The Sims 4 CAS Demo
I posted this over on my Tumblr about 2 weeks back and meant to copy it over here right off and then prompty forgot about it.... Duh! With the Sims 4 release date looming I figured I should say my piece about the CAS system and show off a few sims I've made before the reviews for the full game start to show up. I admit to being extremely curious as to what those first day comments are going to be. ~snort~
Here is my TS4 Simself and these were my initial thoughts about the new CAS system for The Sims 4 (8/12/14). They aren't very different now except I have more practice playing with push/pull system so it doesn't feel so weird.
"All in all, Sims 4 CAS seems fun. Not enough to make me want to spend $70+ on the Base game with its missing toddlers, bassinet trapped infants and annoying Bros running about, but enough for me to keep my eye on the franchise and see if EA can fix those things in a patch without forcing people to buy expansion after expansion to do so. I probably would have liked it even more if EA would have just told everybody an exact date of release instead of playing silly games for over a month, but they did and waiting all these weeks for it has made me look at it a lot more critically than I might have before.
My first thoughts were that the push/pull shaping thing feels really odd. I mean, I knew it would feel very different because I’ve been playing with Sims 2 sliders since 2005, but I thought it would be less awkward and I expected the changes you could make to be much more extreme. Big learning curve, but it has potential.
The skin tones are cartoonish, but not in a bad way, not in that ‘puddin-ish’ way the S3 skins were. I can see myself playing favorites with the hair styles, but none of them were too horrid. A big plus- the textures aren’t all that bad and I was very happy to see there was a blond that wasn’t YELLOW. The eyes… Well… I can see why somebody went about making replacements for them right away. They aren’t dead like Sims 2 eyes, but some of the colors are just too bright and too saturated, they are just a little odd with no shading. It is great that the game will be open to CC so early, just a shame that it is needed already.
As for the other elements- When I looked through the clothes I would say to myself, “Oh, that is nice. I really like that.” mixed in with a few “Why? Why would they do that to our poor sims???”. The accessories/jewelry, I liked for the most part though I had some issues with things only showing up for some clothing categories where you would think they would be there for them all and I wonder if it was going to be possible to give a sim only one earring instead of a matching set every time in the full game. I didn’t really care for most of the makeup, but that has been the case with every sim game I’ve ever played. I’ve use default replacement makeup in my game for years and years.
Initial Grade- 3.5 out of 5 stars
Not perfect, but far better than the TS3 CAS to me. I’ll be playing with the demo some more for sure"
** I've played around with the Demo a few times since the 12th. Getting used to the controls took some time and I'm still not completely comfortable with them, but I am pretty happy with the sims I've been able to make.
I recreated one of my favorite Sims 2 families ever- the Bartletts. Chase (Probably my all time favorite CAS created sim ever), his ex-wife Samantha, their daughter Mari and their son Carter. Of course, in TS2 they got wiped out in a tragic hood melt down (which broke my heart!) and Mari was still only a teenager and Carter a child, but I figured they would have looked something like this as YAs.
Played a bit with the "Create a Sibling" function- did it for Mari and Carter and also for a couple other random brother sister sets.
I’m not buying the game because I’m protesting the lack of toddlers and all the other stuff I think they skimped on, but I do love that I can be a part of the experience this way so I uploaded everybody to the Gallery. And if EA gets their act together maybe I can use these sims in my own game someday.
If anybody wants any of my sims my Origin name is LisaG46 and I have uploaded them to the Gallery. I had to upgrade to a new Origin name because I hated the old one and I wanted it to be the same as my Tumblr and Livejournal, but LisaG45 was already taken by somebody else. BOO!!!