The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle Review
Summary: The Sims learn to be Eco Friendly in this new expansion to the Sims 4. Will you help the environment or will you destroy it? The options are plentiful so check it out.
4.3
Fun
If you are anything like me with your gaming habits, then you probably play a lot of games but you have maybe one or two that you seem to always come back to and sink hours into. For me its Destiny 2 and Final Fantasy XIV, however there are times when I’ve got to take a break from and unwind a little. I need a game where I can shut my brain off and let the game world happen around me. For me, that game is The Sims 4 and I recently got my hands on the newest expansion Eco Lifestyle. After spending some time with this game I couldn’t help but wonder if this was some big troll. I did enjoy this expansion but mostly because I probably didn’t play as the creators intended but I did look into what this expansion had to offer.
So with this expansion I decided to start off by making a new character to explore one of the 3 new regions in this expansion. This is where my brain started to think the creators where just low key trolling. New the hairstyle and clothing options in this game just seems flat out ridiculous to absolutely horrendous. Apparently when it comes to being eco friendly it means gauged ears, sides of heads shaved and odd hipster beards. Not saying any of those things are bad by any means, it just seems odd that NOW is the time EA decides to give out these looks. It’s like they sat around and though “Oh man lets go hipster AF with his new eco expansion, because you know… only hipsters care about the environment.”
Anyways I digress, the real meat and potatoes of this new expansion is the pollution system that they’ve added to the game. Depending on how much energy or water your sims are using, can affect the environment around you. You can actually see a change in the neighborhoods by smog rolling in and eventually acid rain. There is even a meter for the neighborhoods to show different levels of pollution so you can plan how you want to go about saving the environment or destroying it if that is your cup of tea. Just saying it was pretty fun looking for ways to crank up the pollution in my neighborhood to see the reactions of my neighbors.
So with all that in mind, now we can look at all the different things you can do as a sim to be better to the environment. Now I’m not going to name them all because I would be here all day. This game really does add a lot of items in the game that can make things better or worse for your sim. There are windmills, solar panels, hanging gardens, bug keeping, and a host of other eco friendly things in this expansion. Even the windows and doors you have can have some kind of effect when dealing with making a greener home for sim. They’ve even added really cool ways to make tiny homes with the addition of ladders and even building homes from shipping containers. This expansion got a massive dose of DIY style looks and it really works.
Along with all of these new items the game also added in a community shared lot. This lot starts out as nothing then can manifest into something from a community garden to a market place. It really just depends on how your sims vote in the new Neighborhood action plans. Sims can vote on what they want to happen with the lot and you can use influence points to convince the sims to vote your way. It’s always fun when you get to manipulate sims to do your bidding. This is a pretty great feature but I would like to see them do more with it in the future.
As I said in the beginning I felt like this game was just setting things up for trolling because I couldn’t help but spend most of my first few hours in this expansion looking for ways to wreak havoc, but once I buckled down and focused on the expansion I found it to be a lot of fun. My only real problem I see is the price tag as it sits at a whopping 39.99 U.S. and 49.95 AUD in Australia. You do get a lot in this expansion but that price is hard to swallow. If you love the Sims then you will love this expansion. I’m giving this expansion 4.3 stars out of 5.
About the Author
Jeremy Carr Jeremy Carr is a DC fanboy at heart and an avid gamer. He also claims that he is NOT addicted to Destiny 2 and firmly states "I can quit anytime I want..." Jeremy loves bingeing Star Trek The Next Generation and keeping up with comic book news. He enjoys indie comic projects and fully supports projects featured on Indiegogo.
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