The Sims 4: Get To Work Preview

The Sims 4 has been a huge success already - of course, this was to be expected. Its new expansion, Get To Work, hopes to raise the bar higher and bring in long awaited community favourites to the big EA title.

Get To Work brings in a whole new experience to The Sims 4, allowing players to plonk their Sims into a variety of different careers. You can be a crazy Scientist, conjuring up serums and inventions, a high-flying Doctor, having to care for and manage a hospital environment, whilst curing unknown and strange diseases, or you could become a Police Detective, snooping around crime scenes and collecting evidence for cryptic cases.

Careers progress at a manageable and steady rate. Instead of jumping straight into the action, you have to work your way up through the ranks and earn the respect of your peers. As a Police Detective, you’ll start by assisting other detectives in collecting clues for remedial cases, or filing and processing criminals locked in their cells. From there, you start to investigate your own cases, building a sizeable file and tracking down the culprit.

When playing as the Doctor, your first few days are quite basic; getting to know your fellow employees and gossiping with a cup of coffee. Then, you’ll move onto researching health reports, dealing out injections and diagnostics, delivering babies (sometimes of your other Sims, male or female) and curing illnesses.

There are some real unique quirks to come across when taking on each career. We spent a lot of time as a Scientist, fooling around creating mischievous serums that you can give to other Sims for various effects and building wacky gadgets like the SimRay, allowing you to control other’s thoughts. Most impressively, are the awesome contraptions you can create with the Invention Constructor, such as the Wormhole Generator - taking you to Sixam - the new alien world!

Aliens are back in The Sims and can be created directly from Create-A-Sim. Either unleash your alien Sims on the world face-first or disguise them as humans, living their day-to-day lives with a deep and dark secret you can spring upon anyone you feel is worthy. If you meet other alien Sims, you can interact with them without uttering a word using telepathy. Also, for the first time in the Sims series, you can travel to the glowing, alien world of Sixam. As a Scientist, you can find alien plants to help make crazy serums and inventions, learn and watch how alien Sims go about their lives or bring some back to your Sims world with you.

On top of your day-to-day career, you can help manage a retail business - something every Sim can do, regardless of their current main career. Build your shop like you would your home and fill it with plenty of goods - ranging from baked goods to clothes and even collectibles you find throughout your The Sims 4 gameplay. Hire and fire employees, use your best selling tactics to grab a great sale and don’t forget to say “Hello!” when a customer enters your shop.

We really enjoyed exploring the new world of Sixam and mind-controlling peers to put on their PJs in the middle of the work day. There’s a massive amount of game time available with the Get To Work expansion and promises to be a real treat for avid The Sims 4 fans when available early this month.

The Sims 4: Get To Work expansion releases on the 2nd of April on PC.

You can read our interview with one of The Sims 4’s lead Producers, Azure Bowie-Hankins here.