User blog:Alex the Vampire/Sims 3 vs. Sims 4

It's been seven good months since The Sims 4 came out. It's fair to say it received some hefty criticism from critics due to a lack of content in comparison to its' predecessors. However, comparing it to The Sims 3, is it actually that bad? Did it lose more than it introduced?

The Sims 3, I'll admit, was the first Sims game I bought. It introduced a number of things that expanded on The Sims 2. It introduced the open world format, more customiseable sims and expanded on The Sims 2 in pretty much every single way. The Sims 3 managed to keep me entertained for a full year before I even considered buying expansion packs. Now, The Sims 3 was nowhere near flawless. It was plagued with performance issues and bugs, which deterred many people from playing it. Whilst it improved on the Sims game, it also introduced a vast amount of things which blocked people from playing it.

The Sims 4 introduced many things to make it seem far more life-like. The emotions system greatly enhanced the overall gameplay, and the create-a-sim options were so much more fun to use. Now, had The Sims 4 been the first in the series, it would've been considered amazing. However, it stripped back of all the fundamental parts that had been praised in The Sims 3, making it feel rushed. The town views looked like they were only partly finished, in post-development. There was hardly anything to do outside of the new features.

To me, it seemed like The Sims 4 would've been a big update on The Sims 4, but never could've been a standalone game. The Sims 4 needed to add on what was already there and improve, not take parts away and replace them - and that seems to be the universal opinion of the game.