Anyone wanna share some popcorn and watch the Sims 4 train wreck?

[Longknife]

Lawl some people seem to be taking this way more literally than they should.

 

 

Why do I care? In a nutshell, it's fascinating from a psychological perspective in a multitude of ways.

 

It's fascinating to watch customers who've had a sense of disappointment from past EA titles fall for it all over again.

It's fascinating to watch EA shamelessly gut customers for money when they know damn well it tanks their reputation.

It's fascinating to consider a game was knowingly pushed to release while using an engine not designed for this type of game at all.

It's potentially fascinating to see how this will all be addressed and resolved.

 

 

 

This, for me, is on par to if, for example, you saw a high wire circus act where someone's walking across a thin line in a way that should seemingly be impossible, and you're just fixated on watching it either to see how it'll finally give way or how on earth they'll succeed. Or as another analogy, maybe you see a boat taking on heavy water but it manages to stay afloat in a way that seems downright impossible to you, so you watch to try and figure out how this is possible and see if it finally sinks or miraculously manages to make it.

 

 

Sorry to disappoint, but no, I wasn't literal about the popcorn. It's just news I wake up and check daily, right alongside with any other news stories I check up on daily.

And yeah for me the most fascinating part ATM has to be the possibility that....allegedly this game uses a game engine that was used for Sim City before DRM was massively unpopular. In short, it's not secondary and not ideal as it focuses on online capabilities, when the goal was a game that focuses on simulation and has no online portion of its gameplay. They essentially made a racing game using a FPSer engine or the like, just as an example. Now...wouldn't there be somewhere down the line where someone says is can't happen and can't be salvaged and they need to mass delay the game and remake the assets on a more suited game engine? And yet that didn't happen and they shouted "full speed ahead" all the way until....this. That astonishes me. That a million dollar company with plenty of intelligent workers could be so negligent to let this happen to a game, let alone their BIGGEST money making franchise (or one of them, not sure how it ranks).....I find that downright astonishing. I mean I could be wrong on some of that, but that's just one little aspect where this fascinates me.

 

Like I said, it's fascinating to me from a psychological perspective. Just all of it. So I'm watching and waiting to see what happens. How people react, both within the company and within the consumer base.

[oblomir]

It's fascinating to watch customers who've had a sense of disappointment from past EA titles fall for it all over again.

 

I really doubt any of those metacritic zeroes actually bought the game.

[Longknife]

 

It's fascinating to watch customers who've had a sense of disappointment from past EA titles fall for it all over again.

 

 

I really doubt any of those metacritic zeroes actually bought the game.

Why?

 

Of course there's always those kinds of people who 0 or 10 a game without having played it for strange reasons, but what I mean is are you suggesting metacritic is not an accurate estimate of the quality of the game? Yes there are bogus reviews, but they go both ways. One of the highest rated 10 ratings is absolutely LACED with sarcasm as he calls EA god's greatest gift to mankind. So while ultimately I agree, I don't see what difference it makes.

[Nepenthe]

what I mean is are you suggesting metacritic is not an accurate estimate of the quality of the game? 

I hope you're being sarcastic.

[Malcador]

Shame too, was looking at getting this for my sister.

[Gfted1]

Right or wrong, I absolutely use Metacritic as a contributing factor in deciding to buy a game. If its 80 or below I wont even bother reading the game description.

[Lexx]

Right or wrong, I absolutely use Metacritic as a contributing factor in deciding to buy a game. If its 80 or below I wont even bother reading the game description.

This way you miss games like Alpha Protocol, by the way.

 

I think AP is one of my most played games of 2010. I played through it like 7 times in a row.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Lexx

[Longknife]

 

what I mean is are you suggesting metacritic is not an accurate estimate of the quality of the game? 

I hope you're being sarcastic.

 

 

 

We're talking about an industry with a Doritos pope and you want to claim a website with reviews written by consumers isn't useful.

[Guest Slinky]

Yeaah I would trust metacritics user reviews just as much as opinions on youtube comments...

[Longknife]

Yeaah I would trust metacritics user reviews just as much as opinions on youtube comments...

 

 

I just find it astounding we're talking about an industry that's undeniably corrupt and we're just gonna sit here and scoff at reviews written by average joes and consumers not being credible.

 

Alright then, let's all wait for IGN's incredibly credible review of:

 

"It's utterly terrible.

9/10"

[Guest Slinky]

To clarify, I haven't either given any weight to "professional" reviews in a long time.

 

Metacritic just happens to be a bag of pus where haters and fans vomit their opinions for all to see. There might be occasional good-ish review but I rather just have a look of some gameplay from youtube and form my own opinion watching that.

[Longknife]

To clarify, I haven't either given any weight to "professional" reviews in a long time.

 

Metacritic just happens to be a bag of pus where haters and fans vomit their opinions for all to see. There might be occasional good-ish review but I rather just have a look of some gameplay from youtube and form my own opinion watching that.

 

 

It's k, I got this.

 

 

I believe I've found a credible gamer who can tell us if the game is good or not:

 

[DarthDeven]

i'll join to watch The Sims 4 fail,EA needs a hard lesson to not mess with his customers and to not ruin franchises
i already predicted Simcity fail months before it was released
let's be honest here,EA has ruined every game developer and franchises that they got their hands on because of their greed and needs to fail in order for the game industry to regain its original soul

Edited September 3, 2014 by DarthDeven

[Hurlshort]

Completely disregarding user and critic reviews seems just as foolhardy as completely buying into user and critic reviews.  It is perfectly possible to read through that stuff with a critical eye and get a good idea about how a game will fit your interests.

[Longknife]

Completely disregarding user and critic reviews seems just as foolhardy as completely buying into user and critic reviews.  It is perfectly possible to read through that stuff with a critical eye and get a good idea about how a game will fit your interests.

 

 

Exactly. Several of the bad reviews I saw were self-proclaimed Sim-fanatics who would detail people on how long they've been into the series and how many expansions they've bought before calling the Sims 4 horrendous and reminding everyone of EA's 24 hour refund policy.

[AGX-17]

Is it online multiplayer only like the recent(ish) SimCity rehash?

Edited September 3, 2014 by AGX-17

[Guest Slinky]

Completely disregarding user and critic reviews seems just as foolhardy as completely buying into user and critic reviews.  It is perfectly possible to read through that stuff with a critical eye and get a good idea about how a game will fit your interests.

 

No and yes. Someone who disregards the opinions of others can still make his own mind from other sources such as gameplay videos, yet the one who buys it all doesn't probably even have a will of his own. But I fully agree with the latter part.

 

I don't personally need to hear the opinions of others as I can most often easily tell is a game something I would enjoy playing after reading the discription and having a look how the game actually plays. And as someone who buys very few games every year I don't really need to search new games to buy, for that reviews are likely pretty good.

 

Edit: But if I see everywhere warnings how a game that I am interested in has critical problems, of course I will heed those.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Slinky

[Longknife]

Is it online multiplayer only like the recent(ish) SimCity rehash?

 

 

To my understanding it was intially planned to be just like SimCity, but after the DRM backlash that plan was scrapped entirely and the game was retweaked to go back to the old offline standard.

 

HOWEVER the game was NOT removed from the multiplayer and online-focused engine that it had been developed on thusfar. The result is that the game is rather lackluster partly because the engine is so limited and not designed to cater to everything past sims games have been about. For example, teenagers, elders and adults are all the same exact height and all house lots are 100% flat and the same altitude. Small little quirks like that have popped up and as I've said, you have to wonder if they just spent like a year developing a game on a limited engine and never thought to say "yeah this isn't gonna work."

[Humanoid]

It wasn't until I needed to look up the top console games for platforms I knew very little about that I really understand why Metacritic is the big thing that it is. A few years back I got a 360 for non-gaming purposes, so I thought why not get a few games for it? Unlike PC games, there's not much discussion of console games on this forum, so the only obvious places I could look were places like IGN and Gamespot for questionable "best X games for 360" articles, or just look up Metacritic. Likewise when I wanted to buy a 3DS game as a gift for some family members.

 

 

As for the Sims, the character height thing sucks, yeah, but it's only slightly less sucky than previous titles in this regard I guess. Having 100% of teens be 100% of the height of 100% of the adults isn't meaningfully less immersive than 100% of teens having 90% of the height of 100% of the adults. But the lot and foundation design is a lot more disappointing because it actually is a meaningful regression of a half-solved problem (joining parts of a house with a foundation to parts without them was possible only with cheat mode enabled in TS3, and the method to do it was exceedingly awkward, but it worked well enough once accomplished).

 

It's a shame that over the course of 15 years or so, 3D games have yet to crack an elegant way to handle dynamic character height. No game I know of has adjustable actor height but also allows for reasonable animation for interaction between characters, it's very much an either-or situation. Or it can be extra suck like say, Skyrim, where you have neither customisable height nor any complex animations that justify the static height, making it extra-odd that there's a fixed height modifier depending on race.

[Malcador]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=882344 has a pretty good take on it

[Longknife]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=882344 has a pretty good take on it

"Classic NPC Sims - There is no babysitter, burglar, police officers, repairmen, repo men, bartenders, aliens, or firefighters. Think about that last one for a second."

 

 

 

Wat

[Bokishi]

I'm actually digging it so far. Sure it doesn't have all the extras like a 100gb DLC complete install of Sims 3, and has some questionable ommisions that even a mobile Sims game has, but I look at it like trimming the bloat and focusing on the core game, which is the social dynamics, which has been drastically upgraded IMO. And the addition of multitasking, and mood swings. The Sims themselves also look improved, they're not chubby looking and resemble people better, literally anyone can be recreated in this game ( there is that same height limitation tho).

[Humanoid]

I tried the character creation (which is available as a demo) and it is pretty robust and fun to mess around with. It is one area of the game that's largely being praised anyway, so hey. Few quirks to get used to - mainly where to click on the face to adjust a particular facial feature but happy happy happy that slider hell is gone.

[Bokishi]

the last Sims 3 expansions were getting kinda stupid anyways , I mean traveling to the future to socialize with your great grand kids ; like seriously? Years of pilling different expansion worlds on top of each other , and the long loads to go to each one, ugh the whole thing needed a rewrite

[Humanoid]

Oh absolutely, the Sims 3 runs like a crippled slug even on a dream machine, no upgrade, whether CPU, GPU or SSD even does anything meaningful to its performance. It was like that from the very beginning though, before any of the expansion pack bloat. A case of the programmers falling way behind the designers I guess.

 

I still like it though, and prefer it more or less unconditionally to its predecessors. So I'm on that side of the Great Sims Schism I guess. I imagine my sister who's a Sims 2 die-hard would take far less issue with TS4's omissions.