The Sims 4 is likely to be tootling alongside merrily, however it’s now over ten years previous and followers are getting more and more impatient for readability on what’s subsequent for the franchise – significantly given EA’s considerably confounding communications on the matter. Amid all this, one other six minutes of EA’s new The Sims “recreation idea” have now leaked on-line, fuelling all kinds of disappointment as followers ponder a actuality the place the way forward for The Sims is, in reality, only a cheesy wanting cellular recreation.
To recap, EA first started discussing its “subsequent technology” Sims recreation, codenamed Venture Rene, again in 2022. This, many assumed, can be The Sims 5 – till, that’s, EA introduced Venture Rene wasn’t The Sims 5, that The Sims 5 wasn’t taking place, and that no matter Venture Rene was would as an alternative co-exist alongside The Sims 4. It additionally teased a bunch of “cosy video games, social and collaborative based mostly gameplay, [and] cellular narrative video games” coming underneath The Sims banner, earlier than revealing Venture Rene (no matter it was) would start playtesting quickly.
Within the six months since then, playtest footage has sporadiaclly leaked on-line, leaving followers largely unimpressed. And it appears unlikely the six minutes of newly surfaced gameplay footage (as noticed by PC Gamer) will change that, given the tasteless visuals, countless reward-incentivised to-do lists, and front-and-centre forex focus feels extra like a free-to-play cellular pockets squeezer than a very “next-generation” The Sims recreation.
EA describes the playtest – formally titled Metropolis Life Recreation With Associates over on Google Play – as “small elements of a bigger recreation idea”. And the newly shared footage focuses on the identical multiplayer-enabled plaza location we have seen in quite a few leaks earlier than, solely now festooned with much more garish free-to-play model window dressing as gamers stroll round, strike up conversations, and hand out just a few muffins. It isn’t particularly inspiring stuff – and given EA’s refusal to make clear the character of the undertaking, it is unclear how horrified followers ought to really be.
All this, in fact, comes as developer Krafton’s extremely anticipated The Sims competitor InZoi launches into Steam early entry. And whereas I wasn’t particulary impressed with InZoi throughout my time with it final month, it is unlikely anybody’s going to be dazzled by something resembling EA’s Metropolis Life Recreation with Associates when Krafton’s recreation is round.
