MySims

"I spent forty-five minutes this morning making a freezer out of clownfish, gingerbread men and eighty-six types of building block - a gift for the girl dressed as a bee who runs my local ice-cream shop. I decided to take part in an impromptu dance-off with the town DJ on the way to deliver it, but unfortunately my player character looks a bit like a child molester at the moment thanks to an accident with the ‘randomise' button in the character creator, and the sight of him dancing disturbed me so that I had to detour to the nearest mirror and mess with his features and clothing until he looked less sinister. Then I was distracted by the mayor, who was splashing around in the town fountain, which drew my attention to a tiny imperfection in a neighbouring building, so I ended up rebuilding the whole structure."

"Too much construction and not enough socializing keep MySims from really flourishing."

The game has style and charm. I'm partial to the cute, colorfuly visual presentation and actually wish that EA had done a little more with it, going so far as to incorporate Mii avatars – I feel that was a missed opportunity. The world that you explore in the game is filled with objectives, which is great. The problem is that nearly all of the objectives revolve around the same two tasks: the collection of essences and the construction of houses, buildings and items. All of the Sim management and social interaction elements of the previous games – well, you're not going to find much of that in the streamlined Wii affair. If you can get past that, you will still find a fun affair that uses the Wii remote well and generally looks pretty good. It just isn't as non-linear or deep as any Sims game before it. With any luck, the sequel will marry the depth of the series with the new Wii look and controls.