Revisiting 23 May 2020, 10:26

author: Julia Dragovic

There's More to The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle than Sexy Times in Dumpsters

I played The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle. I hugged bugs and garbage bags. I slept in a dumpster, I ate in it, used it as a place to cultivate the body and soul; it was a source of livelihood. It was my personal IKEA. And I could slide ladders like firemen!

The review is based on the PC version. It's also relevant to XONE, PS4 version(s).

Let's start with the most important thing: yes, the woohoo in dumpsters in The Sims 4 Eco Lifestyle is real. Second, we do get a new way to kill sims. And third... ladders. Now we can move on.

I don't know about you guys, but I've been missing real challenges in Sims for a long time. Sometimes, when I run the sim family at maximum acceleration (with my finger firmly slammed into the three key) for four days in a row, I swear I'd pay in pure gold for a system of difficulty levels. So that one of these add-ons finally offers a bigger – and longer! – challenge. Increase likelihood of death, increase the needs, increase the rate of divorce, and make kinds extremely problematic. You know, the full experience. Make houses crumble (because how many arsons can a house sustain?), make them perish in a sea of lava! And where's the repo guy? I want him to take all my belongings!

Anything! I know mods can help, but come on – Sims aren’t cheap, and the price should go hand-in-hand with quality. It seems, though, that my feeble prayers were heard over at Electronic Arts, and that the upcoming Eco Lifestyle DLC will bring a ray of hope. It's gonna be okay.

Provided you don't hate trees and clean air, of course. End even if, it doesn't really matter. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Garbageman simulator: 10/10

Recently, I've been increasingly finding games that really resonate with me (that is, about 3 in 2 years). I like them a lot, and I fall into the cogs of the great machine of capitalism. Maybe I should have higher expectations. Or maybe – oh, terror! – my taste is rather ordinary. Or maybe I'm just a mass-produced unit in the hive of today's world, and it's easier for me to find the things I enjoy?

I pay attention to be more conscious about stuff that affects ecology, I try to live less-waste, and it's pretty easy. I try to avoid plastic within reason, my toothbrush is bamboo, and I cut animal-based products as much as I can. I self-educate and support simple environmental initiatives. I'm most definitely a prime representative of a girl in her late twenties, living in a large, western city. And there's one more thing. I dive dumpsters.

I salvage stuff from the street. It's no easy stuff as I'm also a germophobe, but still, I furnished most of my flat with stuff I was able to get for free through a local facebook freegan group, and sometimes right off the street by curb shopping and garage sales. I salvaged pretty much the entire tableware, from fine, vintage plates, through cute coffee cups, to good wooden chairs and a table. I have stuff I collected in a few different countries, and each find is like a new, completely free, and absolutely unique loot box. I'm not disgusted at all. It's pretty much a hobby at this point.

So you can imagine that Eco Lifestyle, the dumpster-centric, eco-friendly DLC to one of my favorite games (20 years together, it's one of my longest relationships) has landed on fertile soil – I'm a model sim (it's an existential conclusion, finding of Heidegger's self). And I immediately have two conclusions: first, it's a prima-sort garbage truck simulator. Second, as I was discovering the novelties of this DLC, I couldn't help feeling that the creators were having a jolly good time figuring out all this stuff. And there's a lot of stuff.

One of the things you can do, for example, is introducing a sort of open-sexuality community. From sex in the dumpster, through growing meat in a pot – cruelty-free – to freeganism, a system of zero-emission houses, and machines that can be used without being plugged in. You can make soy candles, which – holy cow! – they burn out after a day. There are machines to process literally everything into parts needed to create different objects, and fuel to power the media. There are Sims with paper bags on their heads (I won't tell you what's that about), there are solar panels, windmills and soda factories. There are ladders that let you slide down, there's great industrial furniture, floors and wallpaper made of organic materials, absolutely beautiful woodwork and new apartment blocks. We can move windows and doors as we please. I could go on like that, and still wouldn't list all the novelties. You'll discover a lot more minor changes in the course of the game. Especially if you have other DLCs.

City simulator: 7/10 – too easy

With the DLC, we get a new world – Evergreen Harbor. It's divided into three districts, each with a different extent of pollution. One covered in smog causing the Sims to feel unwell and cough. The second is neutral, and the third is green and idyllic. We will be able to degrade or repair each one by increasing either industrial or green ecological footprint. How?

For example, by small decisions like choosing particular materials of walls and floors, decor, and utilities. Each item carries information about what ecological footprint it has. If we take care of the ecology when building our house, the green footprint will increase and sims will live a better life, so to speak. If we opt for industrialism, they'll start coughing and their well-being will deteriorate.

Once we've built and furnished the house, we'll have some influence points. We'll get the very first points from Knox, a local green activist. We can use them to vote for local initiatives, or to get NPCs to vote for projects close to our agenda. It's a well-designed mechanism, geared towards community building – you'll get more points for making new friends or for actively participating in projects you voted for. And so it goes.

The ugly, post-industrial district will suddenly grow in lush greenery, the rubbish scattered everywhere will disappear, more spaces will be available for leisure activities, and you will gain all sorts of benefits. Auroras will appear in the sky, and there will be places for creative sharing by all residents, like a spotlessly maintained garden. You'll have to forgive me for not exploring the consequences of devastating Evergreen – as a person living my entire life in a city that has a huge issue with air pollution, my first priority was getting rid of the smog. Remember, though, that both options – green and grey – have different pros and cons, and as the game progresses, you'll see what you care more about: money or a sustainable environment.

At the end of the day, I have to admit that the fight for clean air was way too easy. After a comprehensive, ecology-driven overhaul of my home, my footprint was green as grass, and an aurora started tentatively blinking in the sky after 30 minutes. During this time, I also managed to hold one of the votes. I haven't been able to fix the whole neighborhood, and there's a whole lot of project proposals. Cheer up!

We need to talk about the ladder.

The developers stress that in the new addition, they want to give players the opportunity to play against something. This is still quite a new idea here – we've already seen it in StrangerVille, but it wasn't as prominent. The changes introduced by Eco Lifestyle can be activated (and deactivated) in all worlds, globally increasing the difficulty. What are some of the obstacles? It took me a while to figure out what I would get influence points for, and to get used to working without connections to new devices. By the time I collected enough dew to shower my four sims, they'd become walking dirt. To add insult to injury, sim-mother kept starting fires – some materials are more flammable, and I get the sense something is wrong.

Remember the cockroaches from the first part of The Sims? Maybe I just kept my sims clean for the last two entries, but I haven't seen them since. After, like, a decade, I stood on the front lawn again, and there were rats running around. Passing an initiative also doesn't instantly yield results – you'll have to wait for a bit to see changes happen.

And that's just the beginning. I was also able to enter my house by climbing a ladder, and I sleep in a decent enough bed (though it still remains true that there's no beds in Sims that'd be both fancy and comfortable), among vertical gardens and meadows, behind green curtains of creepers, in the faint glow of soy candles. In the morning, I would slide down the ladder (you can also climb down like we usually do) the same ladder, which occupied exactly one square in the building mode. The downside of ladders? You can't carry anything up or down. Rubbish included. After a week, there were already heaps of compost and waste piled up on the terrace – I had to move it myself. On the one hand, it's logical, because sims need both their arms to move up the ladder, and on the other, I'm hoping someone will change it.

Who runs the world? The fertilizer

That's right, manure. What about the garbage? Obviously, I wanted to test the possibilities of shipping containers scattered around the district. So I went for walks and... damn. This is the very first addition, where I'm really missing an open world that you could clean up, chase plastic bags, collect abandoned furniture. Keep in mind that the version of the supplement I was given access to was not the final version – perhaps something will still change. But we cannot really count on the introduction of an open world. Unfortunately, it seems that we will only get rid of waste and old furniture from the streets by passing on specific city initiatives.

When I got to the dumpster (you must first fill the one on your parcel to be able to explore it), I could sleep in it, procreate, look for food and opportunities (not what you think) and ingredients – simoleons, furniture and other things. I could also segregate waste and collect compost. After a while, there was nothing else to look for, but there was a heap of trash underneath the dumpster, so I threw it back in and I could scour all over again. Garbage has gained a lot of new interaction in this addition. There are three ways to explore an ordinary pile of dirt after repairing devices, and you can also get compost.

When an NPC annexes a container, you have to wait for them to finish. It's uncomfortable and annoying, but that's exactly how it works in real life! Well done, Maxis.

I think some of you have already begun to realize that the new death is also related to the dumpster. During your exploits, you may encounter extremely angry flies. They can overrun and kill you. That's it. To be honest, I was hoping for more. Slow death by smog or at least drowning in a mountain of garbage. Flies are a tad conventional.

Sul sul, my bug, I love you, and I will eat you!

After the official trailer was released, the internet went crazy for the chicken that the sim was supposed cuddling. It wasn't a chicken. It was a worm. In addition to soybean bushes and vertical pots for plants (and growing meat), we can also get worm farms. These quirky little houses in the normal world are meant to provide friendly space for bees and other insects. In Sims, this is also the case, as farmed insects can be fed with fertilizer, cuddled and nursed... and then turned into flour, for example, or popcorn. Yes, insect farming allows a new type of protein to be introduced into sim diet with the help of new recipes. There is also a bird house. I set it up at the entrance to admire the winged visitors. None came. None. The house is fake, don't get your hopes up.

Eco Lifestyle undoubtedly has its drawbacks – it's hard to please everyone, after all. But I have to tell you, after watching the EA presentation, all I wanted to do was fix my sim world and comb it for all the novelties. And once I was able to do that, it didn't disappoint me. The addition is as exciting like hell. Starting with furniture and the building mode, through the gameplay, and finishing with the mechanics. When Early Access ended, I was grieving for a good week.

There's something addictive about fixing stuff. I guarantee you'll want to see your neighborhoods in the best possible shape. You will make improvements and overhauls, clean and tidy up, constantly improve your parcel, and experiment to what extent you can limit the technology in the sim life. And then spoil it all and see the benefits of industrial wealth. And all this without any real consequences. I know EA can't really encourage you to do anything outside the game. But I prefer to think that any such addition changes at least a little bit of the real world.

It's officially my new favorite DLC.