Greetings and welcome to another LGR Quickie!
And in case you're not familiar with this format
it's pretty similar to my normal review style, except that it's not at all...
it's just me sort of talking back and forth with the camera and pretending that it's a person
and giving some of my thoughts in a kind of rambling format on a game of choice, and today that happens to be The Sims 4...
for the consoles yeah, that's right!
They have brought over The Sims 4 experience to gaming consoles in the form of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4
finally, and it arrives at a cost of $49.99 US.
for the standard one anyway. There's also a $60 deluxe party edition.
Whatever, man. Yeah, I find those prices interesting because this is a three year old game now and
you know you can currently get it on PC (the standard one) for 39 bucks.
So this is more expensive. All pricing aside though, this is easily the most
impressive technically
version of the Sims ever to come out for a console because this time around they are not messing around!
They have completely brought the entire experience including the free patches and a lot of the DLC....
And I mean, you know, they've got things like the...
ghosts and pools, and the new careers, half walls, dishwashers, the world "Newcrest"...
I mean: pretty much everything that they've added to the game since launch on PC - it's already here!
It's just The Sims 4. So that's why in this video in case you're hoping, for like, me to talk about all the features of
the Sims 4, like what you do in the game, don't bother sticking around because I've already talked about that. I've got a long video.
Considering that's the case,
I'm not going to be going into the nitty gritty details of the gameplay, like what you do in the game.
About the only really big notable feature this does not include is the gallery, so you're not going to be able to save your sims and share them
with others through the game. Of course you can share screenshots and video
but you can do that with any game on these consoles. And of course mods. Mods are not supported yet, so too bad;
sorry, and leave your wicked whims at home.
And, yes, that means that you cannot download your existing sims or lots or any kind of save data from the cloud
like on The Sims 4 gallery on PC and transfer it over.
They're not compatible whatsoever
And speaking of the consoles I do want to specify that I will be playing this on the Xbox One X
not because of any kind of fanboy, because I'm not, I collect whatever consoles come out just when they come out.
So yeah...
I bought the Xbox One X and then I bought this game for it because why not? That came out around the same time
And I also got it because I wanted to try out the Xbox One X's 4k
rendering and whatnot with this little deal-io here, that was sent to me by a company for free. This is the...
AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 plus which is something that I didn't have, I don't have any kind of capture boxes for 4k
So I thought, "Great! I'll kill 2 reviewing birds with one stone," but it turns out screw me
I guess because I didn't read the fine print. In fact, the little fine print right there
that says this is a 4k pass-through device, not a 4k capture device which effectively means
This is exactly the same device does any other Avermedia thing I've talked about in the past
like the Live Gamer Portable, which has an update to. The software is better. That's nice.
It didn't crash at all; nothing was really wrong...but it only passes through a 4k signal to your display
but it actually captures internally or over USB at 1080p. At 60fps, which...and I mean, that's fine,
but so did all my other capture devices, so, whatever man. It works fine.
Here's specs and information about prices and things, if it does what you need to, you know, cool.
So anyway, that's that out of the way, let's get right back to The Sims 4 because
How do I start this? On the one hand, props to Big Squirrel Games
for porting over the game from the PC to these consoles and coming up with the most feature complete version we have ever seen on
a non-PC environment like this. But then again, we're also left with the fact that this is the most
infuriating
cumbersome, clumsy, terrible control scheme! Like you remember back in the day,
Nintendo 64 games or PS1 games that were early 3D
and they didn't know how to do anything with analog controllers? Or like when they ported over a strategy game from the PC
to a console
and it's just...it doesn't work because it needs a mouse and keyboard, and they didn't bother changing the UI or optimizing it.
That's exactly what has happened with The Sims 4 and it is
so unfortunate! It's so bad!
I've played for hours and hours
and I still have not gotten used to the awful way that this controls. And, yes, certain games do support a mouse and keyboard on
these systems, but this is not one of them.
I plugged mine in; the only thing you can do is use the keyboard for certain functions like typing in the names
of sims and lots and stuff like that, and
presumably cheat codes, the EA website says that there's cheat codes available for this version. So that means that yes
you are stuck with the ridiculous controller scheme and user interface
that's going on here, and yeah
it's the same UI as the PC version. You know props to them, I guess, for making that happen
but they really should not have. They should have changed at least a few things more than they did
to make it work because, you know, without a mouse and keyboard, this UI makes no sense, man!
It really doesn't. The whole idea is that you have a button to switch between two different modes: You have one
that's a little mouse cursor that you move with the left analog stick,
and then there's another mode that just moves from function to function on the screen. This is context-sensitive, though;
it doesn't work in every mode or every situation or even every menu within every mode.
And sometimes you can switch between the two; sometimes you can't.
And that is infuriating on its own.
The other thing that's really infuriating, though, is that so many of the little buttons...
it's not very easy to click on whatsoever, and that is just because not only are they really small and really cumbersome to
look around the little navigation modes for the UI...
but it's just awful in terms of how the left analog stick works. The deadzone, it's like, it's like...
a pinhead size! It's the worst dead zone. You barely move it, and you're going all over the place. What the heck is with that?
It's just going crazy for no reason whatsoever! So you're left having to move it just the tiniest
little bit in order to click on that one little part of the UI...
(Angry, unintelligible gibberish)
A great example of this is in build mode, man. I built a house that took almost 40 minutes...
this is sped up obviously, but you have 40 minutes to build a house!
A really basic, single-story...
really simple little house for the, you know, normal amount of money that you get starting out.
This would have taken five, six minutes max on the PC.
There's no option to change the dead zone on the analog sticks, so you're stuck with that...
just ridiculous acceleration going all over the place at all times.
Also, the camera angles can get really, really irksome. You pretty much have like a direct overhead view or a side-on view
that's just like a little
too low, at least for the way that I prefer playing.
Yeah, you can zoom in and out and stuff with the right analog stick, and that kind of makes it better in some cases.
You know half the time. I just ended up playing with no walls whatsoever and...
in build mode that's just not an option if you wanted to put stuff all over the walls!
At the same time though, again, this it really is wild to be able to see, like, you know...
You boot it up on your console, and then it's the same game on the PC! You stick them side-by-side -
I can't really tell the difference. There are very few tells letting you know that this is a console version of the game.
I really do want to stress that! I'm impressed with the fact that they have finally brought over, like, just, everything from the PC version,
stuck in on a console, and it works. It actually works!
It's not, like, ideal obviously, because you can't friggin' control it.
At the very minimum I would love some kind of option to be able to change that dead zone or plug in a keyboard and mouse.
That's it. That would make this totally passable. And it costs more than the PC and that's...
unfortunate.
You know, it's not a crap game. I like the Sims 4. I don't love it.
Those controls...I'm gonna be referring to them for a long time. If I ever hear anybody talk about some clunky controls and be like,
"Well, at least it's not the Sims 4!"
And yeah, you do get more used to the controls...
eventually.
After several hours, I still found myself struggling a lot...
but I was at least getting used to panning by holding down this button, moving that one, and getting used to the dead zone...
kind of, but at the same time, sometimes one mouse cursor just all over the place,
and I would struggle to even click just a tiny little UI element to make my sim go home from the current lot.
I think I've covered all the bases for this one that I wanted to really talk about here again.
I'm not diving into the actual gameplay because they've already talked about that, but yeah
Sims 4 on consoles.
(Strange noises) It's fine.
You know, so maybe a little more expensive than it needs to be and it's also
really irritating to control.
If you got it on PC
there's really, obviously, no reason to get this, but if you've never played it at all
it's not the worst way to do so.
I just probably wait for a price drop or....
And, again, if you'd like more information on what you actually do in the game,
I recommend my full Sims 4 review, which is linked to right here.
And there are also other videos going up every Monday and Friday, so stick around if you'd like.
And as always, thank you for watching LGR!