As is tradition now, I have come to the latest Sims game very, very late. When I talked about The Sims 3, it was about four years after the game had been released. I love a good late review, honestly. Well, The Sims 4 is slightly different. I did download it slightly nearer its release date - 2017, I think. But it didn’t work on my Mac, because it’s an old and rickety machine that desperately needs updating. The game didn’t play at all well and I participated for less than an hour.

It amused me when a while later, there was an EA sale and I got excited thinking I could get The Sims 4 for a very reasonable price, only to realise I had already purchased it and dismissed it. That was quite a disappointing day!

But now, it turns out, work has been going on behind the scenes to improve the game, whilst I have done absolutely nothing about improving my computer. If anything, it’s got worse.

When Mr C found this tweet, I selflessly offered up part of my Christmas Day to test out the game.

And he’s right, it works! The game is totally smooth, everything functions as it should, I even picked up an expansion pack on sale to test it further and that was fine. It’s so odd that I did absolutely nothing except fail to upgrade my machinery and yet the game came back to me and suddenly started working. Backwards compatibility like that doesn’t happen very often, so whilst EA get plenty of rightful criticism, this seems like a good thing on their part.

In terms of the gameplay itself, it seems just like the Sims 3 only you don’t get to do all the open world stuff that makes that game so good. I don’t totally understand the point of the upgrade but then again I’ve only been playing it an hour or two. The trick now is to not let it take over my life while I see what it’s all about.

But hey, that’s what Christmas is all about right? Micro-managing little avatars of humans to do your bidding whilst your watch festive movies and listen to Christmas playlists. Hooray!