STUDIO: Electronic Arts
RELEASE DATE: October 28, 2008
CONSOLE: PC & Wii
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: DS
DEVELOPER: EA Redwood Shores
GENRE: Simulation, Virtual Life
PLAYERS: 1
ESRB RATING: E (Everyone)

The Sims have become a monster franchise - one of the biggest and most influential in gaming in the last decade - but they've also hit something of a ceiling creatively. What do you do after you've given your Sims pets, a hot tub, and all variety of job imaginable? How does EA continue to expand the franchise instead of just offering packs for The Sims 2? With MySims for PC and MySims Kingdom for Wii, they have a clear target - the little ones who may have been left behind by a series of games that focuses on keeping virtual characters happy. Both of these games are geared toward children's desires to make pretty or cool things for their characters and explore virtual worlds. They're not difficult and will probably turn away older gamers, but when their target audience is taken into account then they have to be considered hits. The Sims games have always been about micro-managing behavior but MySims expands that to focus more on something kids like to do with blocks, legos, and all other variety of toys - building - while MySims Kingdom takes the kiddie approach and expands it into a more RPG-type experience of exploration. I remember when I was a little kid that I liked to build Lego cities and then my sister would make-believe play in them. The little version of me would have enjoyed MySims while my sister might be more inclined to play MySims Kingdom but they're both reasonably successful games in a mega-hit franchise.

MySims is almost entirely about creation. Your character - who you can loosely design to look like you - moves to a barren city that has completely fallen apart. It's up to your imagination to rebuild it. Hardcore players will spend hours just designing their own house with the variety of doors, windows, and extras that you're allowed to include. Over the last few years, gaming has moved more and more towards user-based customization and MySims is a part of that trend for children. Your enjoyment of MySims is going to depend largely on how excited you by choosing different wall pieces and window sizes. Personally, I grew frustrated pretty quickly, but that's largely a personal preference that isn't thrilled by the current trend of making every game unique through customization. But that's really the POINT of MySims - the emphasis on the "MY".

After you build your own house, you'll head out to help the rest of this once-booming town recover through, you guessed it, more building. The Mayor asks for your help to bring people back by building houses and other structures around town using your power to control "Essences". Can you return this desolate town to its former glory? Of course you can. MySims isn't really a game of winning and losing. It's one of individual experience that you can then share with your friends online. It's incredibly linear - build this, do that - with the variety coming not from different missions or choosing what to do when, but how you do it. The mechanics of MySims are easy to control and the PC version either employs the mouse or the keyboard, both of which have systems that should be easy even for the little ones to understand. MySims could have worked harder to appeal to both kids and parents, but it should be a hit for the young 'uns with computers this holiday season.

Older kids, parents, and those who have moved from PC to Wii, should check out MySims Kingdom, another break from the expansion machine of The Sims 2 and a slight departure from the franchise that works even better than the often-too-repetitive MySims. With much more of a story than MySims, Kingdom stars King Roland, a leader looking for a new Wandolier (those familiar with the Wii-mote will start to figure out how that plays in quickly), which is where you come in. As the Wandolier, players use both the Nunchuk and the Wii-mote to travel the lands of King Roland and help the citizens of far-off lands and, of course, build, build, build.

The controls and the storyline is much more in-depth in MySims Kingdom, but building and personal customization is still the main focus of this virtual world experience. Even the building is more complex, acting more like a puzzle or brain teaser game, as you'll need to build bigger and more complex things as the game progresses. Every element of MySims Kingdom seems more detailed and well-produced than MySims. Even the music, costumes, and characters choices are well-designed. It's also a more linear, quest-based game and not quite as open-ended as something like Sims 2 or Animal Crossing, a big hit for Nintendo players.

Game players exhausted by Resistance 2 and Fallout 3, are unlikely to be entertained by MySims and MySims Kingdom. They're a little too cute and, especially MySims, a little too repetitive. But when you step back and judge these games on what they're attempting to accomplish - virtual, customizable worlds for mostly children to play and design - they're very hard to criticize. Kids don't mind repetition or Sim dialogue that is more likely to make adults groan than smile. For families with younger gamers, you won't find many better choices this holiday season than MySims and MySims Kingdom.