The Sims 4 Demo Available To Public Through Origin
You all know it’s your guilty pleasure. Whether you create your crush so you can virtually marry them, your worst enemy so you can kill them (virtually, of course…), or your family so you can create what your childhood should have been, we’ve all done it. And now it’s back in higher definition and with a few more features than before. The Sims 4 Demo is only a Create-a-Sim demo, but it can be so much more than that. It can mean plotting your revenge or planning your dream family. Or you can create really ugly, repulsive people, like I did.
As soon as you get into the demo, it’s apparent that the game is completely different. Gone are the complex menus of all other Sims games; this new installment features a very simplistic interface, featuring only a place to change your Sim’s age, gender, voice, and qualities. Clicking on specific body parts or clothing of the Sim will bring up simple menus to pick, choose, and customize the look of your Sim. The interface is very smooth and not terribly demanding virtually. In addition to the simplistic style, the demo allows you to save your Sims to the bin as well as access millions of saved Sims through the gallery and download them to your bin quickly and easily.
As far as creation features, the first one I noted while playing is that you can sculpt your Sim’s body by simple mouse gestures. If you want to make your Sim fatter, you click and drag your Sim’s midsection to the right. Making your Sim skinnier is done simply by clicking and dragging to the left. While this is all well and good, you can lengthen, shorten, or stretch body parts in different directions by clicking and dragging the mouse up and down. I found this hard to get used to, and I would try to reshape my Sim’s butt to make it smaller and it would be drooped below the backs of her knees… but hey, you know, every Sim has its flaws, right? The tool can be very useful or increasingly frustrating, and my guess is that it gets easier as you play.
I do have some mild concerns about this demo. There is no option to custom color clothing, accessories, or hair like there was in The Sims 3. The loss of certain features makes me afraid that EA threw out too much of what they already had, and that they’re not continuing to use the same aspects for the new game like they have in the past. Again, this is a demo, so chances are that all of these things that I’m afraid of losing will in fact be in the full version of The Sims 4.
While there are some missing customization tools in the demo, chances are that it was put out to show off the new tools that EA added. Playing with genetics is something The Sims is known for, but there are now options to randomize a twin, a brother, a sister, or parents for any one Sim you create. This added genetics tool adds a lot of interest to me in the game because it makes creating families a heck of a lot easier than before.
In all, the demo looks promising. While EA has definitely been cutting corners when it comes to in-game content, The Sims 4 seems to have an entirely different interface and play differently than its predecessors. If you want to play the Create-a-Sim demo yourself, you can download it on Origin for free. The Sims 4 comes to PC on September 2.
