The Sims 4 first look: getting emotional with Maxis' latest life sim

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Assisting in your quest to build an optimally depressing writer-cave is a comprehensive set of updates to the construction toolset. It's far more intelligent than it has been in the past, despite looking broadly similar on the surface. You still lay out foundations, walls and furniture on an isometric grid, but the game now recognises when a walled-off area constitutes a room, and is capable of smartly rescaling and repositioning that room – decor and all – on the fly. No more redesigning an entire house because you made the kitchen one tile too narrow for the fridge you wanted.

The same attention has been paid to the Sims themselves. The new build-a- Sim tool works remarkably like the revamped EVE character creator that debuted with the MMO's Incarna expansion: an instance of parallel thinking, I imagine, where two teams of developers realised in tandem that tweaking sliders to adjust somebody's nose just isn't fun. In The Sims 4, you sculpt your character by clicking and dragging on areas on their body, which highlight as your mouse passes over them. You can make your Sim tubby, thin or gangly, give them a hooked nose or cram their eyes close together. Then, an array of other details – voice, musculature, their default walk – complete their personality.

Many of the ancillary systems that have been added to the third game over the years won't be present in The Sims 4 when it launches next year: but what will be present is a more fundamentally detailed way to enact the life of the little person you've got in your head. I'll be able to make a tiny me that does sack off to go and eat ice cream in the bath – and I suppose, on balance, that is a good thing.

Chris Thursten
Chris Thursten

Joining in 2011, Chris made his start with PC Gamer turning beautiful trees into magazines, first as a writer and later as deputy editor. Once PCG's reluctant MMO champion , his discovery of Dota 2 in 2012 led him to much darker, stranger places. In 2015, Chris became the editor of PC Gamer Pro, overseeing our online coverage of competitive gaming and esports. He left in 2017, and can be now found making games and recording the Crate & Crowbar podcast.