My Sims Nintendo Wii

EA powerhouse series has continued to evolve over the years, and its latest form for the Nintendo Wii is yet another interesting take on the virtual-life genre. This time around, instead of creating a family from scratch, you will be tasked with reinvigorating a downtrodden town to its previous glory. That said, there will be an amazing amount of customization to MySims, which we discovered during our hands-on look at the game at EA’s E3 hotel suite.

Our first look at the game featured the player building a bed from scratch, using a number of premade shapes to slowly build the frame and add decoration to the bed. You’ve got several options for building objects in MySims: You can use premade blueprints that will show you where to construct the various parts; you can be more creative and build objects from scratch; or you can find a happy medium between following a pattern and letting loose with your inner Bob Vila.The various objects you use to construct your items aren’t the only thing you’ll need to be successful in MySims, however. To progress in the game, you need to appease the citizens of the town you live in–and your town will comprise two types of sims: commercial sims who want you to do tasks for them (such as build objects), and townies who are looking to move into your town. All sims in the city are motivated by the six different interests found in the game–cute, spooky, geeky, studious, fun, and tasty–and the various objects you construct will be built to satisfy these different interests. A Sim who’s interested in spooky stuff, for example, might want you to build a chair that’s distinctly scary, using the spooky essence.In addition to interests, essences are another big aspect of MySims’ gameplay–in effect they are the currency of the game, in that you can’t complete objects to a sims’ specifications unless it meets a certain interest. And in order for it to meet a certain interest, you’ll have to build that object with essences of a particular type, all of which is spelled out in the task set forth to you by the particular sim making the request. It might sound a bit confusing, but it’s actually quite simple. Essences can be used in two ways–either as physical objects, such as a smiley-faced seat for a chair, or as a decoration or paint scheme for preexisting objects.

Consider the jukebox requested by one Capt. Ginny, a pirate-themed sim who was specifically looking for a music player constructed of 16 angry essences and 20 musical notes. After getting the basic shell of the jukebox built, the person playing the demo painted the individual object that made up the jukebox shell with angry essence. When using an essence as a paint tool, you’ll be able to choose any from four available paint schemes per essence. Topping off the jukebox with 20 musical notes, our jukebox was ready for delivery to Capt. Ginny. She loved it–and immediately popped in a quarter and began dancing to the music. Maxing out a sims’ interest by building it various objects for their homes will help you progress through the game and unlock new areas of your burgeoning town to explore.

Though essences will be an important aspect of building new objects, luckily they won’t be hard to come by. In addition to encountering new essences as you simply walk around the world of MySims, you can cultivate them to keep your stockpile growing by planting them in the ground and watching them grow into essence trees you can shake down. You can also fish for essences in the local ponds, or prospect them using the essence equivalent of a mine detector, which will show you just where to dig. In addition, you’ll periodically run into nooks–semisecret areas which, when accessed, will let you earn new and valuable essences. In all, the game will include more than 80 different essences you can collect to help satisfy the increasingly demanding sims who populate your town.

When you aren’t rolling around, pulling off odd jobs for your neighbors, you can relax and spend some time designing (or redesigning) your digs with the game’s flexible building-construction tools. Though you’ll start with a pretty extensive list of roofs, windows, and doors to start your home with, as new sims move to your town, you’ll earn new architecture styles and accessories that you can then apply to your own home.

MySims’ cute, revamped character models–a departure from the long and lean sims of old–should appeal to a slightly younger crowd, while adults will likely find the creative elements in the game a draw. The game is due for release this September, and we’ll be keeping you up to date on its progress.

You should already be familiar with The Sims, a series of computer and console games that has been taking the world, and its video game sales charts, by storm since the year 2000. We recently had a chance to take an up-close look at a very early, pre-alpha version of MySims, the upcoming Sims game for the Wii, and like other games in the series, this one will let you create a little computer person to live in a little computer house in a little computer neighborhood with little computer neighbors. But this definitely won’t be just another Sims game. MySims has a brand-new look and feel that puts a strong focus on players building their own custom content, from the way you can build your own house (and everything in it) to the game’s cute, blocky characters.

You first step in MySims will be to create your virtual persona in the game. As in the previous games in the Sims series, you’ll have plenty to choose from when it comes to customizing your alter ego, though it must be noted that the character models in this game are quite a bit different form the longer, leaner characters of the traditional PC and console Sims games. Somewhere in between anime figurines, blocky Lego models, and the Wii’s own Miis is perhaps the best way to describe them. Your character model’s base appearance is just the start, and you’ll have plenty of control over multiple aspects of your character using the Wii Remote and your imagination.

By pointing and clicking on your character’s eyes, for instance, you can cycle through various eye shapes, sizings, and colors; similarly, clicking on your sim’s mouth will let you choose from a variety of different scowls, smiles, frowns, and grins. There are a lot of hairdos and hats to choose from too; with a few clicks of the Wii Remote’s A button you’ll find huge Afros, pageboy haircuts, traditional samurai hairdos, and even a spiky mess that was awfully reminiscent of Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud Strife. By clicking on your character’s body you can cycle through a slew of different outfits–from karate gis, to traditional hippie wear, to sci-fi outfits, and the latest in hip-hop styles. If that isn’t enough, you’ll also be able to choose from three voice samples to set the exact modulation of your sim’s voice (and yes, your sims are still speaking simlish).
Several buttons on the interface will let you alter things like your sim’s skin tone, hair color, eyeglass styles (including a monocle, which happened to be our favorite), and up to two facial tattoos or scars. With just a little work, it’s easy to create a sim with a look all his or her own. While developers weren’t able to pin down the number of possible clothing and appearance combinations for your sim, based on the demo we played, the number promises to be high. Better yet, the artists behind the game are busy at work adding more outfits, hairdos, and accessories to the game.

Once you’ve created your character, you can move on to the game’s story. Your character moves into a small, rural town that used to be a bustling metropolis, though many of its citizens have left and many of its shops were forced to close their doors and seal off unused areas. Because much of MySims revolves around the revitalization of your home town, the game will let you get your hands (or at least your Wii Remote) dirty when it comes to urban renewal. Perhaps the greatest aspect of this will be the building creator, which will let you build a one- or two-story building from the ground up, using different preset building blocks. We had a go with the building tool during our demo with the game, and while it’s still going to require some tweaking, we were pleased with how easy it was to get a unique building up off the ground in very little time.
Using the building tool is as simple as dragging different-shaped building blocks from a preset palette onto the building grid. To select a block, you point at it with the Wii Remote, press the A button to select it, drag it where you want to place it on the grid, and finally press A once more to set the piece. Handy yellow dots show you where you can successfully anchor objects to the grid. From there, it’s simply a matter of stacking blocks as you want them, then adding details such as windows, doors, roofs, and so forth.

Our goal was to create a pair of symmetrical two-story structures, one next to the other. We started with a few cylindrical blocks, each topped off with square blocks on top. From there, we cycled to the “windows” palette by clicking the 2 button on the Wii Remote and added a few windows here and there on the top and bottom floors. The next step was to add a door–because you’ll be building structures for your fellow sims to use in the game, each building you create will be required to have at least one window and one door. To place windows, doors, and the like, you simply attach them to the various yellow dots that appear on the blocks. The Wii Remote still has a few problems with the finer motions you need when building, and it’s not always easy to get things right where you want them, but with a little patience, we had just the kind of building we wanted, complete with two flat-top roofs and a pair of symmetrical garden gnomes out front.

Once you’ve built your structure, you’ll have the option to paint it. To do so, you simply click on the paint brush icon and then click on the object you wish to paint. Instead of choosing the color beforehand and applying it to your structure, you cycle through various colors and patterns for that object until you find the one you want. We went with a brick facade for the lower portion of our twin buildings and an aqua shade for the upper parts. Clicking on smaller objects, such as windows or doors, with the paint brush will change their style as well.

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