My Sims
Score: 85% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: EA Games Developer: EA Games Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 Genre: Simulation
Graphics & Sound: If you haven't heard, there is a sort of popular game that has been out a while called The Sims. Of course, gaming wise, this means you have been living under a rock. Dominant on the PC and not content to stay there, this powerhouse franchise has moved on to the Nintendo consoles with My Sims. This is not the first console expedition for this franchise, but they have always maintained the characteristic look and feel of their PC counterparts. My Sims is a complete departure from the look and feel of the franchise. The new look is extremely stylized from its more real-world looking roots. The game's new cartoon feeling is due to its more kid-friendly direction. You are not going to see fuzzed out bathroom or sex scenes here. This is a more juvenile game and so the cute factor has been dialed up and the realism dialed down. Simlish is in no way less annoying to hear with cute cartoon characters as it is with adult characters. The music has a nice little pop to it that doesn't grate on your nerves. There is a law about sounds in the Sims series that is written like Newton's Law of Gravity. For every action, there is an equal or opposite sound effect. There are plenty of audio bells as you move along alerting you to everything you need to do.
Gameplay: There is no difference in how you start My Sims than any other Sims game in the franchise. Though there are a few less options than its other versions, there are still hundreds and hundreds of combinations for you to design your character. This paper doll set-up can take you quite a bit of time to get through just looking at your options. Once you have deigned your look and chosen your name, it is off to actually play the game. You are charged with bringing a town back from the brink of its own demise. You have the ability to use something called essence. Essence is, well, it is a little complex to define. It is how you and you alone can manipulate every aspect of your town from the building design, to the plants that grow, or the people that move in. You build the buildings and design their layouts. If you thought picking your character was hard, how about designing a city and shaping its direction? Do not let the childish facade fool you. There is a lot to this game. It is very forgiving, but there is a lot to take in and work with. The game is, for the most part, open world and sandbox like the others. There is a storyline to follow, but I actually feel like this is a means of a tutorial in the beginning and quickly becomes repetitive later on. This repetition isn't a grind as you can choose to do what you please in every area.
Difficulty: My Sims is a Wii game which means we will work our friend the Wii controller. Building in this game involves stacking and manipulation with the Wii controller, and herein lies some difficulty. The controller is not nearly as forgiving as the game itself. I thought some of the more complex stacking and building portions were frustrating for a younger player. Not impossible, mind you, just more frustrating than the game's direction would entail. You can get away with the bare minimum of building or completing tasks. But, if you want to really work up your town, you are going to take the time to make it look good. This means a lot of lift, twist, turn, and tweak. The tools are not as complex as the PC versions, and the simplified tools work really well.
Game Mechanics: There are several things to play with when it comes to My Sims's mechanics. The character creation area has a lot of content to be able to create and personalize characters. I think that if you have played many of the newer PC iterations of the Sims franchise that you can't help but feel it has been gimped. I also feel, or hope, that this is due to the fact that for all intents and purposes, this is a new title and game, meaning plenty of new content to come out for it. I am definitely comparing apples to oranges here, so with the thought that this is the kid-friendly version of Sims for the population, I think they did a great job. The building system was robust enough to enjoy and simple enough to be grasped by young players. I think that the modular system works well, even if it does limit you at times. For example, your exterior only has so many slots to place items, so when trying to place something like a fence to act as a railing on a balcony, it had trouble grasping the edge as a boundary. I was expecting to see some similar integration of the game to have online interaction similar to Miis. I am looking at this as a foundation for more integrated gameplay and activities to come. If not, then I am going to be sorely disappointed. This is still a good game for kids. I would steer away for the younger kids unless you are positive they have a good grasp of the Wii controller. I can understand that the repetitiveness of the game, once you get into it, could actually start to wear on an experienced gamer very quickly, but I am reminded that the experienced deep Sims player is not the intended audience.
-WUMPUSJAGGER, GameVortex Communications AKA Bryon Lloyd
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