Topic: Youtubers Life: OMG Edition (Switch) Review

[lolmonade]

It won’t stop buffering.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/49264/youtubers-life-omg-edition-switch-review

I balked when three months ago, my 6-year-old son came home from his friends’ house excitedly telling me they wanted to be YouTubers. I don’t have fond associations with the word “streamer,” particularly when it comes to some of the more visible or outspoken personalities that seem to gain more traction than anyone else.  What I do have a fondness for are tycoon or life simulators, which Youtubers Life OMG Edition attempts to be.

I say attempt, because the core gameplay is engulfed by a symphony of awful design choices that drown out the noteworthy features. Youtubers Life has you select music, food, or video game streamer, then plants you at home to begin a career of balancing producing videos, studying, maintaining a social life, and working to afford newly released and popularly trending video games, systems, and computer upgrades. Build your following to enable moving into better homes that also come with maintenance costs you must upkeep.

The act of making a video is actually pretty engaging – broken up into sections, pick cards that have attributes (informative, acting, special effects) that each have different arrow tracks on the left and right-hand side of them. After selecting cards, line them up in an attempt to match them together like a puzzle. This extra layer of strategy makes the process more interesting than some of its contemporaries.

Which is what makes the act of playing so aggravating. Friends will come with invitations to events such as movies or game announcements, but there’s not much to do other than approach NPCs that have no distinguishing qualities and ask questions that’ll improve or hurt your standing with them depending on what you ask about. But you’re given no inking as to what outcomes will come from those choices. Controls feel like a mouse was mapped to the joystick and buttons, making the act of selecting tasks feel sluggish.

The biggest indictment I can charge is how egregious the stuttering, slowdown, and persistent loading times between choosing each task is. The most satisfying part of these life sims is being able to complete a loop of actions, seeing the results, and gauging what tasks you complete in the next cycle to keep each plate spinning. It’s not exaggeration to say there are long pauses between each and every actions taken in game, creating a crawling pace that brings new meaning to the phrase “delaying gratification."  I never figured out what distinguishes OMG Edition from the standard edition, and likely won’t. Youtubers Life has hints of a decent life sim peeking out, but is never given a chance to shine due a layer of meaningless mechanics and endless stuttering that stunts progress. Don’t like or subscribe to this channel.