The Sims 4 PS4 Game Review

Reviewed by Max C. on Nov 17, 2017

Rating:

The Sims 4 brings its expansive living simulation to consoles. Does the game translate well or is it best suited for PC? Read on at Kidzworld to see our PS4 review of the new game!

By: Max Cannon

The Sims 4 is certainly the most expansive entry in the series, especially when it first released back in September of 2014. The game is welcomed to consoles but how does it fare when stacked up to its PC counterpart? Well, some things come across very well while others could certainly use some work but for the biggest fans of The Sims if you missed out on The Sims 4 on PC you'll be glad to start the game up on consoles.

Starting a Sim

Playing The Sims is the ultimate busywork simulator and the series has come a long way from its earliest days by introducing even more personality into the characters and world that Maxis has created. Much of the game is based around taking your lowly Sim from their first house to the height of success with a massive home, happy family, and successful career path. Keeping your Sim on the path to the top will require constant watch over their needs and good use of their off time. This means managing hygiene, hunger, and bathroom needs for your Sim between building basic skills that will help you ascend in your chosen field of work. Time management is the name of the game in The Sims series.

The Sims 4 on PS4 and Xbox One - Kidzworld Weekly News

While everything that's mentioned above is a constant in the entire series of games, The Sims 4 injects even more content, craziness, and customization into the series. The sheer amount of time I spent on designing the perfect Sim is a testament to that but once that's done I found myself taking even twice the amount of time in getting my perfect house made. What really surprised me was the expansive world outside of your house, walking around the neighborhood and meeting other townspeople livened up the world for me -- but to be fair, I skipped on The Sims 3 so maybe this has been around for awhile. Looking at the extra content added onto The Sims 4 on PC seems to suggest that there's a noticeable lack of the PC's additional content here but the base game has so much to offer that I felt like I had a pretty full experience.

The Sims 4's colorful world is a perfect canvas for creative players.

Building a Home on Console

The transfer to console doesn't do much for the game's menus. While certain Sims games in the past have been totally retooled when coming to consoles with new menus or analog control over characters, this game feels like a direct port of the PC game. The menus are very list heavy and you'll control most of the menus with a cursor that would fair much better with a mouse than it does with a controller. Sadly this isn't the only problem I ran into when playing The Sims 4 on PS4.

Building relationships with family and friends shows off the game's personality.

While there are a ton of things going on at once in this game, it's certainly not graphically demanding and my PS4 Pro struggled to run the game effectively and I saw a lot of slowdown. The game also fails to autosave frequently enough to deal with the biggest problem I had: crashes. My time playing The Sims 4 came to multiple abrupt ends due to the game crashing, over 3 times in my first hour of playing forced me to have to rebuild my home from scratch. It's a sizable problem and makes it harder for me to recommend this game.

The game's social events feel more diverse than any other entry in the series.

Final Thoughts

The core of The Sims 4 is awesome and consistently charming. What is far less charming about the game are the nasty blemishes left over from porting the PC based game onto consoles. Crashes, performance, and poor porting of menus damages the experience of playing The Sims 4 on console. If you're a big enough fan to push through the problems I'd suggest playing it on console but if you can try the game on PC that would be the best place to play.