Nobody will read my review, so I'll just say I'm gay

I won't concentrate on the game play mechanics of The Sims. If someone doesn't know what this game is by now then there's a million other places on the web that can describe the game play loop. I will, however, compare it to past games since I played The Sims ever since the first one was published. And in the light of prior sims games, this seems to be the lesser sibling. It's worth the price, however.

The Sims 1 was novel. The Sims 2 was involved and actually challenging. The Sims 3 had more of the open town concept where everything was always happening. The Sims 4 is kind of a step back in that regard. It's not really challenging and you can very easily progress through your career. The worlds are tiny though you can go from one to another, these really feel constraining. The rest of the world just revolves around your character. If you show up to the gym, within a couple of minutes half the town will be there. So the other Sims don't seem to have lives. They just live for you and that just doesn't feel right.

Interactions with other Sims are similarly shallow. It's really easy to engage with other Sims and get them to like or love you. I've talked Sims I just met into casual WooHoo and that's not something I remember being able to do in prior games. In 50 hours, i haven't had an enemy that I didn't want or purused a relationship that I couldn't make happen. It again feels like the other Sims are there for you and not for themselves whereas in prior games they all felt like they had distinct personalities or traits.

Graphically, the game may be a decade old but the art style still works. No complaints here. Yeah, it's not InZoi but it doesn't have to be. The cartoonish world still works here like it does in World of Warcraft - sometimes realistic isn't the best way to go if you want the graphics to hold up better over time.

The dollhouses are nice and it's pretty easy to build something that looks good. It has an OK selection of stuff to do though it doesn't have the Sims 3 great pattern customization capabilities. However, the initial selection of goods runs out fairly quickly and you're going to find that you exhaust the various stoves, toys, gym equipment and the like fairly early in your experience.

And that takes me to the biggest issue. The DLC. I got 50 hours out of the base game. That's great for a free product and that's the reason this review is positive. But within 20 hours you're going to start feeling like you're "missing out" on so much in the game because the selection of items really runs out. And since items are really the way your Sims fill almost all their needs (even social can be filled via items), you're going to start wanting new things to do. For instance, the initial venue selection is pitiful - bar, museum, gym, library and open lot (park). That's it. Not even a restaurant. After you've been to these once or twice, there's nothing else to see or do. So your sim stays home because there's no real reason to go out and then you start looking around your house - and see the same old stuff. You can have a couple hundred thousand simoleons in the game and not have anything worth to actually purchase.

The whole push is to get you to buy DLC. You're bored with the same old careers (they all play out the same way), the tiny world selection (3, but only 2 have anything), the limited venues, the lack of items, etc. and then those the DLC packs starting calling out to you - "MOAR STUFF", "MOAR GAME PLAY",. "MOAR FUN". The base game is a vehicle to get you hooked and then they're going to push the DLC on you. It's the same thing that free mobile games do. And I'd generally be okay with that except the sheer amount of DLC is outright abusive. The DLC for the Sims is currently $1,400+ USD. Since this is a game marketed more to childern and teens, that's really pretty awful. The quantity of the DLC combined with the priciing is just awful. If you have low impulse control, skilp even downloading this game.

And not only are the DLC packs absurdly expensive, they add more BUGS to the game and these bugs are rarely fixed. My daughter has a number of these and when I asked her about the best DLC, she would name a title and then talk about some bug or another that causes things not to work right that's never been addressed. Some are graphical bugs, others outright break the game but all of them are unacceptable. Hence I never purchased even one DLC item in my 50 hours and I won't do so,.

As a free game, this is fun. You can get 20+ hours of enjoyment out of it. Then you'll realize that it's a really shallow experience compared to the past titles. Boredom will set in and you'll start eyeing the DLC packs, looking for fun stuff to do. Then you'll buy those, only to find them poorly supported and insanely expensive.

So as a free title, it's a thumb's up. As a Sims' game? It's the worst of the bunch and I'd look at the Sims 2 Legacy Collection instead (assuming they fix those bugs) since it'll have better, more challenging content and it's one price and you're done forever.

Incredibly over priced DLC