MySims - Sims Attack Nintendo

This is not another add-on to the famous The Sims series, but a completely independent project. Cast aside skill leveling and the career ladder race, relieve the player of a mercantile approach to buying a house and furnishing rooms. Leave physiological problems alone, finally!

This is not another add-on to the famous The Sims series, but a completely independent project. Cast aside skill leveling and the career ladder race, relieve the player of a mercantile approach to buying a house and furnishing rooms. Leave physiological problems alone, finally! How long can you lead virtual dummies to the restroom? Let them enjoy life, collect items, and build homes according to their own desires.

The player is settled in a town spread across a plain, a forest, and a desert, filled with doll-like characters. Everything would be fine, but the poor toys have nowhere to live, nothing to sleep on, cook, draw, or play music, which plunges the little ones into endless melancholy. Building houses and furnishing rooms is the main concern for the player. It won't be boring; assembly and disassembly are done in a fun constructor.


New settlers arriving every morning have a unique profession. Confectioners and bakers, DJs and librarians, butchers and sushi masters, tailors and puppeteers – each needs a house with unique architecture, according to their occupation and character. Since the appearance of the town depends only on the player, we get to choose future residents and their quirks: fun-lovers, studious types, gluttons and sweet-tooths (tasty), fashionistas and charmers (cute), gloomy and sullen types (spooky), tech fans and collectors obsessed with various exotic items (geeky). Character implies a unique appearance for the dwelling. This includes structural features, window sizes, and the presence of fountains, statues, and columns of various types in the courtyards. As well as walls, floors, and interior items painted with special paints – essences – which the player will obtain independently.

Assembling each building is like playing with a children's constructor. Large blocks form walls and roofs, while small details and paints add recognizable features to the house. A waffle cone instead of a roof and milky walls – obviously, the resident is crazy about ice cream. A cylindrical tower with portholes – it seems the inhabitant is about to embark on a space flight. The librarian's house itself looks quite smart and sparkles with glasses-windows, while the fashion salon seems to jump out of pink skirts and green feathers. The elaborate walls of the museum and the gloomy abodes of local Goths are compensated by the delicious shapes of the sushi bar and Italian restaurant. All together, this creates a unique architectural ensemble, a kind of city of childhood dreams.

The appearance of furniture and repainting of walls in these houses is also the player's concern. As soon as another Sim asks us for a new stool, bookshelf, aquarium, stove, speakers, DJ setup, karaoke, bathtub, sofa, or crib, we immediately head to the workshop. The desired item is assembled from blocks and planks according to the proposed stencil, but the work doesn't end there. A certain number of details need to be painted with a special paint – essence.


This tricky ingredient is obtained through conversations and mini-games. Sympathized with a crybaby, jumped with a cheerful person – get a drop of “sadness” and splashes of “fun.” Other paints are not so ephemeral and are ordinary objects: markers, bowling balls, balls, bricks, crystals, flowers, and so on. Collecting all essences is essentially ordinary harvesting. Dug up useful roots, picked natural fruits, caught fish – and there's your material for painting.

Most essences grow on trees or ripen underground. The former can fall on their own, like overripe apples, but to speed up the process, it's better to shake the crown. If you want more fruits, you can water or treat the plant with pesticides. There isn't much fertile soil for planting, so don't hesitate to cut down unnecessary diseased, healthy, or dead trees – we'll plant new saplings in their place, and wood and metal are also essences. Don't be afraid of local exoticism. In MySims, not only flowers-fruits grow on trees, but also steel springs, card suits, chess pieces, glass eyes, and even small ghosts.

Underground essences still need to be found with a special detector, and the boundaries of invisible plots are marked with multicolored crystals. The treasure hunt game is somewhat similar to fishing – the process is so imbued with excitement. Moreover, the spawning grounds for items and fish are close to each other. You just need to approach a forgotten fishing rod near a pond, river, or lake and start catching “clownfish,” “octopuses,” “crabs,” or “snakes.”


The social life of Sims is simplified to the extreme. Relationships are not tested for strength and gradually grow from a “casual acquaintance” to a “strong friendship.” Town residents try to gather in their own groups. Often, representatives of different groups intersect if they have related areas of interest. Sweet-tooths don't mind having fun but won't entertain those who scare them. In pursuit of charm, fashionistas intersect with collectors. Characters play with each other, dance, summon spirits, and have simple conversations about nothing, where the main thing is not the meaning, but the intonation of fun, interest, or fear.

The effectiveness of the player's actions is not only the improved appearance of the streets or the satisfied faces of the inhabitants. Any house, impeccably executed from the customer's point of view, adds prestige points to the town, and the most interesting characters in the game will want to settle in a five-star settlement: a famous pirate, a noble samurai, or a crazy party-goer. The player is rewarded with new items for the constructor and tools that allow access to previously inaccessible areas. A saw can cut down a fallen tree, a pickaxe can break a stone blockage, a crowbar can pry off nailed boards, and a welding machine can cut any lock.

Unfortunately, the main character performs most actions independently. To the delight of players, only stripping trees and hooking fish were left. Everything else, except the constructors, requires pressing only one button. In the Wii version of the game, the controls are a bit inconvenient. When assembling houses and items, you have to hold the somewhat heavy Wiimote and Nunchuk. The DS version is more comfortable – the stylus is almost weightless, which allows you to insert the smallest items into the blueprint-stencil without any torment.

Colors – that's the main definition of the game's appearance. Bright, rich, diverse colors populate every corner of the game space. A keen eye will not notice a single crudely sculpted texture, and the primitiveness of objects is visible only at very close magnification. A gloomy house or an elaborate one, a funny little cook with a mustache and a cap, even an ordinary bookshelf – characters and objects exude their own charm. Everything is correct, the toy world should look pleasant.


Light, uncomplicated music, consisting of simple arrangements, creates the mood prevailing in a child's room, and near each building, the songs change to a cheerful thematic jingle that reveals the inhabitant's character. Japanese tranquility precedes the taste of sushi. Gloomy bells and exalted organ sounds set the mood for meeting the gloomy owner. Harpsichord and piano are great for reading books in the library. Techno-disco of different rhythms and tonalities greets adherents of fashionable clothes and technology, and daring rock excites lovers of change.

The similarity of MySims to the popular Japanese game series Animal Crossing is simply obvious. Only everything is implemented much simpler. Seasons do not affect the gameplay, deserts, caves, and dense forests are interesting exclusively as places for collecting items. There are no thematic holidays, the harvest does not depend on weather seasons, items do not require identification – but, knowing EA's love for making numerous add-ons, it is highly probable that all these “trifles” will definitely appear over time, which will add excitement and a couple of reproaches for cloning other people's ideas.

Diagnosis

The life of little Sims at first seems much more attractive than adult problems and adventures, but monotonous tasks and boring item collection kill all charm. However, with unhurried gameplay, interest in the game does not disappear for a long time, and children and adults can endlessly tinker with local dolls and constructors.

Pro:

• Item constructor
• Character and house design
• Ease of learning
• Addictive effect

Contra:

• no social life
• collecting essences is quite boring