Tomorrow, Wednesday March 29th, the newest Stuff pack for The Sims 4 will release, The Sims 4 Bowling Night Stuff. EA was kind enough to give us a review copy to explore the new pack.
As the name suggests, this pack is all about bowling. A family day out or hang out with friends at the local bowling alley.
The game patch that released just last Thursday, March 23rd, the team even added a new lot trait: Teen hangout.
CAS
The style around the bowling is a bit of a ’50’s style, mid contemporary and that reflects on the Create-a-Sim items.
There are 2 new bowling shirts, for both male and female, bowling shoes, and some other more general tops (mostly female)
As with any pack, the kids seem to be left out a bit, they get the bowling shoes and shirt, but that is about it.
Build/Buy
Like the CAS items, the era the build items come from seems to be the 1950’s.
There is a living room set, a dining room set and a few wall decors and clutter items to give that bowling feeling.
The sofa, chairs and table are very versatile and could be used in any mid century home, or even in other styles as well.
The decor items are more specific to the theme, like a bowling pin, a bowling poster and trophy cases.
But let’s not forget the main item of this pack, the bowling alley!
It can be used by children and up, so it can be used as a great way to hold a family outing.
You need 15×3 squares to place it and it has 10 recolours.
With this pack there are also 2 new styled rooms: “Alley For One” and “Delighting Den”
Gameplay
The bowling alley is the new gameplay item in this pack, which you can use to turn your local bar,
club or whichever into a fun hangout with teens or families, there is no new lot type.
As said before, children, teens, (young)adults and elders can use the bowling alley. Up to 4 Sims can bowl on 1 lane.
There is also a new skill tied to the object, the Bowling skill, it has 5 levels and besides just getting
better at bowling, you unlock new bowling balls as well.
Using the bowling alley is the only way to gain the skill, there are no books to read to improve the skill.
If you also have the expansion pack The Sims Get Together, you can also start a bowling club! You can add bowling to the club rules and don’t forget to set the team outfit!
To give your bowling night some extra fun, and it does actually increase the fun more, you can also turn on the “Moonlight bowling” which is available when you click the lane, this will enable it for all the lanes in the room simultaneously. If you don’t want that, you need to make sure that each lane is in a different room.
When kids bowl, the little side bars go up, so they don’t throw in the gutter.
Conlusion
I think bowling a great and fun way for family players to have something to do for the whole family. Or to create a friends club that go bowling together.
But I must admit, that for the build and cas items, I’m a little disappointed with the versatility of this pack.
There is just 1 style bowling lane and even though there are 10 recolours, I don’t really see the difference between them, the only thing that changes is the back and details on the sides.
The pins, lane itself all stay the same. What I would have liked is a more basic lane added, one that looks like you could build yourself and put it in your yard. So it doesn’t look misplaced in (less fancy) family homes as well.
More general build items like the sofa, chairs, dresser etc are a lot more versatile, but then again, don’t really match a bowling alley, I miss booth like seating for at the lanes.
Overall I would say it is an ok pack. It’s great for family style players, but doesn’t add much for builder (there are no new windows or doors, fences etc.) and for CAS lovers, there’s not that much there either, it all feels a bit too specific.
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