A good way to start this text is to emulate any villain and say, “I’ve been waiting for this moment for 20 years.” The moment when finally my sacrileges against innocent sims make sense beyond having a nice cemetery in the garden. And with the new expansion of The Sims 4, “Life and Beyond”, death takes on a much more special role. Playing as the Grim Reaper (or at least with it) has more nuances than ever with this pack.
This is the Life and Beyond expansion
I won’t hide, I was exposed the day I decided to build the “3DHouse” and dedicated myself to end my companions’ sims in the cruelest way on live from our Twitch channel. That day made it clear that if I focus on the simulation part of the game, I end up emulating the moments of removing the ladder from the pool in The Sims 1 (now they can come out on their own) but in more modern ways. Also, there are funnier ways to die now, like being eaten by a carnivorous plant.
Death has always been part of The Sims. It appeared as an entity that took the deceased and left a gravestone or an urn with ashes in its place. It had some funny moments and, depending on when you catch it, it explored the house for a while. There was also a trick to make it part of the family unit, but its interaction was rather shy. In old installments, like The Sims 2, I enjoyed killing all the characters just because at night the ghosts from the cemetery would wander around and scare the living. I found it funny.
Death has been a recurring character in the saga, but shy
Given this context, “Life and Beyond” is an expansion made for me. In this, we can create a to-do list so that, in case of death, we can complete them as ghosts or dedicate ourselves to be a kind of death interns, harvesting souls and dispensing punishment. Everything, absolutely everything, revolves around death. If we play as the living, we can learn thanatology or be ghost historians. A change I liked is that now, when a sim dies, their body remains on the ground for us to decide what we want to do with it.
It is clear that the expansion is somewhat creepy (not in vain it is launched on Halloween) and it even allows celebrating different funerals and duels according to the personalities of the sims. The fun part in this aspect is the will. We can turn any home into “Aunt Agatha’s inheritance” or into “Clue” just by creating doubts with the money distribution.
But this is not only about the living, for the first time, we can play as ghosts in a developed way. That is, there are several ways to approach this option: as a human who decides to be a ghost for a while or as a proper entity. Since humor is present at all times, we can choose to be a mischievous ghost and terrorize people or dedicate ourselves to completing our unfinished business. There can also be extradimensional relationships. I’m not going to say which option I find more fun, because then I’ll seem macabre.
I’m not going to lie, what usually attracts me the most in expansions are the new objects, furniture, and clothing that come with it. And here is no exception. You can even build a gothic-style house or explore a neighborhood that seems to come from Tim Burton’s mind, but I think the simulation part is the strongest. For example, when I was talking about the horse ranch expansion, I was looking for clever ways to make the most of what it offered. Here, you don’t need to, all the options are clever and fun. If you decide to put a living human face down or make them levitate, they will drop some coins and so on with more situations. We can even have a crow as a pet and find interaction options with it. In addition to all this, this expansion complements others like the Halloween one, the werewolves, paranormal phenomena, or vampires.
Therefore, I admit I found an expansion that has piqued all my interest. The macabre humor is Beetlejuice-style, the aesthetics are like The Addams Family, and the situations are to the player’s liking. Since “Magic Realm,” I haven’t found additional content that I liked so much. Now we just have to wait for October 31 to enjoy it in all its glory.
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