My third eye is open and it’s crying.

This pack seemed so obviously fine tuned to a mediocre experience that I’m sure someone out there might enjoy, but it’s a personal nightmare to me. There aren’t any new collections, but there sure are a handful of weird aspirations that delete my inner peace instead of inspiring it. You’d probably guess from the title, but it’s a pack that introduces the spa, and therefore tosses in everything from detoxifying tea to massages to meditation and yoga. But boy, am I far from relaxed.

Finally my dream job of re-organizing the bones of my neighbors through unlicensed massages is actually achievable, except they made it work in the dumbest way possible. You can’t outright buy a spa in the same way that you can a restaurant, so your Sim is meant to just show up and start massaging people.. just.. because they want to? Please do not tell the IRS of my grift, but there’s no shot I’m getting a W-2 for this. It’s weird in practice and also in function, since the spa has actual NPC employees working hard for their $7.50/hr. It feels like the equivalent of you squeezing behind a cash register at your local Walmart and accepting tips from the customers for letting them skip the line faster. It’s aggravating because the NPCs are actively competing for your space, when really you’re just an asshole, leaving you to constantly beg the customers to let you tickle them a bit with your fingers.

That’s honestly really it? You get the Wellness skill which gives your Sim super calming aura, I guess. They can teleport while meditating and that’s pretty goofy, but other than that there’s not much here besides the furniture. The neat thing is that apparently EA actually refreshed this pack sometime in 2021. (This is the only time they’ve done this. Probably the only time they ever will.) This refresh added Aspirations that weren’t there before and these were what I was forced to do. They are not fun because they play poorly.

It meant I had to pull off some MLM scams at the local spa by bringing people with me. Getting multiple Sims to do an outing together in this game is like pulling teeth and the spa locations have got to be the worst places out of them all. There’s yoga classes happening every 5 minutes, which distracts every Sim in the vicinity like they’ve been hit with a sonar thought wave. One brain cell, only yoga. Everyone drops everything they're doing in an instant and starts performing yoga outside even in torrential downpour. It made getting the massages I needed really aggravating. I ended up deleting the yoga mats and pondered locking all the yoga instructors into a 2x2 containment cell. I would have honestly been doing this town a service since we lost some neighbors who were forced to perform yoga in a snowstorm. God bless those poor souls.

The rewards are not really worth it because they just net you more money for performing spa work. Sir, I am a 2.2 Simoleon millionaire and you will never see me on this lot ever again. I’ll take the soothing super power though if it makes my Sim’s kids complain less while they’re around me. I’d skip this one personally, unless you’re super into granola.

I hope we see free pack refreshes more often though, but this was 3 years ago and that ship has probably SUNK. I've mastered true clairvoyance now and that is sensing when EA is trying to siphon more money out of my wallet and surprising them with a Home Alone death trap instead.

I am a charlatan, an utter buffoon. A fool in clown’s clothing, already messing up the order of my reviews. Outdoor Retreat is actually the first expansion to The Sims 4 and the laugh track that plays over my life is pointing at me in a never ending cacophony of agony. Is it that I went a little too hard on the fizzy juice or just that this is a pack that isn’t used very often?

That’s not to say that this pack is bad by any means. It’s just that the majority of its content is separated from what would be normal gameplay. It introduced vacations to The Sims 4 and a lot of what it has to offer is located in Granite Falls. This place is by far the best vacation spot in the game so far. The other two are dumpsters in comparison. I haven’t dabbled that much in the woods yet, but it’s a camping site where you can partake in bothering the wildlife and accidentally setting your Sims on fire with a fire pit. In fact, the first time I went here my Sim immediately died upon leaving so I actually believe the place is cursed by this version of Boo Boo Bear.

You could be chillin’ and minding your own business under the stars and suddenly a guy in a grizzly bear costume starts doing push-ups off to the side of your campfire, right in front of your children. The game and your Sim recognizes this person as a real bear, but he’s clearly a dude in a costume and his name is Clyde Johnson or some other randomly generated name. He’s talking to you, but he’s totally a real bear. He’s stealing from the plate of hot dogs you just made as we speak. No one knows his secrets, but he has an agenda. Either Granite Falls is the location of the Sims furry convention or this is just a mystery left in the shadows never to be fully uncovered.

There is also a hermit that you can befriend if you follow the correct paths. I haven’t met them yet and I don’t know if they’re as weird as Clyde, but what I do know is that they’re going to be the next target in my 100 Baby Challenge. They let you fish for rare fish and collect rare bugs like Snow White without the 7 dwarves. I’m going to their house literally right now and bringing the bear with me.

I’m also a bug guy, if I were a Pokémon Gym Leader, I’d let a bunch of kids kill me in the first 1 hour of the game if it meant I could be a Bug Type Leader. This expansion adds the Insect collection that works pretty similar to the collectibles in The Sims 3. Like, they kinda just spawn wherever and then your Sim comes and yoinks them. Ooo yes, enjoy your little glass hut you will now live in forever my pretty little beetle guy. They even got one for the weebs too, look everyone can be happy! I can’t attest for how hard this collection is because I still haven’t finished it, but I doubt it’s anything significant. I’ll just live in the woods for 8 Sim Weeks until I find them all. My children haven’t seen me in years but I will have this awesome collection to add to my basement.

Holy shit, it’s also 4/20 I just realized. Light up that herb baby, we got the Herbalism skill. This works attached to the Gardening skill and helps you identify plants in the wilderness. There are herbs now that are either healthy or toxic, and the only way to find out is to either eat them caveman style or train for your Herbalism PhD. Although, the toxic ones only make your Sim sick and can’t actually murder them. I don’t think it’s that super useful, aside from being able to make herbal remedies on the stove that instantly fill your piss meter or something. No longer do I have to shower when I can just drink a potion that retracts the sweat back into my glands, so I guess I would say it’s not completely useless. There is this weird glitch right now though where if you own a grill outside, your neighbors will just autonomously cook herbal remedies on it and then leave them on the ground. Every now and then I look in my backyard and there’s just piles of jars of this crap just sitting out there. I think in honor of this review I am now going to start drinking whatever horrible concoction they leave instead of just selling them. Godspeed to my Sim.

Aside from that it also adds some really nice features that you can take with you, like a tent. I can just buy a tent and sleep anywhere I want now and not a single other person can say anything to me about it. I got shit to do and my Sim is tired but I’m not leaving and coming back; whip out that bad boy and have a snooze right in the middle of the restaurant. Combining this with the reward trait you get for clearing this pack’s one Aspiration is also pretty wise, as it allows your Sim to enjoy camping no matter what and never complain about it ever again!! You could be homeless and they’d still have a ball.

So while this pack is weird and mostly segregated, it’s still pretty good for the little things it adds. The items you can make and take with you can benefit other aspects of gameplay, at least if you’re me torturing your poor Sim to go through the Olympics of Simming. All in all, it’s just a funny little camping pack you can use whenever you get bored of looking at the four walls you force your Sim to live in. I think I am going to befriend the Bear now, I have some experimenting I want to do with him.

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 every time. 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.