I should really be calling this “Five Days with My Sims,” as originally planned because I only played it for five days. Why? Because I rented it. In general I buy games but this time I heard three critiques that gave me pause, they were: 1) the load screens are atrocious, 2) it’s a construction sim not a social sim, and 3) Animal Crossing is way better. All three are true, really. If that’s all you wanted to know feel free to stop reading.

The plot (and I use “plot” loosely since this is a sandbox game) is that you’re some person who comes to some town that hardly anyone lives in anymore. Why is everyone gone? Because the person with the ability to control “essences” and thus the ability to make the world a prettier, mood-conducive-r placed has bounced outie, possibly forever. Here’s where you come in because you have said power, and after you spend a while agonizing over how your character will look (including the pitch of the voice) you can begin to exercise said quasi-godlike powers. Joy! Speaking of, everyone says the characters look like the kokeshi-style Mii but I have no idea what they’re talking about because, to me, the rather twee sims characters look like Pinky St. toys. (The world is my dollhouse!) Ahem. You’re whisked through some tutorials and then you’re on your own in an attempt to get the town from 1 star to 5, unlocking characters, essences, and areas along the way.

The tutorials were not too amazing for me, sadly, and when I was instructed to make a podium out of eight or so apples I literally had a pile of apples with a piece of wood on top. I guess I’m pretty literal in my thinking. You get little jobs like these from most of the people in town, the main idea being, apparently, to paint blocks of wood with the essences, rather than dump the essences into one giant pile of stuff, like I did. Eventually I caught on to the building system, which is good because (note critique #2) you spend most of your time building things, which isn’t really that fun, quite frankly. Sadly that’s the only way you can make people happy, by giving them junk you build and slapped their favorite essence(s) all over, fabulous. Off the top of my head the six essences are spooky (purple), tough (blue), fun (yellow), cute (pink), geeky (green), and food (brown). I really like the geeky sims but was pretty bored with the fun ones, even though they’re mostly ravers, who I think are adorable. The spooky sims had neat gawth stuff but here’s the kicker: you can’t get most of the town sims’ furniture for your house, you can only add/arrange it in theirs. Bogus! If someone becomes your best friend you get one of their signature items unlocked, but it’s almost universally lame.

So what can you do, besides build things, slap a coat of essence on them, and hand them to someone? Well new sims come to town every day, that helps, and you can move people in and out of town as you like. You can (at a certain point) redress sims, but I found this somehow unrewarding. You can unlock rather cute new areas with cute new essence trees (many grow on trees), which was probably my favorite part of the game. Finally, you can screw with someone’s house until it’s just how you like, but I for one never got their houses to look just right, hell, I never even decorated mine. I wasn’t kidding when I said most of your time was spend on the build screen, it really is, but when it’s not there’s something fun about seeing the houses you built (I liked building those, I must admit) and seeing the characters you picked run around down and have dance-offs and the like.

As for the other critiques they’re perfectly valid, I’m not sure why or how but the game must push the Wii to the limit because there are load screens all the time and they’re not short, it’s really annoying. It’s a flaw in the game, really, because it interrupts gameplay significantly. As for #3, absolutely. I once said that Animal Crossing with a bit of Harvest Moon would be the perfect sandbox game, but now I suggest a little of My Sims in there as well. The control over the town is actually quite fun, and AC could benefit from it, as it could from the cute wallpapers that essences produce (and the interesting trees), varied landscape, and the like. In the end I’d rather play Animal Crossing though, the problem being that I had already played it, both of them, in fact, into the ground. As for gender issues (which those who read my reviews know I always write on), I’m not really seeing any, you can play as either gender, the town sims seem split, and you can change their clothes/hair/etc. with few restrictions, oh, and the mayor is a woman. Go, mayor!

In the end, if you played AC and AC:WW too much for your own good and are just dying for something to play, I’d say rent it, but save the cash for AC Wii. Five days with My Sims was enough for me, though I will say, I enjoyed it while I was played, but there’s also something to be said for leaving while the party’s still fun.

Reviewed on 11/07/07
Screen shots from the official EA website