The Sims 4: City Living is the earliest expansion to add a number of important features including apartments, table sales, and battered furniture. It also added the first work from home careers as well as some diverse food stalls and clothing.
It's easy to forget just how many firsts this expansion brought to the game. While some of these features have since made it into subsequent packs, City Living still has a lot to offer. The city is beautiful and the apartments are very different from those in the new world of Evergreen Harbor.
Here are the main features of City Living, so you can find out more about the pack before you buy it.
10 Live In The Vibrant City Of San Myshuno
San Myshuno is the game's first city and really embraces everything city life has to offer. The neighborhoods are slightly variable in style and contain a range of different types of buildings as well as apartments and penthouses.
The feel of the city is well executed and you'll notice lots of cars and traffic noise. It's a modern world but also one with a very different feel to the others in-game. There are more signs of diversity and culture here than you see elsewhere.
9 Get A Taste Of Apartment Living
The biggest addition to the city is apartments. These are purchased based on furniture value and then rent is paid each month. They range from tiny apartments with leaky pipes to luxury penthouses that can be purchased as a regular home would be.
Apartment living also has new drawbacks. Neighbors can be noisy, apartments can become infested with bugs and other inconveniences can occur that require intervention and sometimes a visit from the landlord.
8 Explore New Work From Home Careers
This pack is the first to introduce work from home careers and offers a social media career, art or food critic career, and political career. All three offer rabbit hole workdays or work from home tasks.
Some tasks are city-specific but these are mainly tied to the political career that involves protests and speeches that occur around the city at podiums and in open areas.
7 Eat At New Food Stalls And Gain New Recipes
Around the city, there is a range of new food stalls with a host of different dishes to try. Your sims can taste some more exotic food and even gain a secret spice tolerance skill. This will come in handy for the spice festival!
Sims eating new foods will also gain the ability to cook these foods at home. This will increase their recipe range when hoping to impress their new neighbors.
6 Attend Festivals In The City
San Myshuno is host to several festivals with different themes. There is a geek festival, spice festival, romance festival, humor and hijinx festival, and a flea market. Different neighborhoods host different events and the times vary.
The geek festival focuses on gaming and programming, the spice festival hosts a spicy food eating competition and the romance festival encourages attendees to find love. Those looking to cause mischief or tell jokes can go to the humor and hijinx festival, while the flea market offers bargains for sims in need of cheap furniture.
5 Sell Your Artwork Or Wares
For those looking to sell paintings, they've created or items they've crafted the pack also introduces selling tables. A couple of later packs have also included selling tables but City Living is the only one that offers an item allowing you to display and sell paintings directly to passers-by. Sims can also make money by being a living statue or busking in the city.
You can start your own yard sale or put your items on a spare table at the flea market in order to start chatting to sims and persuading them to buy your goods.
4 Test Your Singing Skills With Karaoke
There's a new karaoke skill and San Myshuno also contains a couple of bars in which you can test your skills. The karaoke machines allow sims to sing individually or with others in order to boost their talents.
Once you're feeling brave enough you can put your skills to the test in the karaoke contests that are frequently run in both bars.
3 Enjoy City Based Activities
Two new collections also come with the pack. Snowglobes can be found in boxes around the city and contain a number of snowy scenes. They can be put on shelves and admired by all. You can also find posters in the cupboard style items scattered around the city. These periodically change and reset, enabling you to build a collection of wall art.
City dwellers will also see buskers, living statues, and protestors. Sims are able to engage with all these activities as well as play on the basketball courts. Along with festivals and food stalls as well as community lots, it means that the city never sleeps.
2 Be Bold With Colorful Clothing
Cultural diversity is the main theme that seems to run through the create-a-sim items. There are lots of casual items in a range of different styles. The wardrobe you're given looks like the range of tastes you'd find in a big city.
You can also find new hairstyles, facial hair, and tattoos. The main limitation is that the vast majority of clothing is for adults and leans heavily towards females.
1 Work Your Way Up To Luxury With Battered Basics
The build and buy mode items contain some cheap and battered-looking items such as a bed, kitchen unit set, and other basics. These really help build up a cheap and basic starter home or apartment and were the first worn down items added to the game.
You'll also find a range of more modern furniture and a large amount of artwork for decorating those perfect penthouses.