Overall, The Sims 4: Get Famous is a fantastic expansion pack that brings a defined goal to Sims 4 gameplay. Working your way to the top through various gigs until you’re a superstar is a beautiful rush. The amount of thought and steps you have to put into the process makes this expansion complicated, yet fun. It certainly still has that Sims 4 groundwork to the process, but the feeling of accomplishment, or failure, is a bit more defined in Get Famous.
Dear readers, I have something to confess. First, I have just built a PC for the first time for my family this past week. Can you believe that? Yeah, everyone was right, total ‘PC Master Race’. Second, I have never experienced The Sims before. I have always wanted to but never made the time. It’s not because of the idea of The Sims is tough to swallow, because it’s not, rather I have heard that giving into The Sims, much like the dark side of the force, will mean you are consumed by it. Having been through the Sims on and off the past week or so, I can confirm that is, in fact, the case. Now, I’m Sith Stevens that plays The Sims.
All semi-joking aside, I now have a complete understanding of why this game is addictive as hell. Having created the perfect Sim in John Smallberries, it has been a journey and a half trying to get Smallberries to live life to its fullest, while at the same time trying not to piss off my roommate. The task hasn’t been easy, but it has been productive. Now, judging the base game, I’m highly impressed how far this series has gotten. While I haven’t played it in the past, I have been very much aware of it as it has progressed. I have to be aware of it. I run this confounded site.
Anyway, the graphics, the world, the details of being able to do pretty much whatever you want is impressive. I’m shocked by the girth of it all, but also commend the good folks at The Sims Studio for diving into this world and making it something that truly simulates quite a few aspects of real life. For example, the first interaction with my roommate was her making me food, having a great gibberish conversation with me, and then going to bed. She left all the dishes of food out for me to clean up, which is fine because she made the food, but knowing that I had to do tasks like that made The Sims feel like, well, simulated life. I spent the first part of my Sims existence cleaning up the kitchen and living room. It was so gratifying in the most OCD sort of way.
Again, I could see myself spending countless hours in this world, which bothers me a little bit, but it’s also an aspect I respect. It’s a huge world that has funny consequences, and I can completely see how people can be emotionally attached to this game, thus not being able to break away from it easily. It didn’t take long for me to ‘need’ to take care of my Sims, so I can imagine how wrapped up the long-term Sims folks get with their games. The game’s design causes this, through mini-tasks and asking players to focus on their Sim friends and surroundings, which is probably why this series is so damn good.
You know all this, though, so let’s move onto the real reason we are here.
Get Famous
The new Get Famous pack released this past month (November) and added the ability for your Sim to live the life of a celebrity, if you can get there, of course. You might be thinking to yourself, how much fun could that possibly be? More complicated fun than you can imagine is my answer. Since living in the world of the Sims requires you to achieve certain attributes to live successfully, or unsuccessfully depending on your Sims demeanor, Get Famous requires certain ‘choose your own adventure’ attributes to progress ever so closer to becoming famous. The trip along the way is an absolute blast.
The first step in the game is to figure out how where you’re going to live. As real estate is at a premium, kind of like in Los Angeles, you have to start low to build your empire. As you progress through the expansion and gain money and power, you will be able to upgrade your humble abode to make your pad more swinging for your lifestyle. As it starts out, it’s a total shit hole of a place, but it’s good for the price and location you’re given.
Once you choose where you’re going to be, you then start performing smaller tasks to build your Sim up. Your character has to meet certain goals as you interact with people and perform tasks before you can get your career started. For example, the first gig that I ran into was a Salty Suds Commercial. It requires me to be a level 2 Charisma before I can even think about participating in my first audition. To get my charisma up there, I had to interact with my neighbor, who you wanted to chat up for a good portion of the day, build up charisma through action, then call my agency (you can choose who represents you) to set up the gig. Once you hit that level, you take the gig, and you try to move towards your careerintover so slowly.
As you progress through becoming famous, you will be given choices along the way. What choices you make, how you choose to react around friends/family/fans will dictate how far you go in the industry. For me, taking on this game manually was the way to do it. I know that you can let your Sims live out their lives on their own, like some freaky Sims child and you’re the Sims parent, but having the ability to control their actions will help you in this game. It will certainly keep you on the path to stardom.
The process of getting famous gives you definitive goals in Sims 4: Get Famous. I know that you gain those on your own through other random actions, but knowing that you have to accomplish certain steps, and knowing what those steps are, creates a motivating factor to keep playing. It’s a defined journey, which is different from just playing Sims 4 straight up. Instead of just having a random open world experience where you can watch Sims live their lives, you can control aspects of your Sim and build their career towards something great, which you have to maintain. The mere fact that you have a goal to play towards, one that was well designed, makes this experience fun. I think that was one of the reasons I didn’t play Sims 4 and below prior to this moment because I like games with definitive beginnings/endings. I’m not sure why I’m built that way as a gamer, but I am built to need somyouring more than just open world.
Anyway, all the rules of Sims 4 still very much apply to the Get Famous process. You’ll still need to respond to people, still need to take care of you Sim in every possible way, and you’ll still need to sleep/eat/shite when you’re asked to do so. The Sims Studio devs did a superb job of integrating all of the above into the Sims 4 flow. The added goals of doing things right to get your wealth and fame makes for a fun time. This game is probably something I’m going to get lost in once this review season comes to an end. The fact that I can play it on a Macintosh makes the experience even nicer. I don’t know if you know this, but Mac doesn’t have a lot of games. I’m sure it’s not because of the shit GPU…scratch that, it’s the reason. The Sims Studio folks, bless their hearts, just made Mac gaming relevant to me.
Enough of my jibber-jabber.
Overall, The Sims 4: Get Famous is a fantastic expansion pack that brings a defined goal to Sims 4 gameplay. Working your way to the top through various gigs until you’re a superstar is a beautiful rush. The amount of thought and steps you have to put into the process makes this expansion complicated, yet fun. It certainly still has that Sims 4 groundwork to the process, but the feeling of accomplishment, or failure, is a bit more defined in Get Famous.
