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Every Sims 4 Expansion, Ranked From Worst to Best

the sims 4, cats and dogs expansion

5. GET TOGETHER

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Every Sims 4 Expansion Ranked From Worst to Best

The biggest thing that stands out about The Sims 4 Get Together expansion is the new ability to create and join Clubs. Special menus let you choose what age and what personality traits a sim should have for them to join your group, letting you fashion hangouts for nerds, hipsters, free-spirits, jocks, and whatever archetype you could think of.

Special icons appear over the included sim’s head while in a group, with the group leader having a crown and being in charge of what the group gets up to. You can select what activities the group can participate in, and also make limitations to how they act, like never being mean to each other or never being able to start a romance within the group. The more you interact with your Club, the more point you will receive to get social bonuses or unlock special things for your group like secret handshakes or set a vibe so your sims feel certain emotions whenever they are together.

Besides this new ability, not much else of Get Together has a lot of substance. There is a new neighborhood Widenburg that is one of the prettiest maps for The Sims 4 so far with European aesthetic on an island setting. However, the layout of the environment focuses on encouraging club house building for your sims, when this activity can be done on any neighborhood in The Sims 4.

As for new items, there a few special ones to mention like walk-in closets and natural pools, but all the other cosmetics and building items are pretty basic and center around themes like pub, arcade, and dance club decor. The expansion also offers a new DJ Mixing and Dance skill, but there is not much you can use those skills for besides showing off to other sims at a party.

Get Toegther is by no means a bad expansion, it just happens to be the weakest in terms of gameplay variability and cosmetic item inclusion of all the five currently released.

4. CITY LIVING

Every Sims 4 Expansion Ranked From Worst to Best

The best part of City Living is by far the new map that comes along with it. San Myshuno offers so much gameplay-wise besides just a new city-themed area, and playing in the new neighborhood can sometimes make The Sims 4 feel like a brand new game.

In City Living, you can build your dream apartment anywhere in four different areas each with their own vibes, including Spice Market, Arts Quarter, Fashion District, and Uptown. The costs in rent differs according to location, and the new cosmetic items for decorating apartments are some of the nicest items The Sims 4 has to offer when creating colorful, and unique rooms. You can even refurbish a warehouse into a trendy, hipster hangout as if you’re in your very own 90s New York sitcom.

City Living also offers festivals, Social Media and Political career tracks, a singing skill, basketball, street art, fireworks, and more. Another great inclusion in this expansion is new small shops and events change daily right outside your apartment, making it so you don’t have to wait for a loading screen to see what the city has to offer.

While it is a great expansion, a few more beat out City Living for being the very best expansion The Sims 4 has to offer.

3. GET TO WORK

Every Sims 4 Expansion Ranked From Worst to Best

If focusing on your sim’s career paths as they climb the corporate ladder is your favorite part of The Sims, then you should definitely invest in the Get to Work expansion.

Get to Work has several new, fleshed out career paths with tons of new items to help your sims succeed in them. Referred to as active career paths, you actually take control during a sim’s time at work, when usually they simply disappear for a few hours off-screen with a few vague choices available as to how they spend their time on the job. The three new active careers include Doctor, Detective, and Scientist. At work, you will have several tasks to compete during the day and the more you compete them, the more promotions you will get.

However, the best part of Get to Work is the ability to open storefronts and sell whatever you wish to eager customers. You can simply increase the price of items from the Buy Mode, or make your own items yourself to sell them for a higher profit. All past creative skills like painting, woodworking, cooking, and more now have a new purpose for your sims, and the new baking and photography skills mean your sim will have even more options of customized things to sell.

Aliens also return to The Sims in this expansion via the inventions you can make with the Scientist active career or through the Rocket Science career as well, and just like in The Sims 2 they can abduct and make male sims pregnant (or be a “host” to an alien baby in The Sims 3) or can be befriended into your households for some wacky scenarios.

There’s tons of new items and gameplay options in Get to Work to explore, and is sure to make your base game feel all the richer.

2. SEASONS

Every Sims 4 Expansion Ranked From Worst to Best

Seasons is the newest expansion for The Sims 4, releasing in June 2018 and offering one of the meatiest content DLC inclusions to date.

All four seasons are cycled through as your sims age, with tons of new activities, items, interactions, and more for each specific one. The temperature and weather changes outside, with a thermostat available to keep things comfy indoors. Just the inclusion of changing weather makes The Sims 4 feel so much more eventful and the passage of time will have more meaning for both you and your sims as well.

A ton of other fun stuff is included as well, such as Patchy the Straw Man who is a scarecrow who can come to life and help in your garden, weather machines to make nature do your bidding, and special weather dependent clothing. Another big part of this update is the inclusion of holidays like Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. Each holiday has special decorations, characters (for example, Santa and Easter Bunny), and themed parties.

There is also a new Gardening career with beekeeping activities, a new flower arranging skill, and several new deaths linked to a sim dying due to seasonal affects like overheating, freezing, or getting hit by lightning.

Seasons feels like it should be included in the base Sims 4 game all along, as almost every other element of the base game is elevated when you include the variability of seasons and weather along with them.

1. CATS & DOGS

Every Sims 4 Expansion Ranked From Worst to Best

Of all the five expansions currently released for The Sims 4, you’d really feel like you were missing out the most if you didn’t pick up our top pick Cats and Dogs.

As the name of the expansion indicates, in Cats and Dogs your sim can create or adopt their own pets who age alongside their owners with their own customizable appearances, personalities, traits, and more. They can be trained to learn skills and can develop relationships with sims in the process, and sims that train animals will also increase the new Pet Training skill.

Along with the animal inclusion, Cats and Dogs also gives players a new Vet career path who can even open their own vet clinics from their homes with special equipment to look after the animals like a vet podium and exam table. The more pets you look after, the higher your vet skill will become, making helping animals easier.

Another inclusion in Cats and Dogs is a beautiful new neighborhood called Brindleton Bay. In it are tons of new areas related to pet ownership, such as dog training parks, cat parks, and more.

While this expansion doesn’t offer as much content as some of the others, you really do notice the lack of pets in the main game, almost to the point where Cats and Dogs should be considered a necessity for the base Sims games. There is still more that could have been added, such as horses, birds, snakes, and mice that are included in The Sims 3 Pets expansion, but Cats and Dogs still takes number one spot due to how much the simple act of owning a pet can add to the game itself.

About the author

Haley MacLean

Video games are a true unification of art and technology, and I'm amped to be able to write about them. Lover of all things Nintendo, obsessed with narrative driven games, and hopes the couch co-op genre makes a return soon. BA/BJ/MJ from University of King's College, NS, Canada.

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