Sure, The Sims 4’s new Life and Death expansion is pretty spooky, but its hidden strength is hardcore Tony Soprano roleplay

There are no ducks in my pool.

There never were any ducks in my pool. To be honest wit’cha, I don’t even know if the ducks in The Sims 4 would hit the same as the ones I fed back in the old place. But I miss ‘em all the same.

Why? Will you stop asking me stuff like that? It always comes back to why with you. Yes, I know you’re my shrink, and that’s why you’re living on the balcony atop my house, taking my money and sleeping in this coffin I’ve bought for you because I thought it’d be funny, but you don’t have to rub it in. No, I haven’t collapsed recently.

OK, I have shouted at a stuffed bunny that looked a bit like a skeleton, and maybe I keep causing a ruckus at the ghost version of alcoholics anonymous, but I’m in control. Things are going fine at work. Look, you know I can’t tell you a lot about what I do for a living, but I have told you that I’m in the waste management business, right? Yeah, not a criminal, because we’re better than petty criminals, but part of an…organisation…that takes care of things.

It’s a family business, the boss is this old fella, and he has a very set way of doing things. Believes very strongly in tradition, as I do. In the idea of people doing what they’re supposed to. He seems to like me, I guess because I’m good at dealing with things discreetly when someone’s kicked the bucket. What? You can’t prove I’ve ever touched a scythe – just try asking the witnesses, I promise they’ll have nothing but good things to say about me.

It’s very Catholic, I suppose, even if I don’t quite remember where that whole feeding reaped souls into the giant portal to the nether was in the Bible. I oughta ask Carmella, she’s more into that s**t than I am, although I obviously still believe and I make damn sure Meadow and Anthony Jr. do too.

It’s important, you know, even if it’s getting harder to keep the harsher realities of working for the Netherworld Department of Death from them at this point. They’re growing up, starting to develop more and more complex moodlets of their own. Having Paulie and Chris living with us – along with you and, er, my mother – probably isn’t helping, but what’s a guy gonna do? We had to move out here to f**king Ravenwood from New Jersey. I wanted to go out to Vegas or Arizona, somewhere sunny, but no, the feds were dialling up the heat, so we’re stuck in a town they’ve never heard of. One with households of ghosts, crypts galore, and a f**king tree that whispers to you.

I even had to bring you too, Dr Melfi. Oh, shut up, you know you didn’t want to go back to that motel you hid out in last time. Plus, there are plenty of weirdos you can talk to here. That Layne Coffin, don’t get me started. Don’t give me that look, he’s just one of those happy-go-lucky assholes we talked about that time.

Anyway, he’s the least of my problems. Yes, it’s my mother. You know I had to relent and let her come live with us when we moved out here, even though she’s dead to me. Well, we didn’t get along, and now she’s literally dead to me. What are you lookin’ at? No, Christ, of course I didn’t do it, I loved that woman. You were there when it happened. She went out for a swim in the pool at like ten in the evening, because for some reason she wanted to try and level up her exercise skill.

The next thing we know, boom, some walls appear around the edges of the pool, trapping her in the water. She bobs there, crying out as we try to get to her, with every one of her need meters nosediving, aside from her bladder. It takes about forty minutes, and then the reaper appears. Somehow, he takes her soul through the walls, and she transforms into a ghost.

Then, next thing you know, he’s gone and so are the walls. Here’s my mother, floating through the foundations back into the house, like nothing’s happened. She’s basically been her usual self since, but she keeps possessing the furniture, levitating stuff, jumping out at all of us. It really freaks Paulie out, it drives me up the wall, and the worst thing is that I know I’m gonna have a fight on my hands when it comes to her stuff, because she did a really weird will. Not that I want any of it, especially that random lamp she made an heirloom because she was still getting a hang of the mechanic. But you can bet your ass Janice is gonna turn up at some point to try and find the deed to her old house.

Speaking of Janice, she wouldn’t come to the funeral. I offered to pay for her ticket from Seattle, but she kept telling me she’d never heard of Ravenwood, couldn’t find it on a map. I told her you just open up the menu, select worlds, and there it is. Apparently that was too tough for her, can you believe it?

Anyway, we’ve all been grieving. There’s four different kinds, and I always seem to get the angriest ones, because I’ve got the hot-headed trait. It’s not my fault, my dad passed it down to me. So, I keep on flying off the handle, especially when I’m around her ghost. The rest of them are coping in different ways. Some of them keep crying it out, giving themselves pep talks in mirrors, or even going for sad swims. The damn house doesn’t help, cause it has the On Hallowed Grounds trait, which keeps making us feel uncomfortable on its own.

The funeral seemed to help a bit, we followed her wishes and kept it low-key. You know, moment’s silence so people didn’t have to try and find nice things to say. No playing music. Plenty of food. I managed to persuade the kids not to fire off the memorial cannon I don’t remember buying. A nice picture of her near the casket, then I took the urn and made it into a gravestone in the yard. Look, if you buy a house with a built-in cemetery, you take advantage of it.

Since then, though, it’s Christopher I’m most worried about. You see, Paulie’s just an undertaker, but I let Moltisanti follow in my footsteps a bit, become a grimtern. Anyway, he caught a look at Grim’s slablet, and now he says he’s gonna die soon, and that he’s going to hell. This whole Chased By Death trait thing. That’s really got Paulie going, he thinks he might be going to hell too. Even went to see a psychic, who did some weird stuff with tarot cards. Now he’s collecting them, giving people readings while he eats his Gabagool. Hums TV ad themes while he does it too, drives me nuts. If he wasn’t a good earner for the household, I might have to cut him loose.

It’s ok, though. I’m just taking it a day at a time, working on my bucket list, to try and find a bit of happiness. I’m doing alright in my soul’s journey. Though, I don’t know how I’m supposed to critique the world. Maybe that’s why I keep getting those moodlets that make me panic about my unfulfilled goals. I guess I’m stressed out that I’ll end up with unfinished business that’ll stop me from moving on peacefully, no matter how much ghost mastery I rack up.

You see, what I want more than anything is for those ducks to come back. But this is The Sims 4, and while this new expansion pack’s pretty cool, I’ve not bought the Cottage Living one yet.

So, there are no ducks in my pool.