Mini Review: Youtubers Life 2 (PS4) - Trend Chaser Is Tedious

For many, the concept of Youtubers Life 2 alone will be enough to turn them off. This is a fairly straightforward life sim, which breaks the fourth wall and sees you assume the role of someone who beat predecessor Youtubers Life OMG and is subsequently invited to Newtube City to forge a new career as a social media superstar. You’ll be outfitted with an apartment, a game console (PlayStudios’ latest system, of course), and a bunch of apps.

Your task is to seek out changing trends across a slender sandbox, creating InstaLife posts about them and discussing them on camera. New things happen in the open world every day, whether it’s strangers showing up with background stories – including real-world icons, like PewDiePie – or events, such as an E3-esque convention called PlayCon. Your goal is to create content around all of these #hashtag moments in order to earn subscribers and income.

The depth that the release delves into YouTube culture is impressive; you can even get demonetised if you say something you shouldn’t. But the systems it implements are irritating: you’ll spend a lot of time simply wandering around looking for trends in the world, and loading screens are far too frequent, breaking the pace. Progression also feels stilted, ruining the “one more go” appeal of the previous title.

There is a lot to see and do here, and the fact that you can now play as a variety YouTuber – as opposed to be restricted to a single career – adds diversity to your day-to-day activities. But once you wrap your head around the flow and formula of the foray, it all becomes a bit of a grind. Perhaps there’s some meta-commentary from the developer here: that chasing trends for fame is less glamorous than it looks.

Either way, despite this being a much bigger, deeper game than its predecessor, it’s just not as fun.