The Sims 4 has been with us since 2014 and has since seen the release of two expansion packs, two game packs, and four stuff packs. If you bought every piece of downloadable content for The Sims 4, including the digital deluxe edition, you would have spent an absolutely absurd $230 on the game so far, and that’s not even accounting for taxes.
We haven’t even seen the last of ’em, since there are probably lots more DLC drops to come. But this should come as no surprise to anyone. The Sims series has long been known for its absurd pricing schemes which somehow still manage to rope in every demographic of gamer out there, easily making the franchise one of the all-time best selling series in video games. So, what do you get for what is nearly the price of a brand new console? Well, you get:
- Two new traits: Dance Machine and Insider
- Two new skill lines: Dance & DJ
- A new town: Windenburg which houses the Chalet Gardens, the Bluffs, and Ancient Ruins
- A new aspiration: Leader of the Pack
- Over 120 Create a Sim items
- New food and drinks, walk-in closets, DJ Booths, Dance Floors, Arcade machines, Dartboards, Foosball
- The Nude outfit 😉
- Bar nights & happy hour (Ghost, Knight, Ladies, Singles, Guys nights. Alien and Bear nights if you have Outdoor Retreat and Get to Work as well)
- Clubs to join and create
- 300+ Build/Buy mode objects
So has all this DLC and the latest expansion pack given fans of the previous games a reason to jump into the latest iteration? Or should they wait a little longer until there’s more to do at a cheaper price-point?
The new Get Together expansion invites you to explore the new Windenburg’s venues and breathtaking vistas. Building a home on the water shores of this European inspired town is a joy thanks to the inclusion of nearly 360 objects to use in the game’s build mode. These items mostly center around the new town’s theme and offer a nice aesthetic appeal that feels truly distinct from the base game’s IKEA-esque furnishings. Lots can now be made to have a touch of historical class to them and the whole process is as seamless as ever, reminding us of the intuitive and powerful build mode improvements introduced with The Sims 4. Relocating, rotating, and even pulling and pushing rooms has never been more useful, and the community has already taken to sharing some charmingly medieval looking Tudor homes and castles on the Gallery, the game’s internal community hub where you can download households, lots and rooms. If you’re not the creative type, this hub is a lifesaver and does wonders to populate your town with vibrant sights and characters.
Windenburg’s cobblestone streets and lively locales motivate hermit Sims to get out on the town and shake their tail feathers with the new Dance skill line at the numerous bars, dance clubs and beach parties. Unless you’re a lone wolf, the whole process is merrier with friends, so you might want to join one of the brand new Clubs before you send your Sims out there. Clubs are the biggest new feature added with this latest expansion pack and they bring with them a level of customization and player empowerment that these games are known and loved for. You can opt to join an existing club and serve as a loyal member or perhaps plot to overthrow the leader and take control. Or maybe you just wanna make your own.
The stock clubs revolve around classic archetypes. There’s the Avant Garde club, appropriately named, whose members enjoy drinking coffee and reading fine literature. If it’s too slow for your Sim’s tastes, maybe join the Spin Masters and level up in the new DJ skill line? Or maybe Dancing is more your pace, in which case you’ll want to join the new Partihaus club and tear it up around town, engaging in dance battles and synchronized dance routines with your crew. There’s a club out there for most Sims, but if you’re an oddball or just want to start your own cult, then Create a Club is definitely for you.
Joining existing clubs is fun and all, but the real joy is in making one. Sims 4’s Create a Club tool has wonderfully encompassing reach, allowing you to set the do’s and dont’s of members, club outfits or color scheme, and gathering place. The pleasant surprise is that said do’s and dont’s are selected from a list which includes most game activities and actions. So you can require members to fight all elders on sight, for example, while being funny to fellow club members. Not your style? How about getting your cult club together in the park late at night for a naked bonfire dance party and a night of Woohoo in the bushes? (Yes, seriously.)
Still not impressed? Maybe you’re more the practical type, in which case you may want to create a club whose members run around cleaning up and fixing broken items. Again, the variety of choices and combinations is astounding. You could be out minding your own business with one of your Sims and witness your fellow townies engaging in some truly bizarre and hilarious activities. The experience depends on how much effort you put in to populate your town with conflicting rival or friendly clubs that also come with perks. You can buy the perks with points from club gatherings where members engage in “do” activities together.
This feature is without a doubt the biggest change made to the game with Get Together,, but is it enough?
At this point, players have a choice between two expansion packs, 2 game packs and extra packs. Most people can’t afford to buy every piece of DLC released for these titles, so if you had to choose between them this is what you should know.
At $40, this feels a little too pricey for what it delivers. The previous expansion pack, Get to Work, offered a whole new aspect of gameplay in the form of running your own businesses or even following your sims to work as Doctors, Scientists or Detectives, and guiding them through their daily work duties. This was a long requested feature fans have been begging for for years and its nice to finally have it in the game. Oh and did we forget to mention that Get to Work even let you build a rocket ship and go to space? Compared to Together, Work emerges as the clear and undeniable superior. The fact is that once you’ve joined a club and had your share of outings with them there’s just not all that much left to do with respect to new content. Yes, the new town is wonderful and the build/buy and Sim creation items are sorely needed if you haven’t bought a single stuff pack yet. But what this expansion pack adds in terms of gameplay and things to do is very limited when compared to its predecessor.
Get Together seems to boil down to being an enhancement and fine-tuning of the social aspects of The Sims 4, but those were the strongest features of the game to begin with. The new multitasking system, the social moodlets and improved interactions really helped define this sequel as superior (in these aspects) to Sims 3. However, 4 took huge steps backwards for the series by removing the open world and chopping towns up into little separate hubs, all divided by load screens, which fans lamented. It also did away with the custom coloring and pattern creation tools which came stock with The Sims 3, which helped make the game feel like there was much more choice and content than there actually was. Why the developers opted to make an expansion focused on the game’s strengths is a mystery, especially considering that many players are waiting for the game to expand its systems and the things they can do. There aren’t any pets or interactive seasons, which bring with them a myriad of activities to do while simultaneously bringing the world to life. It seems as though players will have to continue to wait.
The new town is so beautiful that it makes forgetting about the open world feature’s removal all but impossible. It’s incredibly frustrating to be restricted on where you can and can’t build, as well as the fact that you follow your Sims jogging around town, or go exploring and sight seeing; instead being relegated to boxed in lots with clear borders. The distant buildings and walkways taunt you, standing as mere backdrops which you cannot interact with. While there are new “natural water” pool options along with diving platforms and associated moves, you still cannot create lakes or natural ponds for your Sims to swim in or to decorate your homes.
If you’re a loner, odds are you won’t want to join a club, which coincidentally makes you miss out on the biggest addition this expansion makes. But that seems silly for a $40 expansion. Even Outdoor Retreat, the smaller game pack, feels more valuable with its genuinely exciting vacations and slew of camping related activities. It adds to the game world and expands gameplay in an interesting, new way. And again, Get to Work also offers more to a wider spectrum of players than this new pack.
Ultimately, Get Together stands as an amusing expansion for those Simmers who love to get out and about, dancing, DJing, socializing and partying all night long; this is just the obligatory “socialite” expansion pack that comes with every Sims game. If that’s not your cup of tea, you might wanna sit this one out or maybe pick up another pack for cheaper. So to answer all you Sims fans out there who haven’t already been won over by the improved build mode and multitasking and have been asking “is it worth it?” about the Sims 4 since release: the answer is still no.
This post was originally authored by Ahmed Khattab.
Published: Dec 17, 2015 11:46 am