My Sims 4 Review Part 1: CAS, Build Mode, Neighborhoods & Community Lots

I'm very excited to finally have The Sims 4! Sure, it feels like things are missing, but most base games for the Sims do. Here's the first part of my review of the game so far. These are just my opinions, of course.

Create-A-Sim

I have to say the new CAS is my absolute favorite aspect of The Sims 4. I love how you can literally drag the sims faces/bodies to how you would like them, down to the tiniest details. To me the biggest downfall of it would be the lack of Create-A-Style like The Sims 3 had, leaving you limited color options for eyes, hair and clothes. Other new features for the CAS include the ability to choose various walk styles that you can use to match your sims' personalities, and the ability to create twins/siblings/children of your sim(s) that resemble your sim(s) but are not completely identical to them. For example, when you create a twin, the twin may have a slightly different face or a different eye color, instead of like in TS3 where creating a twin would literally just duplicate them. In the photo below, my original sim is on the left. I randomly generated a twin (shown in the middle) and she came out slightly different (eyes and lips are shaped differently). On the right is a randomly generated sibling, again she resembles the original but varies slightly (eye color and nose shape, for example).

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When creating children, you can either use two created sims, and generate a child or just one sim and the other parent will be random. In the photo below, I have an example of what my couples child would look like on the top, and what my female's child with a mystery sim would look like on the bottom.

Here are some screenshots of the aspiration categories, walk styles and the traits you can choose from.

Build Mode

Build mode is something I haven't played around with too much but I do love that you can pick up, turn and move already created rooms if you decide to you want to move it elsewhere or change the items around, etc. And, if you're an awful builder like me, the pre-created rooms are a great way to build the layout for a house. You are able to place the rooms, adjust the size and take away or add items as you please, which is a nice time-saver. Using just the pre-created rooms (except the hallway/entrance area), I was able to create a decent little house. I like this version of build mode more than the previous sims installments. My main complaint is that it takes a little while to get used to the setup and camera angles in this mode. The lack of pools and bad lighting indoors are some negatives as well.

Neighborhoods

The neighborhoods in this game are gorgeous. Willow Creek is a beautiful and lush neighborhood, while Oasis Springs is a desert-type neighborhood. While I love the look of the neighborhoods, I don't like how few lots there are in each. Each neighborhood is divided into several smaller sections, however, only about half are residential. Hopefully EA will add more lots to the neighborhoods at a later date.

 Community Lots

The community lots in the game are pretty cool but I wish there were more variety in the types. Right now there are two gyms, a few bars/lounges, a couple parks, a library and a couple museums between the two neighborhoods. I would have liked to see restaurants/cafes, grocery stores and the school. What I do like about the lots are that they are pretty populated with townies. It's very rarely that I go to a lot and it's empty, unlike in TS3.

That concludes Part 1 of my review. Stay tuned for the next part!