I am on a bender right now, so I’ll slowly start to review (almost) every Sims 4 expansion. The ones that I own, at the very least. I have been partaking in a self-imposed 100 Baby Challenge, but added completionist elements to it in order to spice it up. (All Aspirations, Collectibles, and maxed Skills on one Sim.) Because of this, I am having to use pretty much all that every expansion has to offer in one single save file. This save file is years old now and is on the verge of black hole collapse, but it’s still standing even if it’s got wobbly knees. I will not be starring these reviews though. As much as I would love to have a 3-star middle finger looking graph on my profile, I really just don’t want to muck it up with a ton of DLC expansions.

Anyways, Get to Work? What are you, my mother-in-law?

Ah, the very first expansion in a long line of never-ending add-ons. The Sims 4 was known for having quite the rocky start with a pretty bare bones base-game that was lacking heaps of things that were eventually added in updates later. Get to Work seemed to be a call-back to The Sims 2 Open for Business and The Sims 3 Ambitions, which offered gameplay features for the sickos that get their thrills from working behind a cash register. Get to Work adds on to this by also introducing active career paths like playing as a Scientist, Doctor, or full-time Bastard.

I actually do really like this initially since most Sims careers are rabbit-holes. I can go to work with my Sim and watch them do home-wreck affairs in the office with the randomly generated neighbors that look like they fell out of a blender before coming to work. It’s got a shelf-life though. There’s only so many samples I can analyze, or patients to scan before I get bored. However, you get promoted a lot faster by gripping the bull by the horns and just doing it yourself. It’s just that after a long time you kind of realize it’s eating up the whole day… like real work. The Detective career expands on this a little bit by allowing you to go to crime scenes, but soon you kind of realize that the culprit is just always spawned into the crime scene before everyone else and you know it’s them everytime. It’s funny though because you can release the prisoners for no real reason. I don’t know why you’re in the slammer bro but I want to get home early tonight so go on, GIT!!

I think the lack of an aspiration is what disappoints me in particular though. You would think there’d be a few that were attached to the careers they added, but nah for some reason. Without that there wasn’t really any need for me to pursue these career paths that deeply. I’m not gonna spit at added gameplay elements though. I play The Sims for the life simulation after all, so even if I don’t particularly have an interest in curing Sim cancer, I can at least appreciate that I have the ability to do so. I can see why people would enjoy the routineness of the tasks you’re given on the job. Plus, you can also just send them to work without going yourself and it’ll play as normally as it usually does.

This pack also introduced several unique collectibles though and also Aliens, which are what I would consider to be a staple to The Sims. The aliens have some diabolical social interactions, like erasing the entire memory and relationship panel of a targeted Sim. They disguise themselves as humans and the only real way to discover the truth is by seducing them and finding it out after the fact. They sometimes randomly abduct you in the middle of the night while you frantically try to cancel out the interaction. They will impregnate your husbands!! Absolute menaces to society, but I love them anyway.

Other things: Magnolia Promenade is one of the worst towns in the game, but not the worst. Only 4 empty lots meant for retail properties, so it just doesn’t breathe any sort of life from it. I find it so odd that there’s buildings drawn onto the map where other empty lots could have gone. I guess it’s nice that there’s a designated area to put your retail store instead of using a lot in one of the other neighborhoods though. I haven’t actually dabbled into the Photography skill yet, but it’s funny to fill your walls with horrid photographs and be reminded of them every time you enter Build Mode.

Also, baking! So long Hamburger Cake, we’re having Rainbow Gelatin tonight baybeeee.

It’s honestly not half bad for a first expansion, but in hindsight it’s also not that impressive either. They use a lot of these gameplay elements in future expansions with careers that are more varied with better rewards. There are a lot of expansions like this though, which I’ll get into when I get to them. You’ll experience parts of them once and then not really ever again. If you’re looking to expand your game through DLC, there are better packs that will give you better bang for your buck in my opinion.

not sure how i feel about this one. hard to judge the very first expansion pack that came out nearly 10 years ago. like, the game is just sooo different now!

the active careers are fun i guess (and sadly we never got any others that were quite like it) but honestly repetitive as shit to me. i only ever really play the doctor one because i like the hospital lot. but it is really annoying having to follow your sim to work every single day to progress their career. forget it if you have other sims you wanna do stuff with!

the retail stuff is a good inclusion but i find it mostly annoying to play with. i think it's because you basically have to put a small living quarters in the back of the store to make it worthwhile. otherwise you're just sitting through too many loading screens going back and forth between home and your store. i actually have a mod that makes any residential lot a retail store and it's SO much better. the mod also makes it so you have to actually restock stuff like perishables and craftables (cakes and paintings for example) instead of clicking the sign that pops up, so it feels more challenging and realistic. i'm basically saying the retail stuff is a good idea but the execution of the gameplay missed so hard i need mods to make it enjoyable.

i often forget aliens come with this pack. they seem so standard to me in a sims game. i love playing with aliens and i love the customisation of them in the sims 4. you can make them blue or green or purple with all kinds of eyes and ears, you can basically make different 'species' of alien which has never been seen before in a sims game.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/HuFe/list/the-sims-4-add-ons-ranked/

The first ever expansion pack was overall pretty solid. It came with 3 fully developed careers, the ability to open a store, and aliens (including a tiny but cool alien world). There's also a tiny ass neighbourhood but who cares. And due to the game introducing a hospital, you can now see how the babies are born. However, the most dissapointing thing is that you can't go to the hospital when you are sick (like the pets do in Cats and Dogs). When the sims are sick they get some ugly stains in their skin and they feel uncomfortable, nothing more serious than that, and you have the option to order medicine from the computer to make it go away (instead of waiting like 2 days), and that's it. Dissapointing.

I played a bit of all the careers, and they are cool at first, but they get boring after a while because you simply micromanage a single sim doing the same shit over and over again (and sometimes they give you stupid tasks like "eat something!", is that part of the job description?). It would be nice to have the option to get a promotion without forcing the players to go to work with them a bunch of times. The scientist one is surprisingly the best, not only because there's a "twist" at the end, but because all the cool stuff you can create, like the freeze ray. I use the freeze ray all the time, I love it.

The stores are a pretty nice distraction, with some creativity you can have fun with it for a while. I made a cozy plant shop, and plants are cheap and they don't make any money, but that made the game feel more realistic, I enjoyed the struggle.