Sept 18, 2007

Despite the many PC versions being among the most successful games ever made, we have to confess our utter indifference to them. They’ve cropped up on Gamecube in the past, and we’ve always had difficulty finding anyone who wants to review them, such is their grinding unsuitability for console platforms and mouseless controllers.

Not even the prospect of bricking up a Sim’s bedroom door and waiting for him to expire in squalid conditions ever gave us much genuine enthusiasm for the games. PC owners might tell us The Sims is a goldmine of creative possibilities, but games that require players to vacuum floors and disinfect toilets probably aren’t for the likes of us.

MySims, however, is a different kettle of fish. It’s such an ideal Wii game, it almost feels like the console was designed to play it. It’s the third-party title that Nintendo should snap up and bundle with the machine for Christmas, because if it’s good enough to sell a stripped-down Sims concept to us lot, it’s likely to get Wii into even more living rooms around the world.

First up, there are no boring management tasks. There’s no cleaning to be done, no trash to be taken out, no jobs, no finances, nothing remotely downbeat or realistic. Instead it’s a blank canvas on which you paint your own fantasy town and spend forever just messing around aimlessly.

It’s built around a clever ‘create a thing’ mode that allows you to design not only the buildings your town residents will live in, but also every piece of furniture and household appliance they’ll use. You get to model the entire place in 3D, using simple building blocks to create your own works of fully functional art.

Each object starts out as a template. There are certain sparkly blocks on the template that must be filled in so that the Sims can interact with it – the seat of a chair, the refrigerator door, the TV screen and so on.