ORIGINALLY POSTED: February 25, 2018
For the past few months I have been playing Sims 4 on PlayStation 4. I have played several Sims games over the years on PC, so when I saw the Sims 4 was announced for console I was pretty excited about it. Needless to say my first several times playing were nostalgic. Suddenly I was transported back in time and thrilled by customizing my own Sim and either elevating them to have the best life possible, or letting them fail miserably and start the house on fire while making macaroni and cheese.
While I have continued to play the game the last few months, and accomplished going through several generations of Sims; I often find myself just shutting the game off out of frustration. I know it’s pretty surprising to say a Sims game can be frustrating. There are not any half-hour long boss levels to beat in Sims 4, but the basic operating systems in this game are a challenge in and of themselves . Last night I was about three hours into a gaming session and accomplished not only a successful marriage between two Sims, but also a few career promotions, when yet another game glitch caused me to have to force quit the application. Last evening's mishap caused me to have a need to share the top three most aggravating glitches in Sims 4.
1) The cursor has a mind of it's own.
Sims 4 was originally a PC game that was ported over to console. Due to it’s roots the game is mainly played using a cursor that is controlled with your joystick and then using to X button to select an item in the various menus. Often while playing Sims 4 the cursor gets a mind of it’s own. The cursors will go haywire and only toggle between certain menus or points on the screen. When trying to select an item you actually want to click on the cursor will jump to another menu item sporadically and cause you to be stuck in a loop. Often this little glitch can you keep you from saving if your cursor ends up not staying in the save menu long enough for you to accomplish saving your game. The only fix that I’ve found for this glitch is to return to the PlayStation screen and force close the application. Usually upon reopening the game, and going through the unbearably long loading process, the glitch is fixed.
2) The task bar does not always remove completed tasks.
While playing Sims 4 each of your Sims has a task bar on the left hand side of the screen that shows, in order, which tasks your Sim will complete next. I have found that when I assign my Sim five or more tasks sometimes the tasks my Sim has already completed stays in the task bar and does not disappear. This is incredibly irritating for several reasons. When the completed tasks do not disappear it seems to the player like the Sim will be repeating something that the player already believes the Sim should have done. It also becomes confusing when trying to get Sims to complete tasks in a certain order. The real kicker though is when you get the message that you can’t give your Sims any more tasks because the task bar is full – when in reality half the tasks in there have already been completed. Again, I have not found any fix for this other than force closing the application and restarting the game.
3) Despite there being multiple versions of Sims games over the years the Sims themselves still do not really "care for themselves." (This isn't really a glitch, but more of a programming/game structure issue.)
In every Sims game you can only control one Sim at a time, even though you can switch between Sims and direct them to do a task while controlling another Sim. When another Sim in your household leaves the lot they automatically go into “care for self” mode, but in reality they do not care for themselves at all! Every time my Sims leave for work, to go to the gym, or to get a drink at the local bar they come back miserable with none of their needs met. Do the creators of Sims 4 really believe people don’t use the bathroom at their place of employment or grab a protein bar at the gym? It seems silly that I am complaining about this, but I really despise having to catch my Sims needs back up every time they return to the lot.
Overall Sims 4 isn’t a bad game. I still play for about 10 hours a week because it is entertaining time filler, but I would probably play it a whole lot more if these little irritancies didn’t build up in the back of my mind every time I pick up the controller.
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*** DISCLAIMER: All images are property of EA Games. I do not represent Sims 4 or EA Games, nor did I receive any type of compensation for writing this commentary. I am just a woman who likes videogames.
