User blog comment:Lost Labyrinth/The Sims 4 impressions/@comment-96.248.209.70-20140722172756

Well, I had preordered the game already because EA jipped me out of SimPoints for TS3 and I had leftover money in Origin, so I said...why the hell not? I'm not going to say that I regret preordering the game, per se...but there are probably better things to spend 60 or 70 bucks on.

I'm alright with the graphics, though the lack of shading was a little bothersome. Also, they really need to let the past stay in the past in terms of the sims and stop trying to bring back "fan favorites" from the previous games. I mean, really? Nancy Landgraab? Don Lothario? This is the "we screwed up so have some fan service" ruse. It annoyed me.

Also, these emotions seem like their way too finicky. I mean, I've had my share of sims die in fires because I forgot to install a fire alarm, or (Sims 2) dying of starvation because I forgot to check the needs panel...but it sounds like just doing regular stuff and then BOOM! Grimmy shows up to take away sims that I spend hours lovingly hand-crafting. Really? No. Screw that. That's dumb.

From what they've said, the game is a semi-open world. From what they've shown? It's a linear world. I could have mis-seen that, but it seems like they were lying to us. Guess we'll see on Sep. 3, but I dunno...that's a bit irritating if they did lie.

The gallery thing seems eerily like pulling someone else's creations from Spore...in exactly the same way. I get that some people don't like to take the time to create sims or houses, but they're making it sound like the game is actually pretty reliant on it, and that it's just too much work to use the creation modes, despite them swearing up and down that creating sims and houses is more intuitive than ever. Just me? Yes? Yeah, probably. Still stands, though.

And you don't just go from being pissed to being elated just because you work out. You might feel better, but if you're already sucking in the mood department, the endorphins that come from working out aren't going to automatically switch you from one extreme to another. In short: they screwed up this emotion system and made it too extreme. You aren't either depressed or elated, and you aren't either angry or pumped. We have middle grounds, which maybe jsut didn't come through in the video, but they might have forgotten about it. Sigh.

CAS, from everything I've seen, is going to be great. Barring that? Build mode makes no sense to me. How are we supposed to get unique shapes for our rooms if it's all a matter of drag-and-drop? The 'drawing out the rooms' system used in EVERY OTHER GAME makes sense to me; it can get monotonous at times, but it offers flexibility to shapes and designs. Unlike most people, just three levels for foundation/wall height doesn't bother me so much, because that's better than what we had before (barring CFE, which can screw up your lot if you make a mistake), so I'm cool with it in that respect.

Not a big fan of the UI...I've never really been a big fan of the minimalist style for that kind of thing. It's one of my weird things when it comes to games. Minimalist always felt...lazy to me, and it's pretty flat and unappealing to the eye. A small complaint, but there you have it.

I really wished that the music was more audible so that I could judge on that. I do a lot of music stuff, so I pay attention to soundtracks. I'm generally not a huge fan of Sims music, and I wanted to know if Sims 4 music would sound any better...guess I'm waiting until the third to find out.

Still, despite it all, the gameplay itself (barring emotions; see above) seems pretty promising. That, at least, seems pretty fluid, so they get points for that, at least.

Overall? I dunno, I'll play the game, but we'll see how it stacks up compared to the other games.

This has been Rin with a comment that should probably be a blog in its own right. I think I'll jsut shut up, now...