Game:

The Sims 4 (2014)

Category:

Review

Duration: 3:51

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Today we’re going to be chatting all about The Sims 4 Get to Work expansion, which I spent a day playing at EA HQ in Redwood City a couple of weeks ago, and really, really enjoyed. I’m not a huge Sims player but of the expansions I have played, this is absolutely my favourite, and might convince me to go back to the Sims 4 again after initially being kind of disappointed by the lack of content.

So, the basics – Get to Work adds 3 new career paths, or, rather, career paths that existed in other Sims games but only now in the Sims 4. Your sims can now be doctors, detectives or scientists for their day jobs, which in itself is, you know, great, but the cool part is you can actually go to work with them. Instead of sitting around watching time tick while all of your sims are out of the house, when each one is ready to go to work, you’ll be prompted to ‘go to work’ with them, if they’re in one of the new career paths.

So, you’ll jump away from home and into the office, where you’ll be tasked with completing a bunch of different things – ranging from feeding a patient as the doctor, to scouring crime scenes for clues as the detective. Most of the tasks are fairly simple but from what I played, it seemed to get harder as my sims advanced in their careers, and even if the tasks are simple you have to complete a pretty solid amount of them before it’s time to leave work, lest you ruin your standing with your employer. This mostly comes down to personal failures, but I feel like I probably would’ve been better off leaving my sims to go to work without me, I damaged their reputation at work more than I helped it.

But, I didn’t, because it feels like it adds a whole new world to your game time. There’s the home, where you buy stuff and build stuff and manage basic needs, and then there’s science lab, where you have to complete actual, sometimes complex tasks during the day, instead of just monitoring whether your Sim is maybe a little hungry or not. I would question whether going to work with your sims could get repetitive in the long run depending on the amount of tasks available, but for what I played, I feel like it added hours of play time – hours where I was actually doing things outside of my own little bubbled house, rather than sitting and waiting for sims to come home.

There did also seem to be enormous variety between the three careers – with doctors delivering babies, scientists creating powerful ray-guns with some purely evil effects and cops patrolling the neighbourhood to break up fights and issue tickets, then head right on back to the station to take some mugshots and lock someone up, or contribute to your case file. Some of these actions did repeat themselves in the individual careers but there’s such a constant stream of them being shovelled your way that I feel like repetition may not matter – it’s more about managing all of the tasks assigned to you. I’m still undecided on that one.

Beyond that, Get to Work also opens up an ‘entrepreneur’ option, where Sims can open up their own retail stores. These are pretty expensive so you will need to save up before going to buy one, but when you get there, you can hire staff from people you know, choose uniforms, choose prices, list items for sale and re-decorate, hopefully to watch the money roll on in. Sims can build bookstores, clothing boutiques and bakeries, adding a nice little side-project for your sim. Bakeries will come in handy with one of the two new skills, too – Get to Work adds a baking and a photography skill.

But that’s not all, folks. There now aliens. Yup, aliens. You can create an alien in the Create-A-Sim to be a part of your family from the very start, with other sims in the neighbourhood also having potential to be aliens and there’s an alien dimension within the game, which a level 10 scientist can reach as they please.
-Alanah
https://www.facebook.com/FutureProofTV

I did have a really great time playing it and exploring all of the new options available, though, of course, it is a stand-alone DLC that you will have to buy on top of already owning the Sims 4.

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