I Went Back To The Sims 3 and Won't Go Back To Sims 4

In roughly about the spring or early summer of 2007, I booted up a copy of the Sims 2 for the first time. I had an aunt who had actively played the first game and its expansions, and had gotten excited to show me the next installment, sitting me in front of the computer to play it and see the lives and subsequent drama all sims could go through. I, the ever probably overly creative kid that I was, who loved storytelling from an early age, was instantly hooked.

I clocked hours into that game, made various families and new neighborhoods, found new ways to shake up their lives, and, somehow always had a fire started within the first day or two of each family. I wasn't the most skilled at handling that at the age of nine. And when the Sims 3 was announced, my eyes went wide in wonder and I was practically rabid over the thought of a new game. My parents bought it for my for my birthday, and I got the first expansion for Christmas, and subsequently kept adding onto my collection.

I spent even more time on it than I had anything else at that point. I made brand new families, tried out the different challenges (including several unfinished attempts at the legacy challenge), and scrolled through the Sims 3 website, looking for new patterns, lots, and reading up on all of the stories that were posted. I was living for it all.

And then the Sims 4 came out and it blew my mind. Sims with smarter emotions? A better version of Build mode that might make it easier to learn how to build? No sliders? I was blown away. When I got my hands on the Create-A-Sim demo, I couldn't help but think of all the possibilities that could come in my storytelling. My Sims 2 and 3 games collected dust, and I spent most of my free time playing the newest addition.

I was so excited for a new game, I overlooked the very clear problems with the game upon release. I defended it throughout not having the pools, toddlers, or, you know, stable gameplay. I praised it for its ingenuity in Sim creation and all the fun I could have decorating their homes. I shut down any criticism about the game, simply having fun, and not caring about the amounts of money I had shelled out for what was, in all honesty, very shallow gameplay.

Which, mind you, was a lot.

When it comes to the Sims 4, the way they've broken up how much content you get per pack, there's now about 4 types of packs. You have your expansion packs, a constant in all 4 iterations of this game, which cost up to around 40-50 bucks; game packs, a newcomer to this franchise with his game, at about 20 bucks and is a medium sized pack; stuff packs, which give you one special item and some smaller things centered around just that theme, at about 10 bucks; and the new kits, which are even tinier packs, for 5 bucks. The base game itself, at release, I believe was 60 bucks and may still be that price. At the time of writing this, there are 10 expansion packs, 9 game packs, 18 stuff packs, and they have just announced the 4th stuff pack. Obtaining all of these packs and the base game, currently, at full price, will easily cost you over $800.

The problems with this really started to be highlighted within the last couple of years, as the excuses began to wear thin. In the six years since the game was released in 2014, the community has gone through hundreds of bugs (many of the main ones still haven't even been fixed or addressed in the Sims teams new monthly "laundry lists"), and the rallying cries for basic things like cars, a more open world, moods that shift on a dime and don't really impact much on your gameplay, and more meaningful relationships, traits, and story telling opportunities. In the defense of the team, it seems like there was an effort in certain stances to try and fix some of that last problem, with work being done on some of the traits and introductions of things like sentiments, which were a way to build up a Sims feelings about others. Which, even that can feel a bit shallow. And they did introduce the idea of lifestyles to which add some additional traits and moodlets to your Sim -- however, that is locked behind a 40 dollar expansion. They have also finally addressed the lack of diverse skintones last December, and have added in a plethora of new skintones, which is nice, but it took a long of outcry from the Sims community to even get that (even though POC creators have been asking for it for years).

I think the disenchantment for me really started about the time the pack Eco Lifestyle got announced. It wasn't what anyone had really asked for, and we had all been excited, thinking we were going to get a farming specific pack. We all wanted some new farming gameplay, to have cows and horses, and to really get a simpler kind of gameplay. What we got was a pack that gives an urgency to go all green or you live in smog. As the Sims is kind of a game of escapism from the real world and the depressing things we face, climate change being one of them, this didn't go over well with all of the fans. And the festering feelings of our basic wants we've been asking for years were beginning to boil over.

I think my breaking point was Journey to Batuu.

I had just gotten into Star Wars around quarantine and I'd been really enjoying it. So you'd think I'd love a Star Wars themed pack, right? You'd be so very, very wrong. As the Sims team was about making that pack, because the backlash was instantaneous. Mostly because it felt like they were trying so hard to appeal to certain niches to bring in new players, without giving back to the large community of players that they already have that were slowly fizzling away because of what felt like a lack of caring.

Also; they could put the Millennium Falcon into the game, but they could not give us cars. I would like you to let that ridiculousness sink in for a minute.

(Let's not even get into the fact that it took until early this year for us to get bunk beds. That's a whole discussion in and of itself).

I tried to hang on for a little longer there, even gave the newest expansion of Snowy Escape a good try. But the more I played last year, the more hollow the game really felt. I wasn't happy, and I didn't feel a connection to my Sims like I once did. All I could see was the flaws.

I stopped playing the Sims 4 all together. I hope for the best that there's a chance the game could improve, but with it so late in its life, I wonder if the best thing for the Sims now would be to move onto the Sims 5 and actually take the criticisms they've been given and build a better game.

It hurt stepping away from a game I've spent six years of my life on, in hoping that it would get better and better. And with a new installment not anywhere near being announced it seems, I wanted something that could fill the void again. So, when I bought my new laptop, the first thing I did was reinstall the sims 3. I installed all of my expansion packs, installed some (a lot) of custom content, even put in the NRAAS master controller to help expand on the storybuilding aspect for townies around the neighborhood, and well?

I remembered exactly why I loved these games as a kid.

I currently have two saves. One I play with my best friend, focused around the Nash family -- with the Man, the Myth, the Legend, Matt Nash, who has become an immortalized character to the two of us -- and my own personal family, which is currently the Langerak household. Originally, it had been Todd, starting off with my main sim Evie Todd, her now ex-husband, and their toddler daughter. Her ex-husband cheated on her several times before she had finally had enough, and divorced him. Now she's married to Dustin Langerak, and raising their children -- her three from her first marriage as well as her ex-husband's alien daughter (who I cheated to also make her Evie's daughter, since she's raised her this whole time) and her and Dustins two daughters) -- and while the drama has died out a little bit in the gameplay now, I still am having the time of my life seeing these sims grow, and I'm excited for the next generation.

I've been in the process of planning out some new saves, finding challenges to try out once more. And I've been saving up to get more worlds and items from the still running store on the Sims 3 website. I love the freedom of being able to pick and choose things I want to add into my game to enhance it and the items in the store are insane. Did you know you could make your own rollercoasters with some items from the Sims 3 store? You can also buy things like a chicken coop, cows, a carousal, baking stations, canning stations to make your own canned goods, poker tables, archery ranges, surfboards, your own pet dragons you can carry around on your shoulder, and a gondola. And that's just scratching the surface of store content.

The gameplay itself is also far more dynamic. I can see all of my Sims traits play out throughout the game -- whether it be my clumsy sims tripping randomly or falling down trying to open a dresser, my over emotional sims crying over the most minor of things (which, honestly, I kind of do that myself), or even a never-nude Sim taking a shower in their swimsuit -- and it feels genuine. Their wants are based around their personality and their Lifetime Wish, which feels more like an actual set goal rather than how it works in the Sims 4, where it's more like a laundry list of tasks that feel more like a tutorial than actual freedom on playing the game.

With an open world on top of that, I can move around the map to all the public lots and check in on what the neighborhood is up to. My Sims relationships feel more real and valuable on top of that, and it always is fun to see them discuss the latest gossip and actually get news on different townies from it. With NRAAS, I also get more detailed updates into the town, and a bit of a boost for townies to build skills, relationships, and even pay child support or get in trouble for not paying it. It really makes it feel like there's an actual community my Sims live in, and not just a tiny little area and only my Sims life has any meaning or progression. And it helps make the storytelling aspect easier and a lot more enjoyable, because I can play off the different events happening around town (which, there are always a ton; there are actual sports games you can go to, movies and concerts to attend, and, in Seasons, the seasonal festivals in the town park), and in the lives of their townie friends and family.

Now a days, I get excited to boot up the Sims when I have some free time between work and writing. It's a game I can actively share with my friends and want to livestream with them on Discord, because it's even more fun when everyone can contribute in on ideas and storylines. I genuinely love this game again, this franchise once more, and while I may not pick up the Sims 4 again, at least not for the foreseeable future, I can always rely on the fun and adventure in the Sims 3, even if it can lag a bit at times.

A little bit of lag is always going to be worth it for one of the most fun gameplay experiences I've ever had, and I'll keep coming back to the Sims 3 for even more crazy stories and lively, lovely Sims.