Terrible or terrific? Alright, Simmers, brace yourselves for a deep dive into Sims’ latest stuff pack, TS4: Paranormal Stuff review! Together, we’ll investigate this new stuff pack and form the verdict.
Let’s see what séances, a new career, and ghostly occurrences TS4 Paranormal Stuff brings to the game.
TS4 Paranormal Stuff Pack: What to Expect?
Hauntings and Haunted Houses
Should you want to immerse yourself in the gameplay with Paranormal Stuff fully, the first thing to do is to make your lot haunted.
While EA has the habit of leaving things unexplained and leaves it up to players to figure things out, I’m here to guide you!
In build mode, you need to enable a special lot type that is introduced in Paranormal Stuff - haunted house lot. Once your lot is a haunted house, you’ll experience all kinds of strange occurrences - from random noises to flickering lights.
All of this will make your Sim get a new emotion: Scared.
The new emotion wrecks havoc on your Sims. It makes them paranoid and enables them to scream incoherently at one another. It renders them completely incapable of doing anything else.
Séances, Mediums, and More
Perhaps the feature that stands out the most in this pack is the return of the fan-favorite - Bonehilda, the ghastly maid. You can summon Bonehilda by building up your Medium skill and have her help you around the home.
Through séances, you can also sense spiritual volatility, perform group séances and perform a ghastly ritual.
Mastering the Medium skill can also lead you to get a paranormal investigator license from Guidy the Ghost. Guidry is a permanently flirty NPC who serves as an advisor.
You can join the new Paranormal Investigator career through the Freelance career and earn Simoleons by cleansing haunted houses and performing rituals.
During hauntings, creepy objects might appear out of the blue. These include ghastly goo puddles, eerie hands, and evil voodoo dolls that reduce the serenity value of the lot.
Getting rid of these occurrences will give you a better chance of completing the career task.
Another thing to look out for is specters. They appear after 9 PM and vary in color and attitude.
The green ones are friendly, the blue ones not that much, while the red ones are nasty.
Getting rid of them will also affect your career task!
Create a Sim and Buy/Build
Since this is a stuff pack, the smallest DLC update, needless to say, I wasn’t expecting much.
The clothing and hairstyles that came with this pack weren’t that versatile and only fit with the bohemian/hippie niche.
The build and buy mode had a lot more content, which also fits in that same mode - think Movie Hangout stuff pack, with less variety.
The Verdict
While the stuff pack added a lot of new elements and aspects to the gameplay, I cannot say that I’m fully satisfied with it.
To put it plainly, this is a stuff pack that you go through in less than an afternoon. There seems to be a variety of novelties involved - a new career, a new skill, a new lot type, but it all manages to fall short.
In my opinion, this stuff pack could have been better. The only aspect of it that I completely enjoy is the return of Bonehilda.
Let’s hope that the next stuff pack will be more immersive and enjoyable - perhaps like The Snowy Escape!