My Sims (Wii)
Ages: Everyone

Yes, me, me, mine and My Sims and finally one that can be played by kids. Building looms large in any Sims game – that and free range customization. It starts with creating your sim, and here clothes make the man or women. Your choice of gender depends upon how you outfit your sim and yes, you can be a girl with facial hair.

You are welcomed into a town that has seen better days, given a house and a workshop and encouraged to do your part in revitalizing it. The town is ripe for development – suggested piles of brick and timber are strewn about but very few people. You set to work making things with the 3D blueprints provided – starts simple – a chair for your house. You work on a circular platform, placing the green tinted blocks where they should go and they snap into position. Red images show when you have selected the wrong piece but eventually, you are encouraged to build "out of the box". You start with simple pieces of furniture and eventually end up building houses. Then there are things like “essences” - patterned textures that you have to find. They are gorgeous and I spent some time hunting and stockpiling them – even dark essences.

The game starts out with a limited area, few people and a half dozen plans, but as you keep your sim moving, talking and building, the town expands, there are more people and more plans. All the Sims games reward time spent in the game, so how big the game becomes depends on how much play time you invest.

The town is a colorful place - flowers, trees, railroad, dock and some houses to start off. The characters are childlike – reminding me of the Legos players in the Star Wars games. Music is cheery. There is day and night with morning light filtering in through the windows and daybreak comes. When my little Sim sleeps – she tosses and turns. There are many nice touches.

The Wii Remote is used for pointing to objects on the screen and the “A” button accepts. The Nunchuck’s control stick moves your sim. Talk is also done with the “A” button but, something should have been done to keep the dialog from repeating. A simple ending statement, as is in many games might help.

Everyone is cute, the construction easy and that hides the exceptional amount of work done by the Electronic Arts team. Making things easy – is hard.

Fun Factor: Lots of
Female Factor: The Mayor is a woman
Player Friendly: The game is gradually introduced eliminating the need for a tutorial.

Reviewed by: Editor - 12/07