The Sims 4: Life and Death may actually be the expansion to get the game back in my good graces

Maybe it's because I recently rewatched Monsters, Inc., but I couldn't help but be reminded of the very beginning of that movie as I started my first day on the job as a trainee reaper in the latest Sims 4 expansion, Life and Death. 

It's an active job—one that you can participate in rather than being sent to a rabbit hole like some traditional Sims careers—so I'm whisked to a small house where a crash dummy lies in the recovery position waiting for me to figure out how the heck it died. I've already done all of my prep in the office beforehand. Standard stuff, y'know, like sharpening my scythe, practising my reaping swing and ordering office supplies. Can't be running out of those whetstones.

Grim, the big bad death guy that's been around in the series since forever, lingers in the house's entrance to watch as I inspect things like the dummy's temperature, pulse, and pockets to see if I can come closer to the truth. After poking at the "body" for a bit, I determined the poor thing died due to killer bunnies. Neato. I get top marks for the day.

The career is just one of the many death-related ongoings in the new expansion, if the name wasn't already a big enough giveaway. There are playable ghosts, "customisable grieving rituals," bucket lists, and uh, romances with Death himself. Not gonna lie, I didn't think I'd ever live in a timeline where you could bone the one and only Grim Reaper sans mods, but here we are. It's an expansion that's ultra-spooky and also, more importantly, pretty dang good. 

I am, admittedly, someone who's been notoriously tough on EA and The Sims 4 as a whole over the last couple of years—I recently lamented how buggy and crusty the whole thing feels, and fellow Sims freak Lauren Morton echoed a lot of my feelings when we found out that it wasn't going away any time soon, and we are both potentially very responsible for the game's total absence on our Top 100 list this year. Oops.

O, death.

I've been placing a lot of hope in Life and Death being good, which makes me all the more relieved that I've been having a cracking time with it. As a certified Spooky Gal, the new Create-A-Sim items are to die for (that's the only one, I promise), with some lovely ornate gothic blouses and colour-blocked hair that makes my own bleach-breakage 'do green with envy—and those vibes extend out to the expansion's Build/Buy offerings.

I've also become rather smitten with Ravenwood, the expansion's new neighbourhood. It's all stone pavings and iron railings, adding to that extra dark and spooky ambiance. It's got some cracking events too. There's the weekly Thinned Festiveil with tarot readings, giftings to the guardian tree and a goofy gambling game that might see the Grim Reaper summoned. Moon Revelry is all about getting naked, lying under the full moon and surrounding the bonfire. 

My favourite is perhaps Afterlife Anonymous, which happens every weekday and is nothing more than a bunch of ghosts gathering, eating lobster thermidor and chatting at a podium occasionally. It's that classic Sims humour that I've really come to appreciate over the years, even if its execution is relatively simple.

I made sure to give my reaper-to-be and her ghostly husband—who died by electrocution, naturally—a handful of bucket list items to complete. In a ghost's case, they're called "unfinished business", and completing them can help spirits pass on, or even be reborn in the next life. 

It's a fun new set of goals that I didn't feel were too imposing on my day-to-day gameplay—I went for a completely random spread and was given things like going on a date, renewing vows, having a bunch of skills levelled up, and even getting down and dirty in a bush. I didn't get too far into my bucket list endeavours, but it feels like a lot of 'em will come naturally as my Sims live their lives anyway. 

I was worried that the whole death theme would feel kinda gimmicky, but I feel like Life and Death is one of those expansions that does a really good job of taking a relatively basic aspect of the game and expanding on it in a meaningful way. It's the polar opposite of the experience I had during My Wedding Stories, which somehow made one of the messier events in The Sims 4 even moreso. 

As someone who has traditionally been kinda hesitant to let my Sims age and die, this pack makes it all feel a little more worthwhile. They don't just poof out of existence anymore, their only memory a gravestone I could pop in my inventory. They can live on in memorial photos, as a corporeal spirit, and eventually as entirely new Sims who can still recall aspects of their previous life if they managed to square away enough of their bucket list. 

Best of all, I can WooHoo the Grim Reaper in a crypt. If that isn't peak Sims gaming, I dunno what is.