Score: 93%
Publisher: EA Games
Developer: The Sims Studio
Media: Download/1
Players: 1
Genre: Simulation
What’s New:
Ever since The Sims 4 came out, we’ve been waiting on a big expansion. They have been slowly releasing tidbits here and there that have been keeping me interested, but so far nothing exciting enough to really get me addicted again, at least not until now. The Sims 4: Get to Work is a huge new expansion that while on the surface doesn’t sound like much, but I think I have played more hours exploring all the new features than I have total in The Sims 4 up to this point.
As the title implies, Get to Work has added the ability to follow your Sims to their jobs, at least for the three new jobs: detective, doctor, and scientist. These are all new careers that have been added, which can be confusing if you had someone in something like the Secret Agent career before, as their levels include Lead Detective. This threw me off wondering why I couldn’t join them for work until I realized that Lead Detective was for the Secret Agent, not the Detective career. They have also added the ability to purchase a retail store and manage it however you see fit. You can purchase a retail store and hold a job at the same time, but I really wouldn’t recommend it as a retail business takes a lot of managing.
Start Your Career as a Detective:
I found the detective to be the most interesting in terms of how many different things there are for you to do. On your first day as a detective, you will be assigned a case under another officer. After you get some more experience, you will be able to take cases on your own. You will have to collect clues, take statements from witnesses, take pictures of the scene, etc. Basically all things you would expect to do, at least based on what I’ve seen on crime TV shows. After you get the clues, you take them back to the station and analyze them. All of the data you gather needs to be posted on the board. Once you have enough clues, you can put out an APB. I personally recommend that you gather as many clues as you can before you do because it’s not always easy to find your suspect. You will need to go on patrol, which I really liked, to question people so that you can find your suspect. The more you get to know about the people in town, the easier you will find your suspects. In the previous Sims 3, some careers required you to have a certain number of friends to get a promotion, which was more difficult when you couldn’t control meeting people at work. Patrolling the community, in particular, will let you meet a lot of people. Granted, I can’t promise they will all like you, but quite a few will.
I had difficulties at first finding my suspects because I didn’t know where my notebook was to check for the clues to find out what my suspects looked like, along with other details about them. Your notebook, for all jobs, is located on the top of the pop-up when you click on your cell phone. If you don’t get your suspect on the first day, you can go back the next, but you don’t get long before you are just assigned a new case. Once you do arrest someone, you will take them in to book them. You need to interrogate them to get a confession. You also need to know that once you start an interrogation with a suspect, you have to get them to confess before you end it or you will have to put out another APB and arrest someone again. In addition to all of this, you can help with booking suspects, taking mugshots, searching suspects, taking citizen’s complaints and more, all at the police station. I haven’t managed to get myself promoted to the top yet, but it won’t be long before I do. I found that it is much easier to get promoted when you are directing your Sim rather than letting them do it on their own.
Or One of the Others…:
The doctor and the scientist are similar jobs in that they both stay in the same location for the entire day. They can leave the building, but unlike the detective, they will not be sent out into the community (at least I haven’t had mine sent out yet). The doctor is probably one of the easiest jobs, in my opinion. You will need to treat patients. When you’re at the beginning of your career, you will have to do things like change the beds and mop up the floor. You will also need to transfer your harder cases to someone who knows more than you do. As you progress in your career, you will have more knowledge and skills, which means you won’t have to mop floors. As a doctor, you will meet a lot of people, even more than you will as a detective. It’s quite easy for a doctor to keep up the social skills.
As a scientist, you won’t interact with as many different people, but you do have plenty of staff to talk to so you can get your social meter up when you need to. Your job tends to be more focused on inventing things and discovering scientific breakthroughs. You get to play with chemical analyzers, robots, and more. It’s not as easy as it sounds though. My first day in the lab, I caught my Sim on fire when an experiment went wrong. Needless to say, my job meter was poor that day! A scientist will need food at work for synthesis, but you can harvest the plants there to get the food you need. I find the scientist to be the easiest overall, especially to get a full green bar without having to stay late, unless you have an accident. The scientist seems to be the only one who has accidents on the job.
Retail is a bit different from the rest. In retail, you will need to buy a store first. Fair warning, the retail stores are not cheap. The three pre-built ones range from $71k to $127k. There are three pre-made ones and a lot that you can buy over in the Retail Promenade. You have to go through and toggle all the items in the store (both pre-made and created stores) to set for sale. You need to talk to the customers and find out what they like, if the prices are too much, etc. You need to keep an eye on the customers in the store and when the customers have a shopping cart above their heads, you need to click on them to ring them up. If the shopping cart turns red, then they have been waiting too long, so you need to get to them quickly. You will also need to hire employees to help with these tasks. I highly recommend you hire employees as it takes a lot longer to check customers out than you would think. Plus, you have to restock an item after it is bought. All of this takes time to do alone. You have to direct your employees as to what you want them to do and when to do it. You will also set when the store is open and when it is closed. Personally, I find the retail store the absolute hardest to run, but I have a feeling they can be the most profitable in the end.
Things to Note:
There are quite a few things that you need to make note of in The Sims 4: Get to Work. For detective, doctor, and scientist, when it is time for work, you can choose to send your Sim to work alone or join them. If you join them, your day will basically be filled with performing the tasks given to you in the top left of the screen. If you run out of time in a day to get enough work done, you can choose to stay late once per day by clicking the timer. It’s not easy to get all three bars fully green by the end of the day! You can switch to your other characters when you have chosen to join someone at work and then switch back to the worker if you want. Every time you switch control, you will have to wait on the new location to load, which can be a pain. If you did not go to work with your Sim at the beginning of their shift, you will not be able to switch to them in the middle. If you joined them at the beginning, you can switch to another Sim and then switch back to the one at work. I have also noticed that the time that it says the Work Day ends in the top left doesn’t always show the right time. I just ignored it and went by how much time was left on the timer.
As I mentioned earlier, there is a whole lot of new content in The Sims 4: Get to Work. It feels like these additions have made it so that you have much more granular control of your Sims, at least in these professions. Before, I would have a family of five or so, which would keep me busy as I would usually have someone at home from work or school to play with. Even still, I used fast-forward on those days where everyone was at work or school. Now, I find the only time I am in ultra-speed is when my Sims are asleep. If you have one of these jobs, you can play with one or two Sims and always have something to do, which is awesome. I hope that they will keep adding granular controls to the other jobs or school. I would love to be able to follow the kids to school like I can follow my Sims to work now.
If you’re looking for an expansion that will get you jazzed about playing The Sims again, check out The Sims 4: Get to Work today!
OS: Windows XP or higher, CPU: 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 4000+ or equivalent, RAM: 2 GB, Graphics: 128 MB of Video RAM and support for Pixel Shader 3.0, Hard Drive: 10 GB free, DirectX 9.0c Compatible
