SOTS Game Review - Mario Strikers Charged
 |
| PLATFORM |
| Nintendo Wii |
| DEVELOPER |
| Next Level Games |
| PUBLISHER |
| Nintendo |
| GENRE |
| Sports |
| # OF PLAYERS |
| 1-4, Multiplayer Online |
| Rating |
| E10+ |
| U.S. RELEASE DATE |
| July 30th. 2007 |
| MSRP |
| $49.99 |
Mario Strikers Charged
OVERVIEW
Quest for the Striker Cup!
REVIEW
Since the Wii lacked any real Mario title at launch, I was one who looked at any potential Mario release as a sign that the Wii had arrived. Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Kart, Super Paper Mario, and this game were three that I was particularly looking forward to. And since Super Paper Mario could only be looked at as a success, it made me all the more excited to give this game a shot. Soccer games are generally fun anyway, so this game had the potential to at least provide some mindless entertainment.
Naturally, the first thing a lot of people do these days when they open a new game is jump right into the tutorial. Who reads instruction manuals anymore? The tutorial generally shows you everything you might need to know to play the game, leaving everything beyond the basics to be discovered later. A good tutorial is brief, to the point, and should have you playing the game competently within a few minutes.
Unfortunately for Mario Strikers Charged, this was the first major failing of the game. I literally sat there for an hour trying to make my way through the tutorial. Not that it took a long time to explain things, but the load time was insane! There were several lessons, and for each of them, you had to load the intro screen, read through an overly flashy and all-too-brief explaination, then sit through an even longer load screen before finally getting to the lesson. After the lesson, you load some more into the flashy summation screen, then more loading back to the menu!
Oh, and it does get better. One of the very first lessons is basic shooting. Now, the game is designed so that there is a wide array of fancy goals and charged shots. And since the computer does the bulk of the goalkeeping for you, it is next to impossible to score a goal with a basic shot. But that is what this tutorial expects you to do. You are put up against a normal-level goalie, given the ball and told to score. You barely know how to pass, you don’t know about Megastrikes or Skillshots, and are barely running around the field, and the tutorial expects you to actually score a goal against a fully-skilled goalie before it passes you on the shooting lesson. Talk about an enormous waste of time. Two minutes into it I had a firm grasp of how to shoot, but I had to spend another ten or fifteen minutes shooting over and over and over again before I finally managed to sneak one in there. Talk about a waste of time.
What was just supposed to be a brief initial session with the game turned into an hour and a half fiasco, and I never did actually play a real game. This initial session really soured me to the game, and it was a couple days before I finally felt like giving it a shot again.
Once I actually got to playing the game, it wasn’t so bad. Basically. The game works thus - each team has a Captain (one of several main characters from the Mario/Donkey Kong universe), three sidekicks, and a computer controlled goalkeeper. The Captains are the most powerful players on the field, each with unique power-ups, and the ability to “Megastrike” - a certain shot on goal that allows you up to six shots on goal per attempt, depending on your timing. Of course, the Megastrike shot takes some time to set up, so if your opponent tackles you while you are setting it up, you don’t get it off.
Now each team has the same goalie - Kritter, a soldier from the various Donkey Kong games. For all normal shots on goal, the computer controls Kritter, and it is usually very good. For the Megastrike shots, however, you do the goalkeeping. After the Megastrike animation, Kritter’s hands appear on the screen and you have to “smash” the balls as the come at you by pointing and pressing the A button before they pass you by. The number of goals scored is, naturally, the number of balls you miss.
Early on I was pessimistic about this system. It seemed like the more Megastrike opportunities you got, the more likely you were to win. And this kind of seemed monotonous to me. That is until I realized that the Megastrike often isn’t the game decider. At higher levels and vs. equally skilled human opponents, the Megastrike almost proves useless. The amount of time it takes to set up almost guarantees that you will get tackled, and any proficient player can easily block all of the shots in a Megastrike. It quickly becomes obvious that the Sidekicks are really your key to victory.
Each team has three Sidekicks, which you can chose prior to the match. These are made up of secondary characters - your Koopas, Boos, Hammer Bros, Toads, etcetera, and fill out your team. Each have special moves and have varying stats, and while they can’t perform the Megastrike, they each have their own special Skillshot. These Skillshots are defended by the computer, and though they can only score one goal at a time, they end up becoming the deciding factor in games once you have progressed to a certain skill level.
To add a little more chaos to the game, you also collect various power-ups. There are two kinds - the general power-up that can be used by every player - these include shells, bombs, banana peels, and other items that are dropped on the field of play (which do exactly what you would expect them to do), and Captain-specific power-ups that of course vary depending on who you are playing with. Effective use of these power-ups is often the difference between winning and losing.
Nintendo core-titles usually make the best use of the controller, and this title is no different. The motion sensor is sparingly used, and it isn’t attached to anything critical. Shaking the Wii remote will allow you to check your opponent just a little harder, and shaking the nunchuck will allow you to cycle through your available power-ups. The rest of the controls are very intuitive, and I had no difficulty at all mastering the control style.
The graphics are good - very solid for the Wii, and the different fields available to play on are varied and unique. The cut-scenes on the other hand - while impressive, are very repetitive. They take a long time to load, and can’t be skipped. This isn’t a bad thing at first, but since the intro scene is identical (one for the home team, one for the visitor) no matter what Captain you chose (aside from the catchphrase), they quickly become annoying and a real waste of time.
BOTTOM LINE
This is a decent game, though one much better suited to multiplayer. The tutorial is a pain in the neck, and since it is vital to complete it before trying to play (for the most part), introducing new players to the game can become time consuming. The cut-scenes are also a drawback - it didn’t take too long for them to become a point of humor in my multiplayer outings.
If you generally play games alone - this might be one to steer clear of. It does have a decent online option - but as well as they pulled off the online component, it still isn’t as fun as playing with someone in the same room. If you routinely play with friends and family, though, it might be one to look into, especially if you are looking for something a little more advanced than Wii Sports, or other party games.
Overall this is a solid game, if a little light on the features. It is a big improvement over Super Mario Strikers, and a good first foray into online multiplayer for Nintendo. My advice is to try and find this one used - with all the new Wii games out about this time, you shouldn’t have too difficult a time finding a cheap used copy.
Rating(out of 5):
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November 15, 2007
SOTS Game Review - Blazing Angels: Squadrons of World War II
 |
| PLATFORM |
| Xbox 360, Xbox, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, PC |
| DEVELOPER |
| Ubisoft Romania |
| PUBLISHER |
| Ubisoft |
| GENRE |
| Flight Combat |
| # OF PLAYERS |
| 1, Multiplayer online |
| Rating |
| T |
| U.S. RELEASE DATE |
| March 20th - Nintendo Wii March 23rd, 2007 - XBox 360 March 28th - PC December 12th 2006 - PS3 |
| MSRP |
| $39.99 |
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of World War II
OVERVIEW
Battle your way through the famous engagements of World War II.
REVIEW
I am always game for a good air combat game - always have been, since way back in the old F-15 Strike Eagle days. It is one genre that legitimately seems to get better and better each generation. Heck - Ace Combat is one of a very few games that kept me buying Playstation.
Naturally with a brand new Wii, I was looking for a solid air combat game for the system. This was really lacking in the Gamecube, and I am still hoping that the Wii will be a little more-well rounded, so I decided to pick this one up with high hopes. I read some average reviews, but I didn’t really let that bother me. I wasn’t expecting the game to blow me away - I just wanted a nice fun shooter and all.
As the title suggests, this is a World War II Era game. You play a member of an American fighter squad who enlisted with the Royal Air Force to fight the Germans prior to the US’s entry into the war. The game starts at the Battle of Britain, works its way through Africa, Pearl Harbor, and Midway before it goes through D-Day, France, and finally Berlin. In each mission you have access to various planes, and as the game progresses, you unlock more aircraft that are supposed to be more mission specific.
The first and most important thing I looked for was the way the game handled the Wii controller. Of all the different game genres out there, the Flight games were the only ones where I honestly had no idea how they would translate to the new controller. Seems like I wasn’t alone there - Blazing Angels had no idea either, so they tried a whole bunch. One control scheme seemed to be more traditional (thumbstick for turning, buttons for various functions), another attempted to use the nunchuck itself as a flight-stick, while the third didn’t use the nunchuck at all, instead opting for the sideways Wii Remote with the tilt sensors acting as the flight controls.
Frankly, the use of the motion controls was terrible. The motion controls simply aren’t precise or reliable enough to work that way (a steering wheel seems to be about as complex as you can get with it), and both schemes that utilized the motion controls for movement were ultimately flawed.
The Classic scheme seemed to work best, but there was just too much you needed to press buttons for. Whenever you have so much functionality in a controller that you need to assign a “shift” button, you know you need to simplify things. You have your various weapon and directional controls, and you have to control the actions of your various squad-mates. You also had two buttons dedicated to camera control, including the main A button (on Classic) devoted to the equally frustrating and awesome follow enemy camera.
See, if you press the A button, the camera will follow whatever you have targeted. This takes a little getting used to, but it becomes awesome. It allows you to keep constant track of your prey, and once you learn to ease in and out of it, and can maneuver without crashing into the ground, it really helps you in dogfights.
Trouble is that it uses the A button in classic mode. Now you use the directional pad to throttle up and down. Now the game recommends that you hit the A button and throttle down for the tightest of all turns. Now it is possible to press both the A Button and down on the directional pad at the same time, but it is difficult, and lead to my first case of gamer’s thumb on the Wii. If you want to speed up while following the enemy? Well, you can forget it, because it is impossible. You can also count out any assistance from your wingmen, because so long as you are following your target, it is just physically impossible to execute any commands.
Which brings me to the wingmen. Exactly when did it become standard practice in air combat games to have wingmen to control? Who’s terrible idea was this? I mean, when it was simple, I liked it fine. I usually just sent them away or had them perform some distracting task just so that they would stay out of my way. Blazing Angels takes this to a whole new level. One wingman helps you repair damage in flight - a useful tool, really. And it is presented well - when you call on him, he gives you a button combination to press, and explains what it will “do.” All of the repair explanations sound fairly reasonable - so it doesn’t seem like your damage is just magically vanishing, but in reality it is, giving you little incentive to avoid getting hit in the first place. As a result you can dive-bomb your targets with reckless abandon, only to flee and recover all of your health like nothing happened.
The other two wingmen are a total waste. One “shields” you by taking some damage meant for you, and another will “hunt” an assigned target for you. What is wrong with just ordering your wingmen to form up or go engage the enemy? The whole wingmen angle adds a needlessly complicated and way over-sophisticated aspect to the game, one it would have been far better forgetting all together.
The scenery is gorgeous indeed. If you take the time to look at the areas you fly over, in most cases they are incredibly detailed and quite gorgeous. Unfortunately, it is tough to see anything at all, because the game seems to think it is cool if everything looks like you are watching an old filmstrip. Everything is dark and brown, and kind of grainy. Having seen the graphics on the Xbox, I can say they are a bit improved, but not by much. Overall individual screen shots look awesome, but the weird motion effects make it all very hard on the eyes.
All of the haze and dust does add a level of realism - it makes it difficult to actually spot enemy planes. But that angle is totally negated by the completely obvious radar and targeting system. You can target enemies miles away that you can’t physically see yet. So instead of dog-fighting against enemy planes, for the most part you are fighting annoying red and orange triangles.
Oh, and the story. Could this game try any harder to be like Ace Combat? The narrator had virtually the same tone of voice, and the story was told exactly the same way that the story is told there. The thing is - in Ace Combat, it works. You have a fictional war with fictional nations - things need to be explained in greater detail than they do when discussing a war that was very real and one we have seen in countless games before. Painting the protagonists in this game as the same kind of “heroes” at the core of the successful war effort doesn’t work in a real-life situation. Less dreamy and fantastic, more grit and realism was required.
Back to the planes - boy, was that a waste of space. There are a ton of planes that you unlock during the game, and almost all of them perform exactly the same. There are some differences between major plane types, but for the most part, you can complete every fighter mission with any kind of fighter, with about the same level of difficulty. And the crappy brown/grain color crossed over into the menu screens as well, so it isn’t even interesting to go through your available planes to see what they look like.
BOTTOM LINE
This game is a real letdown as a Wii title. It does show that it might be possible to make a great air combat game for the Wii, but they are going to have to let go of the motion sensor (at least, for key functions) to make that a reality, and they are going to have to resist the temptation to cram in extras. There are just enough buttons to account for all of the plane’s controls ([i]thumbstick for movement, up and down on the thumbpad for throttle, right and left for rudder, A for targeting, B for guns, Z for secondary weapons, and I don’t know, maybe C for landing gear, a downward thrust with the nunchuck for any afterburners in a jet game, - and + for Form up/Attack commands to the squad, and maybe even a cool head-look feature with the sensor bar… maybe I am forgetting something, but it seems like this would work[/i]), and it could be done easily without making things awkward.
If you are playing on another console, definitely pass on this game, as there are many other better air combat sims out there. If you have a Wii, just stick in your old Rogue Leader game and play that - it is far superior to this, and it is Star Wars, so there is a geek-appeal there.
As for Blazing Angels - it tries to hard to be something it isn’t, and it totally forgot to make a passable fighter combat game in the process. This one is a real yawn.
Rating(out of 5):
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October 25, 2007
SOTS Game Review - Spider-Man: Friend or Foe
 |
| PLATFORM |
| Xbox 360, Playstation 2, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, PC, Playstation Portable |
| DEVELOPER |
| Next Level Games Artificial Mind and Movement Beenox Studios |
| PUBLISHER |
| Activision |
| GENRE |
| Action/Adventure |
| # OF PLAYERS |
| 1-2 |
| Rating |
| E10+ |
| U.S. RELEASE DATE |
| October 2nd, 2007 |
| MSRP |
| $49.99 XBox 360 & Nintendo Wii $39.99 Playstaton 2 & PSP $29.99 Nintendo DS $19.99 PC |
Spider-Man Friend or Foe
OVERVIEW
Alien PHANTOMs have come to Earth and are wreaking havoc! It’s up to Spider-Man to stop them!
REVIEW
I’m going to cut to the chase here. This game is easy. Ridiculously easy. But that’s ok. Spider-Man Friend or Foe is rated E10+, and specifically geared towards kids. With that in mind, this game suddenly goes from overly simplistic to well put together.
The story is pretty straightforward. Spider-Man is ambushed by the Green Goblin, Sandman, Doc Ock, and Venom. After the New Goblin (Harry Osborne, I presume) makes a save and tries to even the odds, all six are attacked by some weird robots, and all are kidnapped by said robots except for Spider-Man, who is rescued by a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Nick Fury tells Spider-Man about the robots (PHANTOMs), what they are, and why they must be defeated, and sets Spider-Man loose on his first mission.
After a brief explanation, you are set loose in the operations center onboard the heli-carrier. This part I liked - it was simple, and small. One of the major weaknesses of games like X-Men Legends was the sprawling mission-hubs (something they improved a little in the second game) - there is no such issue here. You have various terminals for your missions, one terminal to select a side-kick, one for upgrades, one for in-game rewards, and one for game options. All right next to each other - no needless exploring and mindless talking needed. You get in, buy your upgrades, get your partner, and go.
Spider-Man and Black Cat team against some PHANTOMs
To start the game, Spider-Man can be paired with one of two “sidekicks,” Prowler or Silver Sable. As the game progresses, you encounter allies or face enemies who are being mind controlled by the PHANTOMs. The allies join you (are unlocked as available sidekicks) pretty well immediately, and the enemies will join you after you defeat them, and break the PHANTOMs mental control. The look of each of the characters is based on the movie design, and for those characters that never appeared in the movie, they are basically given their comic look with a little updated feel. Generally the characters look good. They are a little cartoony at times, but it fits the tone of the game. I couldn’t figure out why they made Black Cat so short though - but that was just the comic geek in me in revolt. There are two exclusive characters on the PSP version - Carnage and Electro, so there is that little perk if you own one of those systems.The mission levels are extremely straight-forward. You could almost call this game a sidescroller. The level’s map does twist and turn in three dimensions, but you have a very specific path to follow from the start of the level to the end, and you get attacked at certain parts of the level by groups of PHANTOMs. Simplistic, but mindless fun. It didn’t take me too long to realize that this game really was just an old-fashioned button mashing sidescroll, and I suddenly relaxed and started to have a lot better time. I had no idea that modern gaming had become more stressful!
Spider-Man battles a group of opponents
The controller configuration is pretty standard with attack, jump, and throw buttons. Pushing them in different combinations will yield different results. But you don’t need to worry about complicated button combinations to perform ultra-moves. As I said, this is a button masher, so you probably could get through this game using only simple attacks. Mixing it up a little can be fun though. Juggling enemies with Spider-Man’s webbing was easier than you might imagine, and it didn’t take long to feel comfortable rushing large groups of PHANTOMs. The control scheme of the various partners is identical - of course they each have different assets, so their attacks manifest differently. They also have differing speeds depending on who they are - bigger characters like Doc Ock move considerably slower than lighter allies like Iron Fist. It doesn’t have a huge impact on the game, but it is a noticeable difference.Throughout the game you gather tech tokens, which can be used to purchase upgrades in the heli-carrier. As with everything in this game, the upgrades are extremely simple. This is a good thing in this case - this is a button masher, so if there was an overly complicated upgrade system like there was in Legends 2, I probably would have put the game down. The upgrades don’t do a ton, and they definitely aren’t needed to beat the game, so for maximum fun it is better to just upgrade Spidey’s web attacks first before boosting the stats of your team members.
Tokens are also spent whenever you “die.” Now you can’t actually die in this game - if you are “killed” by an opponent, or fall off a building, you return to the board, and spend a few tech tokens automatically. Of course, if you don’t have tech tokens, you really don’t need to worry, you still come back. This takes a lot of the frustration out of the game, but it also takes some of the challenge out of it. Of course, I have to go back to the rating of this game, and remember this really is made for kids, and that kind of explains it. In many ways, this game reminds me of the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game: you die, pop back in right where you fell, and if you run out of lives, you can just pop another quarter in and keep going. Granted, you don’t have a limited number of lives in Spider-Man Friend or Foe, but the effect is the same. There is really nothing to stop you from just pushing forward until you reach the end of the game. Hardcore gamers might not like that, but casual and young gamers will really enjoy having a game where they won’t be penalized for being less skilled with the controller.
Of course, because this game is so well suited for casual gamers, that automatically makes it a good title to try out on the Wii, which I did. The game is pretty well the same on the Wii. The look isn’t any different, and surprisingly the controls aren’t really either. They try to make some use of the motion control, but thankfully they show tremendous restraint there. There is really only two times when you can ever use a motion control, and only one where it seems to really do anything. You have to shake the nunchuck in one player mode to switch the player you are using (if you are one-player), otherwise, swinging the nunchuck around is supposed to modify the kind of grapple attack you perform. It might do the latter - I had a hard time reproducing some attacks, but it seemed that the motion control wasn’t intended for precise move sequences, rather to modify what your character did based on your own natural motions with the controller. If the latter was 
intended, I have to take my hat off - that is exactly how the motion control should be used in a game like this.There are a few parts where you might be frustrated by the lack of a camera. But not very many. You don’t get to control the vantage point, but there isn’t really anywhere where you would need to. Yeah, there are a few places where you wish you could, but keeping in mind that this is basically a side-scroll, it is an easy limitation to get over.
BOTTOM LINE
This game might get old fast for hardcore gamers, but if you are up for a light button-masher, you will have a lot of fun with this game. It is especially good for casual gamers and very young players who can’t handle more difficult adventure games yet. It is ideally suited for two players, so bring a friend, but you can play it through solo with an AI teammate. Good, old fashioned, mindless fun - you don’t get that very often anymore.
Rating(out of 5):
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October 22, 2007
SOTS Game Review - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
 |
| PLATFORM |
| PC |
| DEVELOPER |
| Splash Damage, id Software |
| PUBLISHER |
| Activision |
| GENRE |
| First Person Shooter |
| # OF PLAYERS |
| 1, with Online Multiplayer |
| Rating |
| T |
| U.S. RELEASE DATE |
| October 2nd, 2007 |
| MSRP |
| $49.99 |
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
OVERVIEW
The Strogg have arrived on Earth, and want to bleed it dry. It is up to the humans to stop them!
REVIEW
Seems like a ton of FPSs have arrived on the market at the same time, and with The Orange Box hitting at around the same time this one came out, you might wonder why I picked up Quake Wars first. Simple - I was already hooked on it.
Several weeks ago, a playable demo was made available for free, and I downloaded it with the intent of writing a quick and dirty review. Trouble was, whenever I thought about writing the review, I decided to play instead. Sure, we were playing the same level over and over again, but it was a great deal of fun. It also didn’t hurt that I knew other people who were already playing it - a good FPS is even more fun when you have people to play with, so on that note, this game fit the bill.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is kind of a mishmash of the old Castle Wolfenstein Enemy Territory game and previous incarnations of Quake. The gameplay is about the same as it was in the previous Enemy Territory game, only you can actually drive the vehicles, and the team make-ups are changed to reflect the Quake Universe instead of WWII Earth. Naturally, the technology is a little better in the way of graphics and map size, and there are bots, so you don’t have to worry about finding a server with a lot of players. Naturally, playing real people is far better, but the AI on the bots is good enough at any level that the game remains challenging (and you are not frustrated by your synthetic teammates).
The story is pretty much window dressing. You have the basic idea that the Strogg have invaded Earth and intend to harvest its resources. You pick a side, pick a class, and you are set loose in the mission.
All of the missions are set up in a standard attack/defend arrangement. Either you are set to complete an objective (capture something, stop something, blow something up) or you are defending. The maps are fairly big, so throughout the course of the game some of your side-missions involve capturing forward spawn points and opening up alternate access routes which come into play as the lines push forward. This also allows the defenders to, in a sense, push back the enemy, and gives the offense new lines of attack. This and the placement of powerful vehicles really encourages varied defensive strategies and helps to keep the game from getting too repetitive.
Overall, the control scheme is very good. There is a bit of a learning curve because there is a lot you can do - so much so that console FPS players might be put off when picking this game up on the PC for the first time (there are planned versions in development for PS3 and XBOX360). The basics are easy enough - standard mouse/keyboard controls, but different tools and weapons have to be implemented different ways. It isn’t too difficult to figure out, and a few rounds of single player and you should have everything figured out. At least well enough to be competitive in a live game.
The vehicles are generally fun, but the control-scheme for the aircraft is a total mess. They are impossible for most average players to control effectively. I suppose if you spent a few hours practicing, you could actually use them in combat, but most gamers would rather spend their time doing something else. The air vehicles are better left in the hands of bots who seem to be able to control them with no difficulty (so don’t waste your time). The ground vehicles are varied and very useful. You have everything from 4-wheeled ATVs to Hum-Vees, tanks, and mechs, along with their alien counterparts. Some of the vehicles have a separate weapon turret allowing one player to drive, while the other fires a secondary weapon. This is especially useful for the humans when your mission involves moving the MCP (a giant armored vehicle armed with a tactical missile) to a launch point. Having other vehicles on hand to draw fire from Anti-Vehicle turrets and to provide cover for engineers trying to keep the MCP repaired makes for an intense and fun experience.
Graphics and sound - really, what can you say. There isn’t much about this game that makes it stand apart, but that can be a blessing in disguise. We have reached something of a pinnacle in effective graphic rendering (sure, we could get better, but would it really make any difference?), and the look of this game is about as good as it can get. The maps are detailed and logical, and have a decent flow to them. I can’t say that I was ever blown away by the landscape, but it was functional and varied. You know what mission you are on immediately upon entering the map, but the real focus is where it should be - killing your opponent.
There are a ton of weapons. And some of them take some getting used to. Some of the long-range weaponry like the sniper rifle and the rail gun have a serious kick to them, and the heavy weapons slow your run rate when selected, and have a long recharge time. There are a lot of miscellaneous tools, like summonable deployables, proximity mines, attack drones, hacking and repair tools, and even a tool that allows you to disguise yourself as a fallen enemy. The wide array of weapons and abilities really adds diversity to the different classes you can select. Each have a pretty unique role on the field, and while it can be frustrating sometimes to have to change your class because your team needs an engineer and there isn’t one on the field, the class variety encourages team play even more.
BOTTOM LINE
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is fun. That really is all you need to know about it. If you enjoy objective-based First Person Shooters, you will have a blast with this game. If you like more arena-style “just get as many kills as possible” shooters, this might not be the game for you, but if you ask me, Arena FPS games get boring real fast. I expect I will be playing this game for a long time before I get tired of it.
Rating(out of 5):
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October 15, 2007
SOTS Game Review - MySims
 |
| PLATFORM |
| Nintendo Wii |
| DEVELOPER |
| EA Redwood Shores |
| PUBLISHER |
| Electronic Arts |
| GENRE |
| Life Simulation |
| # OF PLAYERS |
| 1 |
| Rating |
| E |
| U.S. RELEASE DATE |
| September 18th, 2007 |
| MSRP |
| $49.99 |
MySims
OVERVIEW
The Sims’s town is rundown, and the mayor needs you to fix it! Build houses and furniture to help the town grow and prosper again.
REVIEW
This was one of the recent batch Wii releases I was most looking forward to. The Sims was a game I have enjoyed in the past, but I found that it emulated life a little too much for my liking. The Sims were often extremely needy, especially socially, and the time needed to have your Sims working made it so that you were frantically trying to establish relationships. I felt a little less emphasis on “needs” might be good. Boy was I wrong.
The differences between MySims and a classic Sims game are apparent off the bat. The whole look of the game has been transformed into that cutesy anime style that Nintendo often gets grief for from serious gamers. I didn’t view this as a drawback in this game however, and I still don’t think it hurt it. The characters were very distinct and had personality, which is way more than you can say for classic Sims, where the personality is pretty well limited to the cloths on their back.
If you pick this game up, I hope you like to build. And I mean really like to build. Because that is pretty much all you are going to do.
When you fire up the game, the first things you do are the usual - design your character, name your town, etc. The character generation was really lacking. The design choices are rudimentary and not very diverse. It would have been far better if this game would have allowed you to use your Mii instead of designing a poor-man’s version.
After naming your town and designing your character, you visit the town and talk to the mayor who explains to you that the town is run down and almost deserted. In order to restore the town to its former glory, they need someone who can use essences. As you might imagine, that person is you!
Mayor Rosalyn first takes you to your house. Much to her embarrassment, it hasn’t been built yet! So it is up to you to design your house.
As this is your first exposure to house-building, you would expect there to be a much more involved tutorial. Sadly, you are mostly on your own here. You are presented with all the basic building parts, and just set loose after some rudimentary instruction. I built an entire house out of these generic parts before I even realized that if you clicked the arrows on the sides, there were more pages with much more varied pieces. If you take the time to paint your house, you get a hint of what essences can do. The problem is, since they still aren’t explained to you at all, you are left to figure out on your own what their significance is, and how the “scale” applies to the game.
After being tasked with finding some essences (4 apples, in this case), you are shown to your workshop, where you will build various furniture items for inside the houses. And, naturally, this has not been built yet either! After this arduous task, you are asked to build Mayor Rosalyn a podium.
At this point, I gave up. I was well into an hour on this game with all the building, and I was bored to tears. But, wanting to give an honest review of the game, I pressed on and sat down for another session. It had to get better! There had to be something worth sticking with this game for! So after another hour or so, I finally realized - I should have put it down for good the first time.
Building is all there is to this game. And the building isn’t even fun. The control-scheme is unwieldy and the panel is laid out poorly. Instead of having a nice side-bar with your building blocks, they are scattered on the ground in front of your plot. So when you zoom in to see the details of the building you are constructing, the pieces move off the screen. If you want a new piece or to try something different, you have to zoom all the way back out and back in again. The same holds true for the item crafting - but it has even more problems. The blocks can’t be resized like they could be in the house-building, and you have a really limited number of shapes and sizes at your disposal. The game does highlight in green the pieces you can use to fit the pattern, but that doesn’t help you figure out what piece is supposed to go where sometimes. You are “encouraged” to build your design outside the pattern, making things more individual, I suppose. But you don’t get any perks for this, and rarely does the item look any better with your own personal touches (still blocky as ever), so it really just ends up being a shortcut.
So after all this building, you eventually earn a star for your town, which allows you to go to the hotel and invite visiting Sims to move in. Which requires you to build them a house, and complete building tasks for them, which earns you more stars which leads to more building and more new Sims and more building and… ARGH!
One of the best parts of the classic Sims games was the interactions. You met people, had relationships, and had different outcomes based on the relationship choices you made. This was balanced by your Sim’s own needs, the needs of your “friends,” and the design elements of your house. The reward for doing well was a complex and almost interesting virtual life that was unique to your game, and which would be very difficult to duplicate.
MySims is hardly The Sims at all. It is like they took all the worst parts of Animal Crossing, enhanced them, and slapped a Sims label on it. The game isn’t diverse at all. If you played this game through two times, it is entirely probable that you will end up with two identical games. Unless you tried really hard.
The Simspeak is annoying here. Instead of serving as the primary mode of communication, you get to listen to a track in Simspeak, then you are given speech windows to read what is said! While this is necessary to get tasks, it makes the Simspeak totally worthless. You can have your Sim communicate with another on a more basic level, but the choices you have are much more limited than you might see in a regular Sims game. “Be Nice” and “Be Mean” just don’t cover much. And since your relationships don’t matter too much, the only real reason to do this is to get essences. So you get to waste more time being nice and being mean, watching the same Simspeak cut-scenes, and wasting more time flattering or abusing the townsfolk to get building materials. And since your actions have almost no consequences, it all becomes tedious rather quickly.
The game jerks. A lot. You will be walking along minding your own business, and suddenly you will freeze. I can only assume this is where the game is loading. It happens all the time, and it doesn’t take long to get annoying. Especially when paired up with all the other load-time in this game coming in and out of buildings, and going in and out of the build screen. The graphic environment is nice - but the jerkiness really makes it difficult to enjoy.
BOTTOM LINE
Don’t buy this game. Well, if you are the type of person that enjoys building in a video game, rent this game, and if you like it, it will be worth the money to purchase.
This game is the first major disappointment for the Wii. This was a game that I was really looking forward to, and I was totally shocked when I discovered how horrible it was. Everything that was ever great about The Sims is missing, and in its place some of the worst elements of Animal Crossing to fill in the gaps.
There is a totally different version for the DS which is set in a vacation resort, where it is your job to lure in tourists. I didn’t get a chance to play that, but from the reviews, it does seem to be a better game. The building elements are there, but the addition of minigames would make this version a whole lot better. Why they opted to include those in the DS version and not the Wii version is a mystery to me.
Rating(out of 5):
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