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MySims Review

Gwynne Dixon

20/09/2007

The Sims series continues to chop and change as it ages with this MySims spin-off for Nintendo's DS...

EA's The Sims franchise is huge, spanning across virtually every game format and boasting an intimidating amount of add-ons and expansion packs. With MySims, EA has decided to do something quite special and, dare I say it, brave with the crowded franchise. This game offers much more than just a cutesy makeover - it grants you the responsibility of looking after an entire town instead of a household of Sims.

Just like in the Wii version, this game ditches the traditional Sims point and click interface and puts you in control of a single sim. The sole objective is to raise the profile of your town to the prestigious 5 star status by running errands and doing favours for neighbouring sims. What separates this from its bigger Wii sibling is that your town is a once popular tourist spot, and its your job to resurrect it to a flourishing status.

This holiday town setting provides a foundation for all sorts of tourist mini-game activities. These include fishing, paragliding, squash (called racquetball), landscape gardening, treasure hunting, card games and flower arranging amongst other things. Performing well in these games raises the popularity, and in turn, the all-important star status of your town.

Its encouraging to see the DS' features put to good use for the mini-games. In the paragliding game you manipulate the wind by blowing into the microphone, changing the altitude of the paraglider and dodging obstacles. In the fishing game you control the lure using the stylus to grab the attention of fish, and the flower game basically tests how fast you can sort coloured icons into their correct places. The squash minigame is played using traditional controls, but the timing can sometimes seem erratic and unfair when you're returning the ball. Frustratingly, if you fail the game you'll have to go and sift through some dialogue, as well as a few menus to try the game again.

And this is the big problem with MySims: not all of the mini-games are fun. What they lack in depth is made up for by having a high level of difficulty, with the touch screen games demanding a level of patience and dexterity that Dr Kawashima would be proud of. Fortunately you don't have to play flawed mini-games to please all the resident sims. You can buy shop owners' love by giving them constant business and all the land owning sims maintain their land for them.

But this game is more than doing chores, favours and mini-games. It becomes interesting as you see your hard work come into fruition as more visiting sims appear, and you discover more about the resident sims. Perhaps it's because sims have never been able to speak anything other than gibberish in previous games, but they seem to have trouble spitting out dialogue here. This is what makes it so compelling; you'll help a depressed policeman, a lonely ranger, an aspiring chef and more as their stories are drip fed to you.

This game also lends itself to lots of creative customisation as you can extensively modify your sim and their room. Sim customisation offers more than picking out an unlockable assortment of hairstyles, hats, tops and bottoms. The real fun begins when you earn the right to design your own clothes, as you use the DS stylus to make any pattern on each of your sims' arms, chest and back using a variety of colours and tools. The option to draw your own designs also makes a return with custom furniture as you can create an image from scratch and see it plastered around your room. This really helps give the game that personal feel.

It is also very easy to furnish and refurnish your house as you see fit, with a variety of items to choose from. The room editor utilises both screens to show you exactly what space you have using a precise grid on the top screen, with the bottom screen mirroring this with a 3D preview.

There is a day and night time system present in this game. During each of these cycles, sims will be doing different things. During the night, you can still enter some neighbouring sims' houses to find them in a permanently awake state, shattering the illusion of human-like behaviour. For better or worse, this game doesn't use the real-time clock. This diminishes the illusion of a virtual town, but it does offer the benefit of being able to play your way until you want.

As your town's profile is raised, holidaymaking sims will start visiting. Unfortunately it seems the holiday town attracts only the most negative sims as they are all unhappy, and due to the limited dialogue they all share exactly the same five or so problems. Talking to them results in mimed conversations where you choose emotional gestures in response to their problems. Strangely enough you get paid for doing this. You'll also find yourself getting paid for failing mini-games, amassing loads of cash before you know it. A curious currency system like this destroys the value of items in shops, questioning the credibility of the cash system.

The cute art style in this game is very consistent and a high level of presentation is maintained throughout. The characters maintain the soft, super deformed look seen in the Wii version of the game, though obviously the models here aren't as detailed. The town and its surrounding areas vary wildly in colour due to the many cycles of day.

Disappointingly although the game acknowledges its Wii counterpart via the occasional reference from a sim, there is no way to link the two versions together. This strikes me as a huge missed opportunity, and definitely doesn't do any favours to extend the game's lifespan. An open-ended game such as this would have been perfect for Wii/DS interactivity.

Musically this game is punctuated with cheery chimes and the type of music that wouldn't seem out of place in an episode of the Tellytubbies. This is very telling of the younger audience the game is ideal for, and helps signpost the fact that it's designed to be a simple game. It also highlights that 'cute' game music shouldn't be restricted to xylophones, as the music gets rather irritating after only a short time.

Bearing this in mind, although the game does have flaws, some of them are in a younger gamers favour. Not being too text heavy and having a forgiving currency system is certainly enticing for them although, for older gamers, there isn't enough in this package to maintain your interest in the long-term.