Lol, that review is hilarious! My favorite part is this " I can't imagine how bad the gaming industry will become if EA doesn't exist in this world. "

As a matter of fact there is so much downgrading by trolls, but also so much payed upgrading that in the end it's not a review score, it's more like an ongoing battle between greed and hate, EA representing the greed, trolls representing the hate, and while the trolls are outnumbering the EA-bots, they have more patience (me3's score was once down to 1.9).
I like the fact that there are options like twitch and similar lifestreams these days, so that you can take a look at it with your own eyes. You don't even have to listen.

Completely agreed. In the end, numerical scores are inherently flawed, and people on the internet tend to gravitate towards extreme positions one way or the other. The only way you can really find out whether a game is for you or not is to either read enough opinions to form your own or actually play/watch the game in question.

That part is actually true. EA has set an example of what not to be.

“The Sims 4″ Game Review



Review: 'Sims 4' Aspires to Greatness and Fails

More like a EA insider / reviewer paid by EA for writing over-compliment about the developer (EA) not the gameplay itself.
Normal users/customers/players/Simmers would not write long sentences in professionally great structure with the smell of marketing like this.

And you know that, because...?

Regardless of what you think about the game, conspiracy theories like that are just silly. Publishers don't waste money like that. The trolling theory is far more likely.

Yikes. I guess you don't know about the paid 'viral marketers' on reddit.

Trust me, it's my automatic reaction to disbelieve conspiracy theories, especially complicated ones, but this one really isn't that complicated and you can outsource people to post reviews and messages online very cheaply.

Working for a fairly large publisher (not EA), I have yet to see that happen in practice. Our head of PR hasn't heard more than allegations of planting paid user reviews either. Yes, you can of course pay people, but I really don't see that as being worth it from a cost-benefit perspective.

I heard that the wall telephone is gone...am I right? I'm just wondering because I read a review that said something about wall telephones being gone from the game...Please tell me I'm wrong.

It was proven that for some bioware game, I think dragon age 2 or Mass Effect 3, Bioware or EA employees had written a positive review about their own game. The account was traced back to them.

Wether you trust metacritic user scores or not, all previous sims games had a positive userscore, sims 3 had one of 7.5 and sims 2 of 8.9.

That's considerably higher than the 4.3 that users give to sims 4.

In case it has not been noticed yet, the person giving it a perfect 10 in the review quoted above seems to be sarcastic.

Am I the only one that thinks the angarvin43 review is sarcasm and hyperbole? I think it was meant to be funny.

eta: Kind of ninja'd by Inhuman One. :P

I see catloverplayer on the official forums rates it a 7 out of 10. I'm surprised; he's like the biggest Sims fan there is.

Well, that review is problematic for EA. It's not even in gaming media, but an AP review posted on ABC News. Given their desire to reach out to a broad base of players, especially new and "casual" players, general media reviews might very well carry greater weight than gaming media reviews in that demographic.

The funny part to that is, IMO, EA did manage to accomplish something positive for the new and casual player. The barrier of entry to play in both CAS and Build mode were lowered in this game. CAS is probably easier for a casual player to get an OK looking sim in than the 3 CAS, and the simplified, modular Build mode is also easier for the non-builder focused player to throw together a quick, but acceptable home for their sims. But the problem is the lack of development in the third leg of this game, namely, live mode. Because that's where most players do spend their time, and that part seemingly got far less love than the first two.

Which goes to show you, the whole experience needs to be nourished and developed, not just areas your market surveys "tell you" are issues for players. Sure, CAS and Build mode needed some simplification for some players, but stripping out game play to reallocate "scarce" resources for those tasks still leaves you with less than you started with. It'll be interesting to see the reviews trickling out now that the game is released. I guess they were rightly concerned with having Day 1 reviews running, which is why they held back release to the media, after all.

I think Dan & Kellie's short first part Play through review was good, Dan certainly was amazed that with the break up and downsizing of worlds that there is also a loading screens between lots, In fact most of the handful of reviews seem to picking up on this fact of loading screens being brought back like Sims 2 after Sims 3 Open world . Kellie's main grip seemed to be with the lack of cast in the removal of cast which seems to be a common theme for players coming from TS3.

Apart from that it was fair look at an early getting to know the game first part review. Thanks for the link tonicmole

From that ABC review:



Yikes, demon babies appearing in reviewers' games is not good. It seems to be quite widespread, I'm really curious how they missed that one in QA.

My guess is: babby-object is one of the last things that was hurriedly added when they realized players cared about family play, and wasn't thoroughly tested.

I noticed she made reference to the fact she was playing it on a laptop. Does the demon baby only affect those with low-end video cards?

I agree though, I think the babies were one of the last things they added to the game, just like they were in TS3.

Every time I look at the user score on Metacritic; it gets lower; now it's dropped down to 4.1

I don't think low-end cards are the problem, it's possible it's 'laptop', meaning perhaps a problem with an actual discrete gaming card or its drivers; OR it also seems possible it's a dual-chipset problem. Someone here has made another thread about the problem, and they have a typical NVIDIA 7##M / Intel HD #### dual setup. That person thinks their rig is not recognizing the NVIDIA.

I have a friend with a MSI ghost that is NVDIA 860M/Intel 5000 and the game does seem to use the NVIDIA (ONLY once forced to in the NVIDIA control panel), but I don't think any babbies have been spawned there.

So my references are very low. But...I suppose it could be Intel-specific, especially if non-technically-inclined players with dual video don't realize the game isn't being recognized automatically as something that should kick in the 'real' video chip, as I have personally witnessed it fail to do. So I just talked myself around to the opposite argument of my opening sentence. That is very much the kind of week I am having.

Now 4.0 lol

Demon babies....

I agree with Gwynne - I don't think it's a low end graphics card issue. I have a Nvidia GT 740m that is supposed to run this game on high/medium. I can't even get the game to recognize the card, it keeps finding my Intel card that runs it on medium/low. Yes, I did all the forcing...etc...etc...nothing will work. It appears to me (I can't verify this) that the game is attempting to use both cards and causing a glitch. The game found/matched the wrong one and wants to use that one. I over rode it in global settings and my device wants the game to use the other card. Conflict....demon babies are spawned.

Also, the reason it was missed in QA is because those are probably monster desktops that run the game on uber high settings.

They should have tested it on a middle-range laptop as well. Heck, when the recommended specs were released? They didn't even include laptop cards in it. Remember?

Hmmm...laptop mode...wonders if switching to that will fix the babies but I don't want to lose visual quality when I can just age up those objects for now.

At my office we test on different ranges of hardware including really old crap. (A decision I frequently make: "toss it or give it to QA".) That said, I don't think we test on laptops. Okay, I know we don't test on laptops, so I don't know why I'm being coy about it. Maybe this is something QA departments in general should reconsider.

Back to "official site reviews." I put Sims 4 poor reviews in Google. Came up with a bunch. Some site called Craveonline (are we allowed to post names of review sites here?) said it was getting trashed over on Amazon. They also showed features you didn't know were in the game. Some look cool, yes... I am not anti or pro as I don't have the game. I just like to read all sides of the story. Continues to tank at Metacritic at a humble 3.9.

I wish they had listened to the REAL long term fans...I know you cannot please everyone but....

Wow has the person who wrote the review at Craveonline played it ?

The Sims 4 First Impressions – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Careers are very shallow. Maxis has re-introduced the “warp” style of the original The Sims, where instead of going to a work location or having any interaction at all, your character disappears after entering a car, only to reappear once work is over. There are some tasks to be done, such as making friends and improving skills, in order to get promotions, but that’s it. If you enjoyed the Ambitions expansion of The Sims 3, you may be sorely disappointed with The Sims 4.