TS4 48 hour free trial

Supposedly this was the regular base game. If so, I'm sorely disappointed.

It lost the things I liked best about TS3 (open neighborhoods and Create a Style) and TS2 (toddlers and other ages), and had new things (like the "emotions") that I really disliked. I played it for nearly the full 48 hours and was continually frustrated. The "emotions" frustrated me especially. When I didn't care, it seemed like they got "Happy" or "Focuses" easily, but when I wanted them to be those things, it was like pulling teeth to make it happen. And I especially hated how the "emotions" seemed to change them when they were "uncomfortable." It seemed like a slight decrease into the "yellow" zone made them so "uncomfortable" that they hunched around like they were in extreme pain/hunger/whatever. So, when they were "uncomfortable" from hunger, I let them eat. (And I had them exercise a lot.) They started out thin and muscular but despite waiting until they were "uncomfortable" and having them exercise, they ended up looking morbidly obese. Ugh!

And when I was making the Sim in "Create a Sim", although it was pretty easy to change them, it was difficult to make them look like real people. They were either too skinny, too broad shouldered and muscle bound, or they looked obese. It was like there wasn't a real middle ground for them.

I did like that they could converse even if they were reading a book, and that they would spontaneously include others in conversations. (But I could live without that.)

However, relationships seem to develop so much more slowly that it took forever to get them to the point where they were able to do romantic things. (And when they took the time to make friends outside of home, the relationship decayed rapidly to the point where they didn't even show up on the list of who they knew, so it wasn't possible to keep up the friendship.) They were past "young adult" before they were able to even make a simple romantic gesture without becoming "embarrassed" or feeling "awkward." And that was in spite of them living together and talking all the time. By the time they finally had a relationship where they could get married and have a child, to had taken so long that they turned into elders just before their child would have been a teen. Sigh. And their "baby" was an object only (rather than being able to do anything with the baby instead of the bassinet. I really miss my baby bed and the like, as well as being able to put the baby on the floor.) I was thrilled when I found I could age the baby without even cheating (and I did it when the baby was only about a day old.) I really missed the toddler stage. At least the child had fun toys (clay, several dollhouses, typing, games, a horse, monkeybars, etc.) I didn't get to see the teen age, but I've read that they are not like TS2 or TS3 teens.

I'm glad that my Sims could walk a little around their neighborhood but I really disliked going back to loading screens to get to places like the library. And where they could go seemed to be very limited even then. While I didn't care for the "rabbit-holes" of TS3, at least they could go to the movies, the spa, the hospital and the like. But there were really very few places to send them.

I was very frustrated with a lot of the game. Age range, relationships, lack of Create a Style (so I had to put up with the premade color combinations), loading screens, etc. It was like EA decided to get rid of too many of the things that I liked about the previous Sims games and spent their time adding the "emotions" which I didn't like. And instead of having the next EP add things like the toddlers, it's an "outdoor" EP. Sigh.

The worst thing was that in the last 2 real time hours I played, I ended up having to play the same 8 Sim hours 3 times because it kept crashing to desktop. And it would have been a 4th time because it crashed again when I had only 5 minutes left to play. With only 5 minutes left, I didn't feel like doing "groundhog's day" one more time. Shoot, when I was play-testing TS2 EPs, the beta versions crashed less (even with all the EPs installed) than this supposedly full base-game. Overall, I was *extremely* disappointed and glad I hadn't spent money on the game. (Although I was glad my computer at least let me play it, as I'd been concerned that despite my recent upgrade, it wouldn't have handled it at all.)

 

I played for the whole time and got crashes the whole time. I just really paid more attention to what was going on in that last 2 hours. The only reason I played the entire time was to give it a "fair chance." I actually posted my first "review" on the TS3/4 site after I'd played about 24 hours.

I don't know if I'll ever bother to buy it, no matter how cheap it is. I think that they missed the boat in a major way with this one!

I like TS3 enough that I do play it often. (I've had more time since I got laid off recently from my brand new wonderful job that only lasted a little over 2 months.) There are things about TS2 I miss (such as the non-pudding faces) but I don't miss the loading screens and I like the TS3 neighborhoods and Create a Style (so I don't have to get a separate program or download to the point I have a 15 gb download folder.) I also like the Create a Sim such that it allows you to choose the shoes separately rather than have them incorporated into the clothing. I only have WA and the basegame though. (However, since I had to upgrade my computer and the incremental upgrades wouldn't work, I now have many of the problems with TS3 that came with the EPs/upgrades that I never had before, like Error 12.)