Publisher: EA
Developer: EA Redwood Shores
System: Wii
Genre: Virtual Life
Release date: Available now
Review by: Ed Humphries

“Get a life” used to be an insult. Now, it’s a gamer’s prime directive. In addition to our normal 9-to-5, we’re always looking for an escape: to live a Second Life, teach the fine folks at Animal Crossing some new tricks or jack up the prices in Fable and see how the populace responds. This unquenchable desire to lead a simulated life has pushed The Sims series to great success, with many additions and expansions released over the years. The latest Sims incarnation is for the Nintendo Wii, MySims Kingdom.

MySims Kingdom is the second MySims game to appear on the Wii. The new game drops you into a mythical kingdom, where the King takes you on as his Wandolier (an apprentice who travels throughout the kingdom restoring buildings and order throughout the land). This marks a departure from the usual open-ended Sims experience, offering a series of quests that you must complete to advance the story.

As you journey though the kingdom, you learn new abilities that allow you to build larger structures, fashion decorative items and make landscape alterations in a bid to shape the world to match the king’s and his subject’s wishes. While the game employs some of the social interaction integral to the Sims experience, the focus of MySims Kingdom is primarily on world-building and simple problem solving. Eventually the world begins to open up, allowing you to interact and explore new environments, with your Renaissance Faire beginnings shed in favor of more futuristic locales and structures.

While the open-ended nature of prior Sims games explains their popularity, I found the questing in MySims Kingdom to be quite appealing. This game is clearly aimed at the younger set and provides a great experience for parents and children, who will delight in overcoming the challenges posed by the inhabitants while being granted enough freedom to craft the world to their own, somewhat limited, specifications. There is a great deal of reading involved, however, so this might be a better title for elementary-school students, than for their younger siblings. MySims Kingdom consistently rewards you with new abilities, so there is always a new building, object or landscape type to try out. In addition, a number of the game’s puzzles are designed around getting objects to interact (aligning gears to power a windmill that opens a door and allowing you to progress further into the land). This offers the opportunity for some great brainstorming sessions between parents and their children.

While MySims Kingdom sports a cartoonish appearance similar to Nintendo’s Animal Crossing, and features the same level of polish, the lack of an online mode severely hampers the game’s longevity. The main quest can be played through in about 8 to10 hours. While players are free to redesign the various areas to match their whims, the inability to share their unique townships or visit a friend’s creations limits the game’s replay value.

MySims Kingdom is a great family-friendly game that should keep children entertained for awhile, but the lack of online play and social networking aspects does hamper its repeat enjoyment. The quest system keeps you interested by unlocking new abilities, but the requirement that the quests be completed in a specific order runs counter to the usual Sims philosophy of open-world gameplay. That said this well-polished adventure should keep families playing together.