Babies in The Sims 4

Babies are a bit different in The Sims 4 than in the recent iterations of the Sims universe.  In fact, I'd go as far to suggest that the babies in The Sims 4 are more like the babies from the original The Sims game (1) than anything we've seen since.  Primarily, this is because babies arrive in little bassinettes and remain in those bassinettes until they're ready to age up.  Other sims can interact with babies in various ways (and the interactions are quite detailed!) but the baby always stays in that bassinette. 


I do like the great range of options for interacting with babies in this game.  Adults and kids alike can interact with babies in their bassinettes: adults can and coo, talk, make silly face, and cuddle, as well feed (by breast or bottle) and change diapers. 






Unlike The Sims 3, babies in The Sims 4 cannot be "controlled" by the player.  By this, I mean that the player cannot see the baby's needs, which can be kind of frustrating.  Like other sims in this game, babies' "background" color changes in Live Mode (and the color corresponds to the emotion he or she is feeling), but the player can't tell when a baby has high social needs or when the baby is hungry, so it's hard to distinguish what the baby needs.  I've had many occasions where I haven't noticed the baby crying until a little pop-up come up on the screen saying that so-and-so is hungry and will be taken away if not fed soon.  That's always a little disconcerting... 




Babies are magically whisked off to daycare when all the adults leave the "neighborhood" (eg. go to work or any other sort of travelling), but if the adults just go outside the house or on the street, the baby stays in the house and the adults are still responsible for its needs. 




Babies do have legs in this game, and I for one find their little legs just adorable. 




The one other thing about babies in this game is that they don't show up in the family's picture when you're choosing which household to play.  It instead just shows a little bottle icon and the number of babies in that house. 

No Toddlers in Sims 4?!?

One of my biggest disappointments with The Sims 4 is that there are no toddlers in the game.  As previously mentioned, I enjoy creating and playing families, and, fittingly, toddlers are often a part of those families.  Toddlers in previous Sims games haven’t had a whole lot of things to do, but I’ve always liked them because they made the game feel more realistic to me – people grow up in stages, and skipping that huge stage from newborn to grade school just seems so fundamentally wrong.  But that’s just my opinion.  In The Sims 3, one of my favorite things to do with toddlers was to read them skill-enhancing books and watch them develop their little minds and personalities, all before they hit childhood.  Plus, those great teaching moments of toddlerhood (like learning to walk and talk) were excellent opportunities for adults and toddlers to build their relationships.  I won’t miss those actions as much as I’ll miss the simple presence of something – anything – in between the littlest of babies and the most independent of kids, but it’s still something I enjoyed about previous incarnations of The Sims. 

So far on my Sims 4 journey, I’ve played a lot of families with babies and kids, including babies who have aged up into kids.  I’ve noticed that the lifespan of a baby seems quite short; they’re born and then only a few days later, it seems like these previously incompetent and dependent beings are fully able to live out their needs on their own.  Life doesn’t work that way, and this is a game after all (so it doesn’t need to be exactly like life), but I wish The Sims had something to bridge the lost time in between. 

I do like that sims (of all ages) can have a wider range of interactions with newborns in this game (including various social interactions, and even the choice to breastfeed or bottle feed the baby), but there are things I don’t like about The Sims 4 babies as well.  I don’t like that each baby comes with its own little bassinette and is pretty much confined there until he or she ages up.  It reminds me a lot of the original Sims game, in which babies arrived (spontaneously, albeit) in a bassinette and just stayed there until it was time to age up. 

No Family Trees in The Sims 4: My Thoughts

Family trees have always been one of my favorite user interfaces in The Sims game series.  

The Sims 2

The Sims 3

I know a lot of people play only one family or only one generation, but my preferred type of play involves creating large towns with many families, and watching them all grow and develop amongst each other over generations.  I have always loved seeing how kids age up and what kind of adults they become, and then I always want to know how they will parent, and just the same, how their kids will develop and change with age as well.  It’s always rewarding for me to see my sims’ relations over the years, and maybe that’s because I just happen to be “family oriented” myself.  Whatever the case, I was disappointed when I discovered that there is no “family tree” feature in The Sims 4. 

There are relationships – don’t get me wrong.  Sims still have “mothers” and “fathers” and “sisters” and “brothers,” they still have “grandparents” and “cousins” and “aunts” and “uncles,” but there is no visual representation of the interlocking relationships readily available for your own reference.  In the grand scheme of things, I’m sure this won’t really change my gameplay, but I know I’m already keeping track of my sims’ relationships independently from the game, on either some other computer program or on a spare piece of paper.  It isn’t important for a lot of people, but I do like to see how my sims’ families are comprised, and I like the visual nature of the family tree.  My sims know who their relations are – they know their parents versus other family members versus strangers – but I know that, if I do build a great town that develops and lasts over generations, I will eventually lose track of who is related to whom, and I’ll find myself frustrated by this missing feature.  It’s easy with just a few households of relatively simple, nuclear families, but once the kids grow up and create families of their own, I’m sure it’ll get more complicated.  That used to be one of my favorite times in The Sims, but I’m afraid this version of the game will bring with it a whole new stress that I have no interest in dealing with. 

I’m still learning to play Sims 4 – I’ve only had it a few days and I’m still not fully comfortable with all the new nuances of the game – so I don’t know whether this will really bother me, as I delve deeper into the game and start creating my own worlds.  Right now, it’s a little bit of a bother.

Welcome to Sims 4!

Welcome to my first-ever gaming blog!  Over the years, I’ve owned all the base game incarnations of The Sims, so I was really excited to hear that a fourth Sims was coming out, and even more excited to finally get it for myself!  Just a disclaimer: this blog isn’t affiliated with EA games or Maxis or with The Sims – it’s just a fan blog, for me to share my thoughts and feelings about the game, and also for me to share stories from my own personal gameplay. 

                                           

I’m still learning how to play right now – the controls are quite different from The Sims 3 and it definitely takes a bit of time to get used to.  I do love the game though, even with all its differences.  The differences I’ll talk about include (but are probably not limited to) toddlers, family trees, pools, babies, relationships, woohoo, pregnancy, careers, Create A Sim, open world, build mode, buy mode, and more.

Right now, there are a lot of things I’m still trying to figure out in this game, so I’m playing around a lot and just working with a bunch of families.  Right now on my screen: the Lindstrom & Kotters families.  In Create A Sim, I created two female young adult roommates: Reese Lindstrom, who is active, a foodie, family oriented, and domestic, and who wants a successful lineage; and Allison Kotter, a serial romantic who tends to be romantic, a perfectionist, family-oriented, and alluring.  Reese and Allison started out, just friends in a small, pre-built house within their budget.  Allison went out on the town first, with her sizzling red hair and her sexiest outfit, she was hot and ready to flirt.  She met a few townies and made a few friends, but the first guy she really clicked with was a man called Rodrigo Carrier.  I’ve never played Rodrigo, but Allison was a fan, and they immediately hit it off and started a casual romantic relationship.  Allison and Rodrigo had a child together, a boy named Harrison, but the couple broke up shortly after his birth.  Meanwhile, Reese was taking it slow with another townie, a guy named Yahir Fitch.  They inevitably hooked up and made a baby of their own (daughter Shayleen), but Allison and Yahir had a quick fling not much after that, and Allison got pregnant as well (with daughter Helen).  To get over Yahir, Reese started seeing an older gentleman who she fell for hard and fast: Tory Fisher.  Tory and Reese are still seeing each other and still very much in love.  Reese wanted to continue adding to her family, and they are now expecting a child as well.  I know it’s all kind of crazy, but the goal here was not to make realistic families or realistic people or anything the like.  The goal really was just to create some people and develop some relationships, and obviously it got out of hand, haha.  I wanted to try some romantic relationships, and I wanted to build some little families.  It was actually easier than I expected to build those romantic relationships, and it was actually easier to make babies (all over the place, with everyone in the town, almost…) pretty quickly.  I was surprised by that.  I almost feel like the relationships were built much faster in this game than in Sims 3.  So that was my blurb about relationships in Sims 4.  

I'm excited to create some more realistic families and learn more about playing this awesome new game!