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.