The Sims 4 Get To Work is the first full expansion for The Sims 4 and adds a lot of new gameplay content for players to enjoy once they get their hands on it. For the first time in Sims history, players will now be able to go to work with their Sims and control them while they are at work. The Sims 4 Get To Work expansion pack offers 3 active Sim careers which include the doctor, policeman and scientist careers as well as the ability for a Sim to own and run a retail store. Also added in this expansion is the ability for Sims to take selfies in game as well as playable Aliens.
The Sims 4 Get To Work Trailer
The Sims 4 Get To Work Review
Going to work with my Sims is something I have been wanting to do since I first played the Sims 1 and I think it’s something that many other fans of the series have been wanting to do as well. Now for the first time in The Sims 4 I can finally do just that and for the most part it’s a very enjoyable addition to the game.
The old career jobs which are the ones that are available if you just have the base game are still playable once you get the expansion, so you don’t have to go out on the active career all the time if you don’t want to. There is now grouped options between active careers and non active careers when you choose to find a job.
The first career I took a look at was the detective career. In this career you get to solve crimes, interrogate suspects, collect finger prints, search suspects, investigate houses for clues, access the police database and basically do anything that the police would. This was my favourite career of the three as I thought that it was the most full career.
A lot of the work that you will be doing will be inside the police station, but a lot of it also happens out in the streets or inside Sims houses who have been robbed or suffered some type of crime. I felt the the world of The Sims 4 felt a lot more full when I was out and about and I got a sense that things were going on in the lives of other Sims that I did not know and haven’t met before. Other careers like the doctor or science careers are confined to the work space (apart from the alien world) but this one really gets your Sim out there and I liked that a lot. Although you do feel a sense that Sims have lives when some Sims you know come in sick and you end up treating them and that’s really nice.
I did think though as I was playing through the detective career that a really good career to play as could have been some type of crime career. I wouldn’t mind going out and being a criminal in the game and seeing what could happen, maybe I could rob the Goth’s or something. Also after seeing all the houses that had crimes in it, it may have been nice if this could happen to my Sims as a type of event and the police would come and let me know if they find who did it. But it’s not there, all the crimes seem to be contained within the job while you are there at random households. Your Sim is still perfectly safe and out of danger (no chance of burglars), it just seemed to me to be the perfect reason for burglars to come back to the series and it’s a completely missed opportunity really. The world of the game would have been so much more full if your Sims actually needed the police for something, but they don’t.
There’s a lot in the detective career to keep you and your Sim busy. Each career has a checklist of things to do each day and depending on how many of these things you do during your day, your chances of being promoted in the game will increase. Sometimes these could be simple things like taking mugshots of prisoners in the jail or just chatting and being friendly with the chief. There is also a small gym on the second level of the police station for your Sim to work out should they need to.
You can also go out on patrol and monitor the streets for crimes like littering or fighting and issue out a citation to Sims who have done the wrong thing by the law. I enjoyed giving out the citation but I found it difficult to see if Sims were doing the wrong thing. I ended up just clicking around until I found a Sim that I could issue a citation to. You can spend your time looking around for a Sim who has littered, but you really have to pay attention to everything.
Solving crimes is the better part of the detective career. It’s good fun putting together the clues you find when you walk around houses and then placing them up on the wall. Then when you go out to catch your suspect at their last known location it’s fun finding them and arresting them as well as the following interrogation. You can sometimes get the wrong Sim if you have arrested an innocent and will have to set them free. But find the right Sim and interrogate them in the right way and you’ll be able to put them in jail. Interrogations are broken up into good cop or bad cop routines and I usually chose the bad cop choices like staring at them, dangling handcuffs, asking for a bribe or acting crazy. Then I could mix it up with some fingerprint proof which I found that proves that they were there and make that Sim so anxious they just have to confess.
It’s satisfying once you solve the crime but there are a few details throughout this career that are missing that could have made it a bit better. I would have liked to know the type of crime a Sim committed. You kind of just investigate a crime and find clues, but I don’t know the story behind in it. It would have been nice if a small description was there when you start the case, even just a simple one that said a robbery or murder occurred and you have to find who it was. It seems I just have to imagine what happened there. But other than that the career is fairly solid and it’s very enjoyable.
The second career that I chose to look at was the doctor career and in this one you spend your time in the hospital and start out as an intern and work your way up and slowly gain more responsibilities. It’s a large area that you get to work at in the doctor career but it’s very repetitive once you get into it.
I felt that when I was going through it that I was constantly just greeting patients, walking them to their bed, taking a look at their eyes, taking their temperature, looking at their ears, checking for samples, analysing these samples and then prescribing some medication. Then the next patient comes and I do the same thing all over again. You also get to go and grab some coffee to keep your Sim awake as well as chat to co-workers.
When the kids come in and you spend time treating them they are all incredibly cute. There are a lot of nice aspects to the doctor career and anything to do with kids and babies is really nice. I enjoyed going to work and being the doctor but I felt that the police career had more things to do and the science career had a lot of cool items. I do like the idea of Sims having to take medicine though and getting sick as well which adds some realism to the game.
The science career was one that surprised me a lot in that I didn’t think it would be as fun as it was. There a lot of cool gadgets here and there that you unlock as you go along the career and I won’t reveal all of them but my favourite item is the ice gun which I’ll talk about in a moment.
In the science career you’ll travel to the science lab where you will be able to examine all types of crystals and metals that staff give you to look at or you find from other places. There is also a robot/machine you can talk to which can be used to make different inventions like the ice gun. There’s also the possibility that some of the staff there are aliens which are now part of the game.
Now for the ice gun. To me the ice gun was the best thing in this expansion. I had so much fun going around and freezing Sims that I think everyone in the neighbourhood must have hated what I did to them. I froze all the co-workers in the science area and everyone in the gym as well. I then went to the new retail area and froze all of the rival staff in the other retail outlets so they couldn’t sell anything and also some of their customers. I think the way Sims turn blue after they get unfrozen is funny and it’s also funny how your Sim gets a chisel to crack them open. It’s a small feature but it’s good fun.
When you get higher up the science career there is an alien world you can go and visit, although I don’t want to put pictures of it here as I kind of feel it’s a spoiler. But there is a world up there to go and explore for those who are interested. You can also get abducted by aliens in this expansion and one of my Sims actually got taken away during my playthrough. You can also play as an alien and even find aliens that are disguised as regular Sims around the neighbourhood, they’re a great addition to the game. The aliens are well designed and there are a variety of different face types to choose from as well as skin tones for them as well.
Another big feature that comes with The Sims 4 Get To Work expansion is the ability to buy and own a retail business. You can sell any items you wish in the store by simply setting them for sale once you are in the retail lot. But there are a few premade stores you can use to start off with in the buy mode such as the bakery and the clothes store.
You can spend a lot of time in this expansion building up your store in the build mode and for those who love building in the game they will certainly enjoy doing this. I enjoy it as well and there are a lot of different set ups and new items for you to put in your shop that come with the expansion such as signs and stands as well as mannequins you can dress as well.
There is a tiny retail area you can go to in this expansion which is known as Magnolia Promenade and this area has three already set up stores and one space for your own one. I say it’s tiny because what if I want another retail store? I have to knock one of the already made ones down or set a lot in one of the other world’s as a retail lot and put my store there. But I would have to sacrifice my residential lot to do so. I think 10 lots would have been a better amount for Magnolia Promenade because what if I want to get some retail stores from the gallery? Where do I put them? But nevertheless, it’s what we have.
When running your store everything can be set by clicking on the cash register. This will allow you to set a price point by choosing a markup on the products. You can either have high prices or low ones depending on your markup, but I had no issues selling the more expensive items and I’m not sure it matters how much things are priced in the stores. You can also choose to hire some staff to help you sell things and will need to pay them an hourly rate which costs you some simoleons. You can also advertise on the internet or on TV to bring in customers which costs more simoloens. Once items are sold you can choose to pay some simoleons to restock them. All the costs are reflected in a financial report that you can check throughout the day and at the end when you close your store to see your profits or losses.
I love the retail stores but one thing about them really bothered me and it was the way the Sims purchased the items. You have a cash register in your store, but the Sims don’t line up there with their item ready to buy. Instead they just stand there and you have to click on the Sims and it says “ring them up” and when you do your Sim will get out a tablet computer and complete the sale. I would have loved for them to line up at the register, it kind of makes the cash register pointless. I could just as easily manage my staff and purchase advertising from the Sims tablet, it doesn’t make sense that it’s done with the cash register really.
There are other aspects that are nice touches to running the retail store such as being able to select what uniform your staff will wear. It’s fun to create this look for what your stores staff should look like. I also liked managing staff in the store as well. You will need to sometimes give them a promotion or compliment them on their work in order to keep them motivated. Many staff of mine quit because I kept them overtime and never spoke to them. It’s important to keep the staff as they get better at selling over time and have a sales skill in their descriptions that develops over time, the higher the skill the more sales they can get, but also the more they cost per hour.
The final thing worth mentioning about this expansion is the ability to now take selfies in the game. At any time you can click on your Sims phone and navigate to take a selfie. This will put your Sim in a selfie pose based on their mood and you can take a picture. You can then use these pictures which appear in your inventory and put them on your Sims wall in their house. I love this feature and it’s very in with the times as well realistic. It’s such as small feature in the game but it means a lot. When you have a wall of Sim selfies over the course of your Sims life it does add a lot of feeling to the memories your Sims have as they go through the game and the lives that they have had.
Overall The Sims 4 Get To Work is a great expansion with so much content in there that it is sure to keep anyone busy for many hours. As far as expansion packs go for the game and I know it’s the only one at the moment but it seems to me that it will likely be one of the essential packs you may need to get. If the game launched with this alongside it I think many would be saying that The Sims 4 has an abundance of content available for players to enjoy and that’s what this expansion pack provides. While there are still things here and there that probably could have been added to make it better and it’s not completely perfect it’s a solid expansion pack. As the first expansion pack I hope all future ones have just as much content as this one did, if not more content.
