Everything is out of your control

THE SIMS 4 PS4, XBOX ONE HH HHH THE start of a new year always brings mixed emotions.

There’s the initial excitement of the fireworks, the singing, the anticipation of what the next 12 months could hold. Then a few days later reality hits. It’s cold, you’re back at work, and there’s literally months to go before anything exciting happens again.

It’s around about now you wish you could try living a different life ... and that’s where The Sims 4 comes in.

If you’ve never played The Sims before then think of it as a life simulator, where you get to act as a deity in control of a virtual world, and all the tiny souls that inhabit it.

Now before you start, I know this game has been around on the PC for donkeys, but EA has finally launched it for consoles.

And for a console port it looks very pretty, Blind Squirrel Games has done a seriously good job.

But it falls down when you play. So much attention was paid to making it look good, that no-one thought to alter the interface to make it easy to control on a console.

The controls are horribly oversensitive and the icons so unfeasibly tiny that even saving a change can feel like a side mission.

Build mode nearly broke me, the completion of a perfunctory two-up two-down leaving me with a feeling of accomplishment only seen from smug homeowners showing off their new builds to Kevin McCloud.

And it’s this lack of attention to the controls which ruins what could be a great experience.

The console version of the game is jam-packed with features from the past three years, including toddlers, pools, etc, instantly making it a much fuller game than the PC version.

The ‘moodlet’ system has also been carried over, meaning your character can carry their mood over to whatever their new task.

My current mood is one of frustration, because all the elements are their for a wonderful game, but sloppy controls and bugs tarnish the experience. BUY IT: £24.99 from smythstoys.com.