The Sims 4 Create-A-Sim Demo

Today I installed the Sims 4 CAS demo and played around with it a little. Here are my thoughts.

The interface was a little confusing at first. I had trouble navigating because there are no clear instructions, directions or hints at how to access the different menus for the body and head options. It's a little fussy to figure out which things on the head you can change in Detail Edit Mode and which are changeable in regular viewing. I did figure my way around after a couple of minutes though.

The hairs may look like stupid fucking lego hairs, but at least there's some variety. I'm impressed with the amount of wavy and curly hairs, something that was definitely neglected in Sims 3.

The makeup selection is okay. The blush comes off too strong with the limited colour selection and the lack of opacity slider. Otherwise, eye liners and shadows are good. The lipsticks are basic and there's just enough shine, nothing too strong like the default glossy lipstick in Sims 3. I'd like to see more makeup for dudes. There's some selection of eye liner and eye shadow, but no blush or lipstick at all.

There are a lot of eyebrows and they all look really good. Yeah.

I like the fact that there's a sizeable selection of premade facial features. They all look good, too; nothing has incredibly sharp corners in places there shouldn't be, or strange mushy shapes that don't look human at all. The premade body types are also very well done. There are a variety of body types to pick from as bases, though with a system so customizable I think there should be more bodies, at least as many as there are premade facial features.

As for the new click-and-drag CAS features, I already mentioned the fuss with the Detail Edit Mode. Otherwise, I really enjoy it, to a certain extent. While having to fiddle with a bunch of sliders fucking sucked, I feel like it was a little easier to fine-tune things that way. The click-and-drag system can be very finicky sometimes when it comes to finding the right area to click and dragging around in the right direction. I really enjoyed the new ways to customize the body, though. It's a very basic division of what can be changed, but it's a new system, what can you do.

The clothing selection is alright. Having to use premade colours fucking sucks, but what else is new. All of the clothes seem to mesh well with every body type, which is definitely a plus.

The filter feature is a good way to cut down on clutter. It's really handy for finding what you want. It's definitely a good addition to the game.

I'm not impressed with the new trait system. It's a piece of shit. Also, "Bro" is a trait? Really, EA? That's just fucking sad.

The walking styles are an interesting new feature but they're just a stupid gimmick. EA wasted so much time on this crap and it pisses me off.

The new voice system is cool. I like how you can change the intonation of your sim's voice without any of them sounding flat out stupid. The differences are subtle, but they're there. I like it.

The Gallery is a nice feature for saving your creations. You cannot save single sims, only households. You can share and download if you please, but I won't be uploading or downloading anything into my game.

All in all, I'm not sure what to say. There are some parts of it that I very strongly like, but there are other parts that are utter trash. I've got to give this one a 6/10. I liked it, but it didn't live up to expectations for me. I was really excited for the new CAS click-and-drag features (they were the only thing I was looking forward to in Sims 4), but they didn't quite perform.

Despite my iffy review, I will definitely be playing the shit out of this. Since you can save your households, this is all I'm going to need. Fuck the game, I'm just going to create a million little simmies.

I will command an army of plastic Barbie doll lego-haired Sims and we will rule the earth!

~BookyGirl17~

P.S. If you want a look at the sim I created, Marina Crash, read below the cut.

Summer Fun Part 2

Part 1 consists of all my saved game pics from mid-May to current day (which isn't as many as it sounds) and other simming things. Part 2 consists of my real life summer shenanigans.

Wow, okay. So a lot has happened since I last posted about the real world on here.

The biggest thing would be the end of the school year and the beginning of summer vacation. I finished my grade eleven year. I have survived! My first full year at my new school went amazingly well. I'm actually excited to be returning in September, which is definitely a pleasant feeling. I'm really hoping September doesn't come too soon, though, seeing as I still haven't started really digging into college and university programs yet, since I'll need to start applying in fall (eek).

After that, my ease into summer was a whirlwind. I attended a Pride celebration on June 21st, which was a total blast. I met some awesome people and it was so amazing to see so many queer people in one place! Same goes for the next event, Toronto Pride Prom. Rose asked me to the dance in the cutest way possible. It was on June 23rd. I was incredibly anxious for the first hour or so, but after I loosened up I talked and danced with Rose and others and had a blast. The 25th I went to an event that was part of the Bent Lens Pride celebrations at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The event was In Conversation With... Laverne Cox. I am a HUGE fan of the Netflix show Orange is the New Black where Laverne Cox plays a transgender inmate, and Laverne Cox's trans activism is so spectacularly amazing. She's a goddess, I swear. The whole experience was out of this world. She just fucking went to town. It was beautiful.

The weekend of June 27th - 29th, I went to a camp with my Rangers group. It was a tent camping trip, a co-ed with Scouts on a Scouting camp site. It was real tent camping, not like that Girl Guides shit. Empowering young girls? Fuck, Guide camps are such baby shit. I had no idea. Scout camps are actual camping. We had no electricity or indoor plumbing. We had to share an outhouse for the weekend. It wasn't that bad actually, but it still really sucked. One of the girls in my group brought a fucking hair straightener to camp. She seriously fucking did. It became a running joke through the weekend. We're never going to let her live that down. Our tents were also fucked up. They're the area's tents, so all of the Guiding groups in my town use them. Whatever group had them last fucking fucked them up. One of them had some fucked up busted-ass zippers, there were no pegs (used to pin the tent to the ground), and one of them was missing the fucking fly (the thing that goes over the tent to protect it from rain)! We ended up having to tie a tarp over it using some surrounding trees.

My latest weeks have been occupied with my summer job. I don't believe I've ever mentioned my co-op here, but I did a co-op during second semester (a co-op is a co-operative education course where you are given a workplace placement and you attend that work placement instead of attending classes for that period of time [2-credit co-op takes two class periods, 3-credit is three, 4-credit is all four of your class periods aka your whole day] and you must complete a certain number of hours to gain your credits [2-credit = 200, 3-credit = 300, 4-credit = 400). I was placed at a children's art studio helping with their after school group an doing some special work with their kids on the autism spectrum. This has lead into a summer job helping at their summer camp. The kids are all super sweet and my supervisor and co-workers are all really great. I adore this job! It's going to lead into a part-time job in September teaching art classes in the studio.

Otherwise, I've been using off-days to play Sims and hang out with Rose. That's been my summer so far!

Have a lovely summer!

~BookyGirl17~

That's all my real world stuff. To read about my simming adventures, click here.

Summer Fun Part 1

Part 1 consists of all of my saved game pics from mid-May to current day (which isn't as many as it sounds) and other simming things. Part 2 consists of my real life summer shenanigans.

PREFACE: My sincerest apologies to Iona and the rest on the LIFE modelling competition forum. I'm sorry for dropping off the face of the earth like that. During that time I was overwhelmingly anxious about the end of the school year and was unable to submit the first assignment.

My summer vacation started roughly three weeks ago, and boy has it been a hell of a ride so far. I won't get into real life stuff here though. This is my Sims post. Let's hop right in.

I spend a good part of my time playing Sims. I finally purchased University Life and Seasons on sale, so I am now totally happy with the state of my game's expansion packs. As I play around more with University, the campus is getting pretty fucking boring, but I really enjoy the other features, objects and CAS items the game added, so it's totally worth it. Seasons is glorious. I love having seasons in my game. The festivals are kind of blah though, I rarely visit them.

I've worked a family up to the introduction of the third generation, but now the fucking game file's glitch and it won't save any more. I have no idea what fucked it up, but I'm so fucking frustrated. The same file also hit a glitch where I couldn't click for my sims to fucking walk anywhere, and I saved, quit, and reopened my game and the problem was fixed. There's also this random glitch where I can't click and drag an item from my sim's pocket to place it in the environment. So this file's fucked up, but I am so goddamn attached to this family, it is incredibly frustrating that I am now unable to save.

I have almost made it to the same point in a second files as well, and that file has not seen many glitches, if any at all. This was the first file I created after installing University and Seasons so both of the founders, Vanessa and Rayyan Ahmed, have university degrees. Vanessa has a Communications degree and Rayyan has a Science & Medicine degreee.

Before I get into the pictures, one more thing: Today I received an email from Origin informing me that I have been selected to access the free TS4 CAS trial. I will be posting about that as soon as I try it out.

Pictures below the cut!