Here at Sims Community, we often do review articles on paid content and packs that get released for The Sims Franchise, but you may wonder, which factors of the game we review help us out to review the game and share our positive or negative opinions about the game?
Pack Reviews
If we're reviewing a Stuff Pack, Game Pack or an Expansion Pack, you'll usually see our Review divided into 3 different categories: CAS content, Build Items content and new gameplay / features. Here's what influences our game review score for each of the category:
- Content Quality (CAS & Build)
- Content Quantity (CAS, Build & Features)
- Entertainment Level (Features)
With content quality, we check if the content that the game brought is good enough. For example, hairstyles, clothes, furniture and so on. If, for example, the game comes with a new sofa, we look into if that sofa's style matches with the pack's overall theme, if it brings enough color swatches and its style in general.
Content quantity is what also matters. For example, Cool Kitchen Stuff Pack brought a very small amount of objects compared to the amount of objects in other Stuff Packs, and that's what influenced
the review score.
Last but not least, we play with the features and see if they're fun to play with (and if there are enough features to play with). It's very important that certain features / options / premium objects included in the game promise continuity.
Pack Theme
We don't usually add in if we like the theme of the pack we review or not, and the theme of the pack will
NEVER influence our review score. Why is that?
People who read our reviews already have certain opinions about the themes they like. If, for example, a person is reading our
Dine Out Review, that person should already have formed their opinion about restaurants and restaurant management, whether they like the game that revolves around such features or not. The Sims Packs are very different and each Pack brings a different theme to the table. There's a high chance that you may not like every single pack theme that there is, and so our reviews are written mostly for people who already formed their opinions on certain themes, because that's the matter of their personal taste.
Early Access Copies
Sometimes the staff of Sims Community gets provided with an early access copy of the game from EA that lets them finish reviews and other articles just in time for the game release. The fact that the review author had been given exclusive access to the game doesn't mean he/she will praise the game more. We stand by our review standards and the early access factor doesn't effect our review score.
