{"id":16486,"date":"2017-05-26T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2017-05-26T00:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=16486"},"modified":"2017-05-08T11:55:35","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T11:55:35","slug":"stardew-valley-ps4-xbox-one-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/26\/stardew-valley-ps4-xbox-one-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Stardew Valley (PS4, Xbox One, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The farming sim that took PCs by storm last year is now available on consoles.\u00a0 In the game, your dying grandfather gives you an envelope to open later.\u00a0 One day, while bored and frustrated at your cubicle job at Jojo Co., you open the envelope and find the deed to your grandfather\u2019s farm in Stardew Valley.\u00a0 So you pack up your things and start your new life out in the country.\u00a0 Will you be able to work hard to make money and cultivate the land and friendships to find happiness, or will you succumb to Jojo Co. who is trying to buy the land for warehouse space?\u00a0 Stardew Valley is available on PS4, Xbox One, and PCs, but reviewed on PS4 here.<\/p>\n

If this premise sounds exactly like the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons titles, well you\u2019re exactly right, as Stardew Valley is just a carbon copy of those kinds of games. But that\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing.\u00a0 The game still plays very well, and there hasn\u2019t been a Harvest Moon title on a home console in quite some time, as they\u2019ve all been on handhelds for the past few years.<\/p>\n

When you first start your farm, you\u2019ll need to clear the land, till a patch of it, and plant seeds and water them every day.\u00a0 When they finish growing, you can pick them and put them in a shipping box to earn money.\u00a0 There is an in-game clock that runs at a pretty good speed, maybe almost too fast, as the days are pretty short and you don\u2019t really feel like you have enough time to do everything.\u00a0 You must also keep an eye on your health and energy meters, which run out as you do activities.\u00a0 You can refill them by eating food or going to sleep.\u00a0 You\u2019ll start the game with nearly all the tools you\u2019ll need, like a garden hoe, axe, mattock, watering can, and even a fishing pole.\u00a0 Later on you\u2019ll even be able to raise animals as well.<\/p>\n

But farming isn\u2019t the only thing you\u2019ll do in the game.\u00a0 You can make friends with the townsfolk and give them gifts.\u00a0 Some of the residents are single and you can even marry them and have kids later on.\u00a0 You can also fish, mine for ores that you can use to upgrade your tools, fight monsters in the caves, play arcade games at the saloon, and much more.\u00a0 You\u2019ll even be able to find hidden spirits and help them to restore the land over Jojo Co.\u2019s ever-looming presence.\u00a0 You can pretty much do whatever you want to in the game, but you can pull up a handy screen that gives you goals to complete as well, which is helpful.<\/p>\n

The game has a few small problems here and there.\u00a0 There\u2019s not really much in the way of tutorials on how to use your tools.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve played a Harvest Moon game before, you\u2019ll be able to jump right in for the most part.\u00a0 But I did have to restart my game once because I accidentally threw my fishing pole away because I didn\u2019t know how to use it, and once you catch a fish, the mini-game you must play to reel it in isn\u2019t very intuitive.\u00a0 Plus some of the menus mix regular controls with mouse controls, which is a little jarring.\u00a0 But I still loved the 16-bit style graphics and the gameplay was still solid.\u00a0 If you enjoy Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing games, you\u2019ll definitely want to give this a try, too.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stardew Valley is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Simulated Gambling, and Use of Alcohol and Tobacco.\u00a0 You can fight enemies in caves with a sword, and they just make a squishy sound while 16-bit guts splat out when defeated.\u00a0 There is a lot of text, so reading skill is a must, but I haven\u2019t come across any bad language yet so it must be used sparingly.\u00a0 There is talk of gambling and people drink alcohol and talk about smoking in the saloon.\u00a0 If your kids are old enough to enjoy games like Pokemon, they\u2019ll be fine with this game, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The farming sim that took PCs by storm last year is now available on consoles.\u00a0 In the game, your dying grandfather gives you an envelope to open later.\u00a0 One day, while bored and frustrated at your cubicle job at Jojo Co., you open the envelope and find the deed to your grandfather\u2019s farm in Stardew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16486"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16488,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16486\/revisions\/16488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}