The Sims 4: Adventure Awaits Expansion Pack Review (PC)
Summary: Adventure Awaits does not live up to it's name. Adding small nudges to lots of areas of the game, it doesn't quite know what it wants to be and doesn't manage to succeed at any of it. This is unfortunately not an Adventure you'd miss out on.
3.1
Lackluster
The Sims 4 ends the Summer with yet another expansion pack, following up packs like Businesses & Hobbies or Enchanted by Nature, Adventure Awaits promises getaways to camps, fitness retreats, romance competitions and more, making for an interesting premise. It promises to introduce new systems like venues, where you can set schedules to create new and better experiences for your Sims’ vacations, and introduces all sorts of objects and mechanics for kids specifically. The execution, however, is lacklustre. I was looking forward to the Adventures that may await me, but was left disappointed.
Adventure Awaits feels like the weird brother of the Expansion Pack released earlier this year, Businesses & Hobbies (or rather, Businesses & No Hobbies) whereas this one does introduce a few interesting skills like Archery, Papercrafts, catching bugs, playing with an imaginary friend, a whole playground and more. It introduces a new venue system, similar to the one introduced in Businesses & Hobbies, which let you turn any lot into a home business, set tasks or activities for people to do there, and earn money. It’s the other way around with the new venue system here. Getaway Venues let you create schedules, list activities, set rules like an “elimination competition” to create your own version of Love Island, but instead of making money like in Businesses & Hobbies you’re paying for it.
This is the new system’s main flaw. Setting schedules is a really handy feature for practically any kind of lot. It’s an even better feature for the Businesses we got earlier this year. Except, making a resort that you want to visit requires you to pay up no matter what. There is no customisation for pricing, really limiting your options, which makes for a frustrating, convoluted, and unhelpful feature, on top of all the hoops and knowledge you have to jump through to set up any of these Getaways in the first place. This makes it so the pack’s main gameplay feature and draw is flawed, confusing, niche, and likely not something most casual Simmers will deal with, and something that’s frustratingly limited for the creatives. It’s a real dud and I doubt anything will be adjusted without the help of a mod.
Adventure Awaits’ new world is called Gibbi Point, a perfect location for a Getaway. It comes with many prebuilt lots, made by the community, and it’s starting lots and locations are excellent. The world itself is nothing too special, seemingly inspired by a mixture of America’s geysers and woodsy getaways, and New-Zealand. But overall it carries a similar look as worlds from the base game. As someone who’s more used to German or French, denser, woods this place does not strike me as much of a camping getaway. The world itself brings some new, but uninteresting festivals, which seems to be a theme for every pack these days. It has some decent points of interest like a geyser with a quest surrounding it and an abandoned mine or firewatch tower, but not much more beyond that. A bit lacklustre in comparison to other packs.
There’s a new career in the form of the Park Ranger career, new skills like Archery (which doesn’t have a lot to it, sadly) or Papercrafts are mostly things reserved for kids. A base game update added a new lot type called Playgrounds, which is perfect for all the Modular Playground equipment added in this Expansion, really letting you create entire customisable networks of your own choosing for your kids or any adults required to go after them. There’s also a new diving plank and diving skill attached to it which I quite liked, reminding me of Get Together’s Dancing.
Besides the Playground Equipment and the new Imaginary Friends, which you can turn into real Sims to join you into teenagehood when you grow up as a kid, the rest of the Build & Buy mode for this pack is lacklustre. Most of it carries a sort of woodsy self-made air that fits neither a camp or a home. A kayak or archery target is nice, but any other pieces of furniture are extremely lacking in their theming.
The Create-A-Sim items are similarly lacklustre. It adds a lot of functional clothing like vests for kayaking, swimming caps, and more, but lacks a decent theme for any wearable clothing. No Scouts jackets, proper new fitness gear or anything else, and instead just more t-shirts that don’t quite stand out from anything a different pack could offer you. It’s clothes don’t form a comprehensive theme, and none of it’s new hairstyles are worthwhile additions to your game either – I’d say.
Final Verdict
It disappoints me to have to be so negative about Adventure Awaits. I was really looking forward to an Expansion Pack focusing on a Summer camping experience in a beautiful world, but I was left with a DLC with an identity crisis. It seemed to be unable to decide between going all in on a specific aspect, or making it’s mechanics wide but an inch deep, the same goes for it’s theming in Build & Buy mode or CAS. Adventure Awaits feels like the weird other half of Businesses & Hobbies, this time focusing on the Hobby aspect and making your Sims pay for anything you’d wanna do in these new venues. The mechanics have a lot of potential but make the same mistakes as Businesses & Hobbies made earlier this year, with its strange restrictions. There’s potential for a clean-up of these two Expansion Packs to give us the best gameplay additions yet, making for a huge overhaul to how we can play and enjoy The Sims 4. Unfortunately, we’re left with lacking potential.
Adventure Awaits is a decent addition to your game if you play with child Sims a lot, letting you take them out to camp, have an imaginary friend, create playgrounds, let them practice archery, catch bugs, or kayak around with family. But where it tried to expand beyond that, like in its potential from Romantic Competitions to recreate TV shows or so much more – it ends up extremely lacking & frustrating. If we would’ve had a pack fully focused on giving kids a camping experience instead of this, we would’ve been left with a much better Expansion.