The game is about you and your relationship with the animals. Oddly enough it has a god-like hand a la Black & White. The game boasts 32 different types of animals from North America and Europe.
The game has some interesting ideas behind it. You can make a baby bear and a baby squirrel as friends and they will be friends for life. But that doesn't mean that the bear will not eat other squirrels, just not the one he grew up with. Just like with other Sims games, your mileage will vary depending on how creative you are.
The DS version of the game will be essentially the same, though in 2-D form. It looks amazing due to the hand drawn animation and other drawings used in the game. I am actually more interested in the DS version of the game, even though the Wii version is more "sandbox-y."
We had a tour of the EA campus, which is four buildings and 23 acres. The EA store is great as all console games are $20 and PC games are $10 (all EA games of course).
At the end of the day, we had two hours to play MySims Kingdom on both Wii and DS. This was a wonderful opportunity as Tim LeTourneau and many of the designers and testers of the game were wandering around engaging in conversations with us.
As part of our goodie bag, we all brought home SimCity Creator on Wii, which I have been playing (and destroying my cities with Godzilla-like monsters, of course). We will have a review up shortly.
I also plan some further impressions of the four games shown, so look for them soon!
Article comments
1 - Ladym
Ken, your email keeps bouncing back when we try to contact you. Please contact me with the correct one and we can include you in all the MySims conversations. Thanks, LadyM
2 - Tall Writer
Great insight behind the production and creative processes of the Sims games. The simulation genre has such a large draw across both genders. Looks like it won't be slowing down any time soon. Glad you had safe travels.
3 - Ken Edwards
Angie wrote it down wrong. Sorry, it is ken at blogcritics dot org.