Are you a creature of the dark or a day walker? That's the question us simmers will be asking ourselves when we create new characters in the Sims 4.
On Jan. 24th Maxis dropped another game pack and it's one I think we have all been not-so-patiently waiting for. Every Sims game series to date has given us the treat of being able to play supernatural characters, there was even a supernatural pack in the Sims 3!
When the Sims 4 dropped in 2014 without supernatural sims, people were upset but as the game has grown new fun characters have been added and now they've finally given simmers the cool treat of our first supernatural beings: Vampires!
The newest game pack is entirely geared towards vampires including a new world called Forgotten Hollow which includes a longer nighttime, coffins and all kinds of bonuses for vampire lovers everywhere. Now I know what you simmers are thinking 'Only vampires, no other supernatural characters, what a waste!' Maybe so but I like that this pack is solely vampires because it gave Maxis the creative freedom to fully flesh out vampires. That's pretty wicked if you ask me!
The game includes cool new vampire furniture and clothes, pretty standard for any Sims game pack or expansion. In addition to the standard stuff though, the game also includes a new skills system which allows players to create different types of vampires with all kinds of different powers. It's really neat! Vampires also gain Vampire levels, starting as a Fledgling Vampire and finally becoming a Grand Master vampire. Each of these levels makes your vampire more powerful and gives you more power points so you can unlock new powers!
This has probably been my favorite game pack so far, I've always been a big fan of vampires and I'm glad not every vampire is the same. It keeps the game fresh and enjoyable. I love the skills, my current vampire is named Lila and she can turn into a bat, suck the life spirit from a Sim and create other new vampires. She'll have more powers as she goes but right now she's only a Prime Vampire so she's only halfway through her vampire leveling.
Something I found interesting is this pack doesn't just include strengths, vampires must take a weakness as they move up in rank. I find this very interesting and laughable sometimes. Right now, Lila can only sleep in coffins and she can't keep human food down. Which means goodbye comfy beds and have fun blending in with humans Lila!
This pack is great and it'll keep you occupied for a few hours. I have played a lot sims lately thanks to this pack, I'm having a good time leveling Lila up and creating a coven for her. She currently has one other vampire follower that she changed over and they're great friends! There are really only a few things I don't like about this pack and it's more appearance based than gameplay related.
Vampire creation is vast like the rest of the Sims in Sims 4 but the vampire specifics are at best limited. There are only around 6 eye shades for vampire and around 4 or 5 vampire skin tones. It makes it hard to make Sims actually look like vampires all the time. It's rare I compare Sims 4 and Sims 3 but in Sims 3 vampires became paler, no matter the skin tone, and their eyes had a glow effect, no matter the eye color. I wish those things happened in Sims 4. Lila has green eyes but the Sims vampire eyes have no such color, which bugs me. I loved the way vampires looked in Sims 3 and I guess I wish Maxis did a similar thing with this new pack.
I will say that despite the small appearance drawbacks there's still some extra goodies for vampires that I'm very fond of, namely-- creating Dark Forms. Dark forms are really cool, you can make your Sim look totally different in this form and it won't effect their normal appearance! There's all kinds of extra pieces to make them look more scary and dangerous! I love Lila's dark side, she looks positively evil. What's nice too is players can choose to give their vampires a dark side or not. All you have to do is delete it in Create-A-Sim which is great for those who don't want to draw attention as they innocently suck the plasma out of the pathetic humans.
Overall I'd give Maxis a 4 out of 5 plumbobs for this game, I love this pack and I'm looking forward to adding to Lila's coven as I play!
