Sims 4 Urban Homage Proves A Sequel Should Exist For One Notoriously Underrated Game

Summary The Sims 4 Urban Homage Kit aims to represent city life culture in the game, enhancing diversity and style options.

The spin-off The Urbz deserves to return to focus on city living.

Despite the unlikelihood of a new game, returning to ideas from The Urbz would be a great move for The Sims.

The new Urban Homage Kit is an interesting addition to The Sims 4, but more than anything, it's a reminder that one older game in The Sims franchise deserves to have a proper comeback. Although the release model of The Sims has long relied on extensive amounts of expansion packs, the series also spent much of its lifespan spinning things off into proper side games. Although this could sometimes get very far from the original concept (like in MySims Racing), the franchise also had its fair share of games that fulfilled core concepts in their own interesting ways.

Despite being the face of the franchise for nearly a decade, but The Sims 4 is still finding itself in some key ways. DEI consultant Ebonix recently assisted with new Sim creation options to better represent diverse hairstyle options, and the game has partnered with her yet again for the Urban Homage Kit. This DLC is intended to represent a more complete sampling of city life and culture than what was previously present in the game, as the City Living expansion from 2016 has shown its age and limitations in plenty of ways.

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The Urban Homage Kit Proves The Urbz Should Return

An Urbz Sequel Just Makes Sense

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It's nice to see The Sims 4 revisit some areas that weren't well-covered, but the Urban Homage Kit isn't a complete answer to everything that the game is missing. It's a small sampling of additional style options that carries an extra $4.99 price tag, marking yet another of the many minor additions to the cost of a robust Sims experience. The bulk of content in The Sims 4 is decidedly still focused on a more suburban lifestyle, which is perfectly entertaining but can ultimately feel one-note.

The connotations of the Urban Homage Kit's name and contents have been somewhat contentious, but Ebonix responded on Twitter to clarify that the title was her choice.

There's one game where The Sims fully embraced the city living experience — The Urbz: Sims in the City, a console title that released on GameCube, PS2, and Xbox alongside a separate version developed for the Game Boy Advance and DS. Wrangling a Sims experience into consoles has always had its challenges, and The Urbz shows them, with a simple gameplay loop and lack of creative freedom compared to PC entries.

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At the same time, The Urbz undeniably carved out its own niche with a distinct flavor. It's easy to argue that there's more reason to play The Urbz today than the original console version of The Sims or its follow-up Bustin' Out, which tend to mostly exacerbate the itch to play a more fully-featured version of the game. It's undeniably 2000s — the Black Eyed Peas themselves make an appearance — but even that has its charms.

EA & Maxis Once Planned A Sequel To The Urbz

What The Urbz 2 Might've Been Like

According to a former employee for The Sims studio Maxis, The Urbz was originally slated to receive a sequel, details about which can be found in a since-deleted post on the Mod The Sims forums. Although elements of The Urbz 2 ended up making it into the console version of The Sims 2, the things that made it The Urbz were largely lost (including, sadly, further planned contributions by the Black Eyed Peas).

It's not terribly surprising that The Urbz 2 didn't make it to market. Sales, while perfectly substantial, weren't incredible, and the critical reception to the game was slightly tepid. Developing major games themed around concepts that can be reasonably covered within mainline Sims games isn't the most efficient way of making money, and EA's path to the current model of sustaining The Sims 4 for as long as possible seems like an inevitability in hindsight.

The Urbz 2 Would Be Better Today Than Ever

A Sequel Would Be Better Than A Sims 4 Kit

All the same, a proper sequel to The Urbz would be a great addition to the franchise, and getting one now could be better than the original sequel might have ever been. Enough time has passed for a significant cultural shift in city life to change up what a second game would look like, and the franchise's increased commitment to working with DEI partners is definitely an added benefit.

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Making another console-targeted game for The Sims could also result in a stronger release now. The PlayStation and Xbox releases of The Sims 4 are the first time that the console experience has been truly comparable to PC for a mainline title, and a sequel to The Urbz could incorporate a lot of that additional complexity while still streamlining things a little. The PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in particular have also improved things with fast SSDs that benefit games in the mode of The Sims, where intense amounts of resources and variables can otherwise slow loading quite a bit.

If anything, the rough points of The Urbz are all the more reason it should get a sequel. All of its exciting elements and locations deserve to shine in a title that lives up to them across the board, and retooling its goal-oriented system into something with more fundamental variety could make it an interesting alternative to The Sims 4. The original title is a cult classic for some today, and building on that legacy while ushering new fans into the fold could result in a hit.

It unfortunately doesn't seem all that likely that EA would end up going in the direction of a sequel to The Urbz, as The Sims 4's model still seems to be working just fine. If the Urban Homage Kit ends up performing well, however, it'll definitely prove that leaving things at City Living isn't enough. Urban life remains a fun area for The Sims to explore, and there would be no better way to do so than bringing back a subseries fully dedicated to it.

Source: Ebonix/Twitter, Mod The Sims