User blog comment:LostInRiverview/The Sims 4 CAS Demo now available/@comment-1519608-20140812205143

I'll weigh in here in the comments, since this isn't an opinion-based blog.

To be honest, Create a Sim has never been terribly fun for me. I prefer to play the Sims and build and decorate their homes, rather than spend time crafting the Sims themselves. But, it's a free demo, so it's worth trying.

I'm not incredibly blown away by the "revolutionary" changes to CAS. The click-and-drag is intuitive only to a point - you have to click in just the right areas in order to find something that you can change. And it seems the range of changes you can make are rather limited. It reminded me a lot of the creature creator tool in Spore, and I honestly wished there was something the CAS would have that Creature Creator does. Namely, when you click on a "part" to modify, in Spore you can use the middle mouse wheel to size up and down the piece you're clicking or holding onto. I find that a lot more easy to use than click-and-drag, especially if you're looking at the body or face at a sideways angle.

I did something I usually don't do with The Sims - I made a version of myself. Despite not being able to get the right hair style or color, or to get the face to look exactly right, I managed to do a half-decent job; better, certainly, than I've ever achieved in TS2 or TS3. My first big "wow" moment during the demo was when I decided to create my brother too. I used the genetics feature and randomized it a few times, but the Sim it produced was strikingly similar to my brother. After a few wardrobe, hair and body shape tweaks, it was almost a perfect replica. At one point, I was playing with his eyebrows and it suddenly hit me just how close this facsimile was to the genuine article. I think the genetic tool had a lot to do with that, as it would've taken much longer to create him from scratch if it hadn't borrowed the base from me.

On the whole, I think this CAS is good but not great. It doesn't seem as complex overall as TS3's CAS did. And while I was worried about the reduced number of traits between TS3 and TS4, I think the re-introduction of aspirations helped bridge the gap. But, as I mentioned before, CAS is such a small part of my Sim-playing experience that this demo doesn't sway me one way or the other towards actually buying The Sims 4.

So, go ahead and try the demo, especially if you're the kind of person who likes to tweak with little details on your Sims. And even if you're like me and you don't care much about designing Sims, it's worth checking out anyways.