the way Sims behave, and it does an excellent job of integrating them. All this gives the feeling of being an artisan, of finely crafting dollhouses and their dwellers.įor some people, playing with these creations will be a little bit less fun than making them. Then there are aspirations to choose, personality traits to add and even walks and voices to customise. Bums are broadened, calves compressed, wardrobes discarded and even tiny facial details can be tweaked and tugged out. Putty in your hands, these willing subjects can be stretched and squeezed and deformed in almost all the ways that your godliness might dictate. The same is true when it comes to shaping your Sims. The satisfaction this can give is not to be underestimated and, for a particular sort of player, the chance to indulge in endless readjustment is absolutely intoxicating. "Like so many Americans," wrote Vonnegut, "She was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
Wall lights and paintings sit at a variety of heights. Similarly, shaping very small spaces can be a little fiddly and it's possible to make silly mistakes without realising, but practice makes perfectionists and the detail-orientated will be delighted to discover that, after very carefully choosing the colour combination of so much of their furniture and fittings, many items can be very precisely placed. Roofs, always something of an eccentricity in previous games, are now easier to place and adjust, but still remain a little quirky and often seem to be levitating slightly above everything else. Like a superhero whose power is interior design, with one gesture you can boost ceilings, raise foundations, summon friezes or create a staircase wider than a bedroom. Rooms can be dragged into existence, reshaped, reshuffled and repainted with only a couple of mouse clicks. Offering the roles of architect, carpenter and engineer all at the same time, The Sims 4 has a wonderfully well-designed interface for house and shop construction. The sun always shines across its tidy, broad and beautiful neighbourhoods and the homemaker's catalogues are brimming with appliances and conveniences and dozens of wallpaper designs. The always-expressive Sims, never very nuanced creatures, are nevertheless both more diverse and more capable, while the world they live in is almost heavenly, certainly compared to a recession-hit, autumnal England.
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It makes the series look fresh and young once again, doing so with polish, style and even a little subtlety. In many ways, the game is a confident step forward.
At night, interiors can sometimes appear a little too gloomy. Seizing them in The Sims 4 isn't always easy. In Kevin Smith's film Dogma, the angel Loki suggests that all life is is a series of moments, moments to be seized. It takes time to be able to afford that new oven.
Just a day or two into their final age bracket, apparently healthy Sims can croak with no warning. Bills are high, progress is slow and life can be short. While the fourth Sims game is still a fair one, it can also be tough. The series has always been a capitalist fairytale, a world where hard graft always wins out, where there is no privilege or prejudice or patriarchy and where everything can be earned in the end. There's a lot that is prosaic along the way, although its Sims are also smarter than ever, more articulate and even a little bit moodier. Life in The Sims 4 can be routine and repetitive, a slow if comfortable accumulation of capital and possessions that act as a sort of consumerist compensation for the labour your Sim devotes to the unseen gods of employment, all resulting in a slightly bigger house, a slightly shinier kitchen, a slightly higher income. While you will never find yourself in another part of the world or behind the wheel of a large automobile, you may at least ask yourself, how did I get here? Caught up in the details of the mundane, the prosaic, you can have your head down for far too much of it until, all of a sudden, it's your birthday and you're an Adult, or even an Elder. If there's one thing that Maxis' life simulation The Sims 4 captures better than anything else, it's that sense that life flies by all too quickly.
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