MySims – Review

As a long time Sims fan as well as an Animal Crossing aficionado, MySims was added to my must purchase list as soon as a release date became apparent. Having played the title now for many hours, I thought I’d write a review, to help those still undecided.

For those of you that are Sims fans, you’re probably going to be disappointed in the lack of depth MySims offers in comparison to it’s more adult counterparts. Although MySims does indeed borrow from the Sims universe – in that the game mechanic has the players character befriending other Sims and doing various menial and creative tasks – it is by no means one of the traditional Sims titles. For those gamers familiar with Animal Crossing on the Gamecube or DS, this is a better example of the gameplay of MySims.

As with most Sims games, you start MySims by creating your character. This is a simple task whereby you click / point to the area you want to change using the WiiMote and cycle through your options until you find the one you want. This can be carried out for face, hair, eyes, mouth and clothing. You also get to name your Sim and the town your Sim is moving to. The set up really couldn’t be much simpler and although there’s not a huge amount of choice with physical features, there are plenty of clothing choices. There should be something there to please everyone regardless of their personal taste as you can choose from, geek, goth, yuppy and more.

Once your Sim is created, it’s time to enter the game. This is where you’ll learn the overall idea, which, put simply, is to resurrect an ailing town. As with Animal Crossing, you make friends with the residents, do tasks for them and as your town gets more popular you’ll make the Mayor of the town happy. A little depth is lent to the title via its use of ‘essences’. These are magical type painting skills found in various items, be it fruits, foods, flowers, animals and more. When constructing items for the other Sims in town, you can use these essences to make them more applicable to said person. An example of this may be that you know the town goth Violet likes things made of dead wood or other essences dark in nature. If you then go make her something with that essence, you will build your popularity with her and improve your town’s overall popularity eventually also. It’s a nice touch and can lead to some crazy concoctions. The only down side of the essences is that late in the game some of them can be frustrating to find, though with good planning and or planting, this can be remedied to a degree. Because the world opens up into a few distinct areas, you can go searching for essences in other areas or through other means. Some of the main ways of finding them include prospecting, fishing, shaking trees and more.

Where MySims stands out is in it’s creative process, regardless of the very basic and easy to jump into nature of the game overall. It is a lot of fun to create items and to open new ones and can become strangely addictive. As you make residents happy, new residents will arrive in town and you will build their homes and businesses to your own tastes based on building materials set out for that particular character (for example building a video arcade for the ‘geek’ character—one of my favorites). Each character has around 3 or 4 tasks that you need to complete for them and when you do they’ll award you with blueprints to a new building item or something similar. It’s fun to carry out the tasks and it’s good to get to see the diversity of characters that arrive in town.

Graphically you’re not going to get a game much cuter than MySims, it is oozing with the cute stuff, out of every full coloured pore. The environments (once opened) are fairly sprawling in overall size, character design is varied, though all the character models are essentially working off the one frameset. Homes and businesses are there for you to tweak at your will, which means you can essentially have the entire town decked out in your own style (to a degree). Despite the simple nature of the game graphically speaking, it does suffer from some baffling frame rate issues, which see the game stutter and start from time to time. Though this doesn’t ruin the game, it does stand out as being an odd occurrence. If I were getting similar slowdown on my mac or PC whilst playing any of the other Sims games I wouldn’t be happy, so I don’t know why it’s expected to just be overlooked here.

The sound in MySims isn’t fantastic, but it is what you’d expect for a cutesy title. As with previous titles in the Sims franchise, all speech is done in Simmish, the pretend language of the Sims characters. For this reason there is really no drawback for the deaf or hard of hearing gamer, even the sonar sections when prospecting utilize a graphical bleep also. The music is sickeningly chirpy and repetitive, but you get to a point where you barely notice it the more you play. What is cute is how each Sim who moves in has their own theme song based on their business. When you walk past the pizza restaurant you get a blast of Italian music, going past the spooky museum means you’ll get creepy sound effects and an overall theme of doom. Little touches like this add to the fun side of the game.

Female gamers will be pleased to know, that as with the other Sims titles, MySims allows the player to play as a male or female character. Customization is a lot of fun and you can dress your sim in the clothes of either gender, so if you want a tomboy look, it’s not a problem. As far as NPC’s go, there are also loads of cool female NPC’s. All of the characters are so adorable, you’ll probably love them all for their unique charm. There’s little doubt that MySims will be flashed as one of those ‘girl gaming titles’, and to a point this is true, this is the sort of game that the non gaming girl may well spot and want a turn of, so husbands and boyfriends who bitch their other half hates gaming, get MySims, just don’t complain when she’s taking over your Wii. Veteran girl gamers will like MySims for the same reason guy gamers will, it’s shallow fun, end of.

Despite the overall lack of depth, there’s just something about MySims that is so endearing I found myself playing it for hours on end, something not many other games in recent times have accomplished. It’s not without its problems, stuttering at points for no apparent reason, extremely repetitive in gameplay nature and so cute as to make your eyes bleed, but even with all that said, it’s fun and since that is what gaming should be about, it’s going to get a rather good score. The other great thing about MySims on the Wii is that it is essentially playable by almost any age. Locational environments are more expansive than the Animal Crossing universe, it’s just a shame that for whatever inexplicable reason, EA opted to leave out a visit friends town feature, making this a single player experience only. Hopefully the next MySims title will expand on what is a fun and promising title, for gamers of all ages. MySims is a fun alternative for Animal Crossing fans whilst they eagerly await Animal Crossing on the Wii.

Review by Tracy