The Sims Into The Future: A Look At Gameplay

I for a long time have played The Sims franchise; I have collected all the original Sims, Sims 2 and Sims 3 expansion packs. When EA and Maxis announced that they were bringing out a new expansion pack in 2013, which would allow you to take your sims to the future and back, I couldn’t have been more excited.

EA and Maxis announced that this expansion pack would consist of the ability to let your Sims time travel into the Future.

They also added a new neighbourhood/world for you to explore and buy houses in. However, this neighbourhood can only be explored and occupied by your Sims if you time travel. I was a little disappointed when I started playing the game for the first time, as I really wanted my Sims to have a new world, which was accessible to me through the main menu and not just through time travelling.

A lot of new items have been added to the game through Into The Future, which include:

• New futuristic furniture (A sleeping pod, clothes display, an air shower, a food synthesizer, vehicles and much more)

• New clothing (very futuristic design with a lot of hard edges and bold colours)

• New skills (Riding a hover board, building bots and mastering the air shower)

As I played the game and allowed my Sims to venture into the future, I of course wanted to experiment with all the new household items. I purchased a sleep pod for my Sims to try.

The sleep pod allowed me to control my Sims’ dreams. 

This interaction was completely new to the game. I played around with making my Sims have bad nightmares, good dreams, and sometimes just left them to dream on their own. When the Sims have a bad nightmare, their moodlets become negative; such as your Sims have a nightmare about children, they will not want to interact with them for a couple of hours of their day. If they have a good dream about food, they will have the urge to cook for a while. This aspect of letting dreams and nightmares change their day made me quite happy as it was more real to life.

Next, I decided to change my Sims clothing.

I ventured into CAS (Create a Sim) and brought up the everyday clothing tab. To my horror, all the new clothes included with the pack were quite hard-edged and a bit too futuristic for me. The dresses stuck out too far, the tops were very pointy on the shoulders and generally, all of it was a bit too abstract.

I was hoping that EA had added to the present day clothing inventory, but all the new clothes were futuristic. I admit, I haven’t even used the new clothing for my Sims as I have a disinterest and disliking for them.

The addition of a hoverboard under the Vehicles category made travelling much more humourous.

My Sim started off on the board, and soon after she had got on it, she fell from it. This made me chuckle quite a bit. The hoverboard comes with a skill builder, so every time you use it, your Sims gain skill and won’t fall from it as much. I liked the idea of having a vehicle that needed some skill to use, as every other vehicle in the game allows you to just use it without having to gain skills (unless you are playing as a teenage Sim who needs to learn to drive).

There is a completely new skill and career, which consists of building Plumbots.

These bots are seen all over the new world when you travel to the future. Once again, you have to build your skill in bot-building to create the best bot you can. You can buy a Bot Station in-game, which allows you to increase your skills in not just bot building, but also building trait chips and nanites as well. The nanites and trait chips allow you to customise your Plumbots personality traits. These traits include:

• Solar Powered

• Robonanny

• Musical Machine

• Office Drone

• Steel Chef

Plus a few more. If your bot has the trait chip ‘Robonanny’, it will be able to look after babies and toddlers, taking one more responsibility off of your hands. 

If your Plumbot has the trait chip ‘Steel Chef’, it will be able to cook for you. I found that I loved getting my Sims up to the highest skill possible so they could build a Plumbot with more chip placements, so they could have a superior Plumbot in their household. I liked picking the traits for the bot too. They are an excellent help if you have a Sim family with a lot of members in it.

Personally, I think that EA and Maxis have made a fairly good expansion pack.

I would have liked to have seen more clothing for present day, more interactions for Plumbots and more futuristic items. I was disappointed with the general gameplay of it, as it didn’t add anything new apart from travelling to the future. They could have included travelling to the past, more options for skill building, or a few more interactions between Sims. I congratulate EA and Maxis on bringing out an expansion pack that was a lot more interesting than the same life expansions they had released before.

Bring some more humorous and imaginative expansion packs out!