The Sims is a mystery series. Just about any “virtual life game” from Maxis and Electronic Arts can be really cool or not so cool. At the same time, it is usually very difficult to guess in advance where the jackpot is hidden, and where is the dummy.
Until now, every new stage in the life of the series, every next incarnation of The Sims has been in one way or another revolutionary. The Sims 2 has shifted its focus from physiological to, let’s not be afraid of the word, spiritual, or at least personal. The Sims 3 turned out to be a game about society, inscribing each individual family of virtual humans into a multidimensional and diverse society. It seemed that after the release of the third part, it was already difficult to surprise us with something in the field of a “life simulator”, but the developers decided to try – and relied on the emotions of the characters.
“Unique characters!” – they promised us in the announcements. “For the first time in the history of the series: direct control of emotions!” – proclaimed marketers. “Bright city!” – we have heard and have already managed to roll out the lip so that now, really, we will have to buy a sprinkler.
The main change, around which there has been so much talk, concerns the system for displaying the desires and emotions of the characters. If earlier feelings were more likely a “by-product” of what was happening and simply added happiness or unhappiness to Sims, now, in addition to complete pleasure, a neutral attitude to life and extreme dissatisfaction with this very life, there are still separate states of the soul, such as “inspiration”, “playfulness “,” Flirtatiousness “,” embarrassment “and other colors of the emotional spectrum.
Of course, there is no direct control over emotions: everything that a virtual person experiences depends on the effects acting on him, as was the case in The Sims 3.
Got a promotion to a character, earned an effect that added a couple of points to “self-confidence” – and immediately felt like a superman. I went on a date, flirted with a girl – and the world played with all the colors of pink, and the mood changed to “thirst for flirting.” Moreover, each emotion brings the hero several additional opportunities and desires, often quite stupid. So, an embarrassed Sim may want to hide from everyone in bed, and a man who is sad, temporarily gains the ability to water the plants with his tears.
Are the characters more vibrant and realistic thanks to the emotions? I think no. Each Sim can only experience one feeling from the entire spectrum at a time. Feelings, as we remember, entirely depend on the effects that the hero experiences on himself. The result is nonsense: a man enters a room furnished with bonuses to concentration, and falls under the influence of the emotion of “mindfulness.”
This condition, for example, encourages him to work with a microscope, but the microscope is in another room, where there is a lot of debris. The sim moves between two adjacent rooms – and voila: by the time he reaches the microscope, the place of “mindfulness” is already taken by “displeasure.” The old trouble, which was in The Sims 3, only there the brain endured abrupt switches between happiness and depression, but here the same thing happens with any emotions available in the game.
The easiest way to get a man to experience something is to send him to the shower. Different types of bathing give your Sim different emotions. Stunning realism, isn’t it? Are you inspired by long standing under streams of water? And local characters – yes!
Okay, the macaroni monster is with them, with emotions. We were promised a lot more besides. Take the “vibrant city”, for example. Its brightness, apparently, lies in the fact that both towns are now quite tiny. Park, museum, bar, gym, library … Everything, actually.
No, it is clear that the idea of the developers was to abandon the “blind” buildings, into which the character entered as if in a black box. There were only areas with a reality directly simulated in the game. But why are there so few of them? In essence, we are again seeing everything that was already in The Sims 3.