 This video was sponsored by Audible. Time to take a look at The Sims 4, the greatest virtual human fish bowl of all time. Just like all the character creators before, we will be looking at the base game with no mods, and in this case no DLC either, because I don't have $2,000 that I really hate having in my bank account right now. But I'm sure the main fundamental systems in Sims 4 are more or less going to be the same with or without the DLC, and it just gives you more stuff. This is also going to be a long one, so strap in. When you begin a new game, you will be brought to the Create a Sim, where the game prompts you if you want to start making a character from scratch, or alternatively if you'd like to use the Create My Story system, which will give you a few questions to answer and the game will generate a character for you based on your answers. Whichever one you choose, you'll then have a random base character to start with. At the top here, we have The Sims Personality. This includes their first and last name, and their gender, which has a little dropdown for more specific gender identity options. We have Age, which you can pick from a toddler all the way up to an elderly person. Note that a Sim created through My Story has to be at least a young adult or older, so if you want to make a child, you'll have to start from scratch. There's a set of walking cycles, selection of voice styles including pitch, and relationship status with any of the other Sims you create in the same household. Then down here, we have The Sims Aspirations and Traits. These are the goals and personality traits The Sim will take on as you play the game, and they'll give bonuses to certain activities they do in the game, like making better food if they are a Culinarian, or earning more money if they're a Gold Digger. Working towards these Aspirations will give you special rewards, usually additional bonuses that pertain to certain Aspirations, like being extra skilled at something like painting really well, or guaranteeing the next thing The Sims says is going to cause a riot, or being really good at casting spells. Yeah, there's spell casting in The Sims 4 now apparently. Don't ask me, I don't even know These traits are The Sims interests and finer personality quirks, as certain ones will lead to Sims having certain tendencies, like how an active Sim will want to work out a lot, and they'll get sad if they don't for a long time. These traits can also lead to unique conversations and interactions with other Sims and objects in the world, say like if two Sims share or have complementary traits where they can have unique conversations. You can have up to three traits to start out with, and your Sim will gain additional traits as time goes on. However, children will have fewer traits the younger they are, so here a toddler starts with one from a unique set of traits that are exclusive to the toddler, and a child starts with one and a teen starts with two, because children are less complex creatures. And you can randomize these traits as well with this little dice here. Now from here on out, I'm only going to be focusing on the teen to elder range of this Sim creator, because most of these things apply to the child creator as well, but I wanted to mention that up front because there are items and options that are different for kids than they are for teens and up, and those include certain aspirations, traits, limited body adjustments, and exclusive clothing options. But as far as the young children are concerned, that's as far as I'll go because I don't want this thing to be three hours long. So from here, let's move on to the face options. By selecting the Sim's face, you will be zoomed in and given a few things to work with. Firstly, over here are a bunch of categories pertaining to the head, including a bunch of face presets, which itself includes a wide range of skin colors and even some crazy options, like blue and green and red and various shades of gray. We also have finer details like face imperfections and even teeth of all things. We didn't have hair styles, facial hair for males, hats, accessories, makeup, basically everything else you would expect from a face creator. The main face adjustments are done through the Sims's take on face sculpting, where you can select a highlighted portion of the face and make adjustments based on your mouse movements. This is also how you can prompt specific options for that selected part of the face. As once you select a certain part of the face, you can then see here that there will be a set of options for you to choose for that section. So if no amount of morphing of the nose is getting you the quite right shape, you can also have this to work with as well. And this goes for just about every major part of the face, the eyes, the ears, the nose, all that stuff. And this thing that's been ominously floating here this whole time is the detailed edit mode, which allows you to get even more specific with your face morphing. Selecting it will zoom even closer into the face and allow you to do additional morphing options that weren't initially available from the base zoom in case you are interested in being extra precise with your face shapes. And with all that, we can move on to the body. Just like the head, after selecting the body, you have a few presets to work with. And after selecting those, you can go in and make additional fine adjustments. To start out with our body options, we have over here a muscle and fat slider, both of which you can adjust to change how large or skinny your sim is with quite a bit of range to it. Additionally, you can adjust specific parts of the sim's body. Similar to the head, you can select and morph individual sections. For example, I can change the head size, shoulder width, back and chest posture, chest size, thigh thickness, calf size, basically any part of the body, including the butt. You also have a bunch of body tattoos, several for each different sections of the body and some of which can be recolored. And now on to the clothing. Your sim can wear a variety of different outfits, whether it be a combination of tops and bottoms, or a full body dress, or anything else, you have a large selection to choose from, almost all of them with additional color options at the bottom of their little icon here. There's also accessories, which covers things like gloves and socks and bracelets, and then finally shoes at the very bottom. With all that covered, I think it's about time I point out this filtering system. The Sims 4 allows you to filter various subcategories of items based on a variety of things, from their color, to their material, to their intended outfit category, to which DLC pack they're from, etc. In case you are looking for a very specific item, you can even change or remove gender assigned clothes too, in case you want a masculine outfit that you want your feminine sim to wear, or vice versa, or anything in between. And if you don't feel like going through all that trouble, there's also style looks, which are pre-made sets of clothing with a handful of color options. Now once you have a look you're happy with for your sim, the customization doesn't just end there. We also have these little icons up here, which are different types of occasions in the game, whereupon you can have different outfit styles for the sim to wear for that specific occasion. Whatever I pick for the sim to wear for the workout fit, for example, that's what they'll change into when they go to work, including hair, clothes, accessories, makeup, basically anything that doesn't require plastic surgery. And that goes for all of these other options as well. So like when they're working out, or when they're going to bed, or when they're going to a party, all of that stuff. And there are some pre-made style looks for each of these as well. Now down here we have a few more options. We have a randomized button, which you can filter which parts of the sim you do want to randomize in case there's a certain part that you like, and you would like to disable it and randomize everything else, like just their outfit, for example. There is an undo as well as redo button in case you make a few mistakes and need to go back, or your mistakes are fine and you want to go forward. A randomize from gallery button, which will pick a random sim from the online gallery, and it includes a little info tab on who the creator of the sim is, and if you'd like to download it to your own personal library. Speaking of, if you're particularly fond of a specific household you've made, you can save it to your library, where if you so wish you can edit or use them for other playthroughs or merge with other households. Additionally, you can upload your household to an online gallery, where the whole world can get thirsty at your incredibly attractive personal harem. Things in the gallery can be downloaded by anyone so long as the person downloading has whatever DLC that was used in the creation of these sims in that household. There! Is that everything? I think that's everything. I've gone over my notes so many times that I'm fairly certain I covered everything, but I still feel like there's something I'm missing. But you know what? Whatever. If I did, it's probably super insignificant anyway. Let's just look at the bad. First of all, I have some itsy-bitsy tiny gripes with the UI. I dug pretty deep into Fallout 4 for this, so I think it'd be unfair if I didn't bring it up now. But the face sculpting is a tad imprecise because of the fact that there are no sliders to work with. It's nice to be able to morph one-to-one with your mouse movements, but sometimes you can't quite get the right adjustment, in which case a slider with the ability to make some deliberate adjustments would come in handy, even if it was optional. Like if I wanted to move this nose up but then I accidentally make it a little bit too long because of my imprecise mouse movements, I think a slider would definitely help mitigate my human error and my inability to move this nose up or down without moving it sideways. Second, the highlighted parts of the face, although more clear than Fallout 4, still take a certain amount of finesse to work around. It's not always clear what parts of the face is adjustable and it takes a second for the full highlight to come into view. A toggleable option to show all possible adjustment areas like in Black Desert Online would be nice and convenient, in my opinion. Third problem with the UI, this side menu I feel is wasting a lot of horizontal space. This entire right side over here is not used at all, so I think more of the options could be displayed with this empty space. It would make navigating and selecting the options a lot nicer instead of having to scroll so much just because we only have two columns to work with. Minor nitpick I've started to take into account on behalf of people with long beards. There's a lack of long beards. In fact, overall the facial hair options are pretty lacking. There's a few variations of facial hair, but not a lot of facial hair styles. That said, I do not own any of the DLC, in which case this issue might be fixed with purchasing a certain DLC pack. I don't know if they added more facial hair options, so if they did, this criticism is relevant to those who have it. So if that's the case, this is only valid nitpick of the base game. Let me know if that's the case. Final complaint, there is no height slider. In a game about simulating life and how diverse and different each person in life can be, you'd think there'd be an option to make your sim short enough that they'd need someone's help to reach the cookies on the top shelf. It means everyone's going to be pretty much the same height for the most part. Heck, even the teens are just as tall as the fully grown adults. Which I mean sure, some teens are prone to do that sometimes, with crazy growth spurts and all, but I feel differing heights is one of the main defining physical traits for a lot of people. I mean, why do you think so many people put it in their Tinder profile? However, in the words of Yahtzee Kroshaw, these are the complaints of a tiny, irrelevant mouse clinging to the back of the roaring lion with a jetpack. Because as hard as I look for ways to improve the sim's character creator, there's really not a lot missing that I would consider fairly important. What's there is so much good already and any additional improvements they could make would just be more window dressing on this already incredibly dressed window. And I'm going to go over just how much good there is. Firstly, these personality options are great. There's a lot you can do with your sim to really give them a unique identity, from choosing their body frame, to their age, to their walk cycle. There's a lot to mess with to really set each sim apart in more ways than just on the surface. Some minor praise, facial features and accessories are not mutually exclusive to themselves or one another. It's super nice that you can toggle wrinkles and moles and freckles and makeup all together if you want, considering so many games don't allow you to have that luxury. Also, the background music is nice. It always has been in the sims, honestly. Next, there are so many gosh darn adjustment options for the face. This face morphing system that I praised before, I'll praise it again, gives you lots and lots of control over how you want everything to look. So many fine tuning options is really nice. And the best part is that this applies to the body as well. There's so much that you can do here. I might have complained about the lack of height slider, but damn, how much control you have over the body shape and size and everything is just top notch. The fact that you can change individual sections of the limbs and sections of the torso and all the other stuff is like, holy cow, there is a lot of control and they do not hold back and how much variation you can have in body shapes. It's among the best in the business. Now, I want to look at the hair real quick. Okay, let's get rid of this filter so that we can have all the all of the hairstyles available to us. There's a lot of hairstyles, right? Which is already worthy of praise, but this extends to pretty much everything. There are so many options to choose from. Tons of glasses, tons of earrings, tons of shirts and jackets and pants and skirts and socks and shoes and everything you can wear on your wrists. It's all a wonderful quantity of items and odds are you're going to find something in there that's just right for the look you are going for. But what is quantity without quality? And I'll say Sims 4 also has this. The character model, although not necessarily the most polygons and high texture resolution is stylistically very pleasing to look at, which is subjective and the aesthetic they're going with goes a long way in hiding some of the graphical shortcomings the game has in order for low-end systems to be able to play it. Basically, I think it looks good. A different kind of quality I'd like to give the Sims props for is the individual items they have for you to customize your Sims, which are really cool too. Like you can wear a hot dog suit if you want or this sleeveless jacket or, well, EA has partial rights to Star Wars so you can be a boba-fet if you want. The variety and crazy kinds of clothing is fantastic. Continuing to praise the outfit customization, it's so nice that you have so many options that can be adjusted, let alone with how many options there are to choose from. You can pick their hat, their glasses, their earrings, their pants or underwear or socks, shoes, gloves, wristbands. How many games let you do anywhere near this much mixing and matching? It's usually just reserved to head, shirt, pants. But no, not in Sims. We're a life simulator and we're gonna let you pick every single piece of your wardrobe puzzle. Final thing I'll say about the clothing, I promise. I think the highlight for the outfit customization is the freedom it gives you in that everyone can wear anything. There's a slight grievance I have with a lot of video game outfit customization in gender exclusive clothing, where a lot of times a character cannot wear a specific item because it just can't be worn by their gender. Arbitrarily. Like, example. In Pokemon X and Y, there's a vest item that boys can't wear. Like, what? Even by gender norms, that doesn't make much sense. In Sims 4, however, they take it to the logical conclusion that all clothes should be able to be worn by everybody. So if there's a guy's shirt that you want that fits your girl, Sim, you can have her wear it. And the same goes for male Sims, wearing what would otherwise be considered women's clothing. And that is an incredible amount of freedom. Lastly, I want to appreciate the UI just overall. Functionality and style and effectiveness. Aside from the weird wasted space that they have over here, this thing is so incredibly user friendly. Everything is just a thought away right at your fingertips with some very clear icons right where you need them. Selectable preview means things only show up on the character once you select them. All these subcategories to each option, the filtering system, the undo and redo buttons, nothing is ever in the way and everything is designed in service of the user to make creating this character as fluid as possible. Never in the entirety of justing things in this game have I ever felt inconvenienced by the UI in any way. And I think that's something worth all the praise in the world because a good UI can make or break your character creating experience. Having a lot of options is nice and all, but having a UI make it painless in adjusting those options is a whole other accomplishment that never gets enough credit. So I will always, always praise good UI. And this is some damn, damn good UI. Conclusion. There's a reason the Sims is the go-to game when it comes to listing the best character creators in video games. It's got body diversity, it's got fine detail adjustments, it's got style, it's got functionality, it's got options, it's got freedom, it's got just about everything you can ask for in a character creator. And it is a personal favorite of mine. You know what's a personal favorite of mine? Being entertained by enjoyable stories that are inferior to my own experiences. But I'm too busy slaying great creatures threatening to imbalance the ecosystem to be sitting around being inactive. So luckily there's a service that can beam those stories directly into my ear holes via today's sponsor Audible. Audible allows you to listen to a massive library of audiobooks so you can inject the soothing sounds of whoever's narrating into your brain imagination while you're doing other important things like cooking food, hunting monsters, bullying the handler, or best of all while you're taking five hours creating a character and a video game character creator. Every month you choose one audiobook along with two Audible originals to listen to and best of all if you ever decide that you'd like to spend your money elsewhere you get to keep whatever audiobooks you have in your library FOREVER! It's like an MMO subscription except you get to keep playing when it runs out. If you're looking for my high quality taste recommendation have a listen to Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. It's about magic and wars in a miserable land where the chosen one failed and thus plunging the world into a state of totally effed up. If you enjoy interesting magic systems and or are a nerd who could fit into most lockers that one should be perfect for you. Go to audible.com slash joe cat or text joe cat to 500 500 and start listening with an exclusive 30 day free trial. One free audiobook of your choice and two Audible originals for absolutely FREE! And now you know how to multitask. You're welcome. This has been Character Creator Critique. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.