The Extreme Violence mod makes The Sims the kind of place where every day is The Purge. Part of this is because while Sim will visibly and audibly panic if there's a murder going on in front of them (and the Extreme Violence mod allows players to call the police to arrest the Sims committing crimes), once they cycle through the animation, Sims are just weirdly okay with the random shootings and stabbings. It's not so much grotesque as it is cartoonish. Still, there is something intoxicating about just how absurd the Extreme Violence mod is. If I want realism in my game of The Sims, I'll add laundry. There is too much violence in the actual world for me to get much pleasure out of causing it in the game that I use to escape into fantasies of interior design. You basically get a 'push this button to cause chaos' mechanic, allowing you to turn the pleasant neighborhoods of Oasis Springs or Britechester into blood soaked nightmare towns at a moment's notice.Īs an adult, I don't need all this. When I was fifteen or sixteen, I would have loved this. The violence is random, and escalates exponentially so that you go from fist fight to cold blooded murder before you can blink. Playing The Sims with the Extreme Violence mod installed turns it into a bootleg version of Grand Theft Auto.
