SimGuruGrant and SimGuruRomeo took to Twitch on Friday to demo the new festivals in The Sims 4: City Living expansion pack. At the very end of the livestream (read about 15 new features we learned about here), Grant went on a big rant about how awesome City Living is, how it’s basically an updated TS3: Late Night. In addition to the obvious aesthetic differences, Grant went on to talk about how City Living is the best expansion pack for TS4 bringing substantial new gameplay and control.
“The City Living expansion is maybe my favorite that we've done for The Sims 4 so far,” Grant explained. “It fundamentally improves on Late Night from The Sims 3. The city is dense and beautiful and it feels like a city.”
Unlike living in Newcrest, Windenburg, Oasis Springs or Granite Falls, the city of San Myshuno has more of an open-world feel because of limited loading screens. Sims can walk straight onto the sidewalk through the neighborhood to a festival in City Living.
“The apartments are sincerely a distinct experience from living in a home in Willow Creek. Living in apartment feels different -- there’s a sense of community from the people who come visit you, interact with you, and change your life,” Grant added.
Grant and Romeo also talked about the subtleties of actually making City Living feel like a city. During the testing phase, Romeo revealed the apartments just didn’t feel enough like a city. Even the cheaper apartments looked like high-scale apartments, until they added the grungy furniture options. In addition to grimy walls and refrigerators, lot traits offer different moodlets based on the apartment, such as ‘grody, ‘needs tlc’ and ‘filthy.’ These lot traits help the apartment experience feel more realistic. Clogged sewers, leaky pipes, electrical explosions, cockroaches, and forever filthy surfaces accentuate what it’s like for most moving into their first city apartment.
“You have the broken objects and traits, and all those things that change stuff. But then looking out the window you have so much gameplay that really ties into what a city is about,” Grant said.
In addition to those subtle features that help simulate what day-to-day city life is all about, there’s also substantial gameplay improvements from previous city-themed expansion packs. Past incarnations like Late Night didn’t really have activities exclusive to the city, just late night partying options like bars, clubs and lounges with celebrity appearances.
“Looking back to Late Night, almost nothing really had anything to do with the city. But in City Living we have the festivals, cultural events, street basketball, murals and protests. We’ve got new careers which are a sign of the opportunity you get moving to a city. We’ve got careers that have new gameplay and new behaviors that you can't get living back in Willow Creek,” Grant said.
If City Living lives up to all the hype, it may be the expansion pack that converts players still stuck on The Sims 3. It’s great for builders and storytellers, and strongly complements previous packs like Get Together and Dine Out. For players adamant about The Sims franchise sticking with an open world, San Myshuno is a good compromise.
City Living releases Nov. 1.
