LGR - The Sims 4 Moschino Stuff Review

The Sims 4 has another stuff pack. This makes fifteen of them now. Good lord. And this time it’s a branded stuff pack, Moschino Stuff, so-named for its promotion of the Italian luxury boutique fashion house. And if you’re new to The Sims series, this kind of quid pro quo collaboration is not without precedent, seeing as they sold packs like The Sims 3 Diesel Stuff and The Sims 2 H&M Fashion Stuff back in the day.

Though at the very least they’ve taken plenty of time before dumping this pack on us, with the last one, My First Pet Stuff, releasing almost a year and a half ago, or 518 days to be precise. Not long enough in my opinion. Or Ralph’s, who uh, yeah. I almost forgot that happened.

Anyway, as usual I didn’t receive any early copies or anything so I grabbed it on launch day in order to make this review. The Sims 4 Moschino Stuff starts off with a wait, wh-what is this! They changed the plumbob! Aw dang and like, everything else too.

Menus, icons, everything. And it looks... fine? I dunno, I don’t hate it. I saw this image floating around comparing the new colors to Norton Commander for MS-DOS, and well, when you put it that way I guess I have to approve. Whoever’s in charge of the new design system really dislikes color gradients, I think that much is clear.

Though as someone who tries to keep up with design trends, it’s not too unexpected, as it follows the current brand redesign fad with logos taking on the flat mobile app aesthetic, with solid colors and simplified vector objects scalable to any screen.

And since it applies to retail copies too, there’s currently this amusing situation where both the old box art and the refresh are on shelves side by side. “New look, same great content!” Heh, like it’s a box of cereal or something. Anyway yeah, this whole rebranding is fascinating to me and I had to say some stuff, and I may or may not be stalling so I can put off having to talk about this lackluster pack, but who can say? All right fine, I’m just delaying the inevitable at this point.

So let’s talk about The Sims 4 Mosquito Stuff or whatever. This is a pack of stuff with things in it. Things like clothes and accessories, as you’d expect for a pack branded by a company that primarily sells clothing and accessories. Though it only comes with 25 of such items total, across all sim genders and age ranges.

Fewer than I expected for a pack named after a dadgum fashion company. Especially since the real life collection contains 37 items. Yeah that’s right, these Create A Sim additions are partially pulled straight from the actual Moschino x Sims 2019 capsule collection, so if you really love these designs you can buy some of them in real life! If you’re high.

$250 for a rubber necklace, $275 for a t-shirt, $450 for a pair of leggings, $600 for a hoodie, $800 for a fanny pack, $1300 for a backpack. Yeah, this outfit right here would cost like two grand in real life. Thankfully, The Sims 4 is not real life, so you don’t have to pay a single simoleon for clothing in-game.

Sims do have to pay for the new build mode objects of course, of which there are around 50 new ones. First up are the requisite new pieces of seating apparatus, two in total, with only one of those being a chair. You also get a twosome of tables, each mimicking the design of the previously mentioned butt repositories.

There’s a new standing bookshelf with several spots to place some of the new clutter objects like books and camera lenses. Joining the storage situation is an angular object display stand that stands there displaying objects. Next up are a couple of befuddlingly unusable items, like this clothing rack holding clothes your sims can’t wear, and this gear case and pair of amplifiers your sims can’t use.

There are also some wall things, including a shelf with vertically suspended camera gear, a mirror for reflecting on your choice in exclamatory verbiage, and a swirly art something-or-other that very much exists. There’s a new stripey rug for stripey rug-lovers.

As well an assortment of new windows and a couple of geometrically-deranged wallpaper patterns. And finally, there are an assortment of lights for assorted lighting things, several new picture frames which we’ll revisit here in a moment, as well as a glass room divider and a selection of photographic backdrops both standalone and modular.

Those last groups of items go along with the most notable Moschino Stuff addition: the fashion photography career. This is joined by selecting the freelance option of the career menu, and this provides another gig-focused job for self-motivated sims.

Now, photography has been in the game for quite a while now, with both a dedicated photography skill and also a photo studio as seen in The Sims 4 Get To Work expansion way back in 2015. But the freelance option puts in place a more tangible system for making money using the existing photography features, and expanding on them.

Much like the other freelance jobs, you can select and complete gigs from within the career menu, with new options showing up on each skill level on up to level five. Each gig comes with multiple tasks to complete, a time in which to complete them, and an overall performance rating that signifies how well you’re doing as a freelancer.

And y’know what, I enjoyed this! As you might expect seeing I was already a fan of the snazzy snapshot stuff introduced in Get To Work, so adding onto what’s already there is cool by me. Of course, the gig tasks themselves do feel repetitive rather quickly, often relying on some variation of “take five photos of such and such,” then “talk to this certain sim about a photo shoot” and finally “submit the photo for approval.” Still though, you’re given additional leeway to customize shots to your liking, with the ability to plan your subject’s outfits in Create A Sim, change the backdrop patterns and animations, and choose from a number of poses divided into emotional categories.

Although actually choosing the exact pose you want can be somewhat frustrating since it doesn’t let you pick specific poses and instead just picks one at random on each click, so eh. There are also subject marks that you can place down on the ground to make sure sims stand where you want them to, while also providing a few additional options that allow you to hire models and manage their actions during a photo shoot.

And we also finally get a tripod, letting you stage a photo shoot just about anywhere, and ensuring that your pictures turn out as nicely as possible, free of blurry results and random gnomes. And yeah, when combined with one of the nicer cameras sims can buy, it won’t be long till you’re taking exceptionally high quality photos that both satisfy clients and make a respectable sum when sold on the black market.

Or, I dunno, wherever photos are sold in The Sims. It never actually says, you just sell them they disappear into the void. And if you don’t wanna sell, then you can always mount and display them in a frame, either on the wall as usual or as a standing frame if you drag it onto a surface, something added in the latest patch.

There are also new digital picture frames that show groups of photographs in a customizable slideshow. How very 2008. But yeah, that’s about it for Moschino Stuff! As with all Sims 4 stuff packs, this one costs $10. And as usual, I think that’s silly.

For one thing, paying ten bucks to be advertised to by a luxury fashion brand is somewhat off-putting. If anything, you’d think the price would be lower than normal, but nope. Even disregarding that though, the stuff this stuff pack packs simply isn’t that noteworthy.

Sure, I think the freelance photography career is enjoyable enough and the new photo studio objects are certainly useful. However, I wish these things were rolled out some other way instead of being crammed in here with a couple dozen clothes I’ll never use.

So as usual, I always recommend either skipping piecemeal packs like this entirely, or at least waiting until they’re available at a discount. There are simply far better packs to spend your money on, no matter how enjoyable it is to take high quality toilet pictures and sell them on the Sims black market.

And if you found this video informative, do check out my other Sims content since I’ve covered all the packs so far, for one reason or another. I also make videos on all sorts of retro computer stuff that I swear is super fascinating, so maybe give those a try too.