My Sims Kingdom: Nintendo Wii Game Review

I was waiting for My Sims Kingdom to come out for the Nintendo Wii as soon as I heard news about it more than 5 or 6 months ago. I enjoyed the first release of the game My Sims and had a hunch that the latest versio,n My Sims Kingdom, would deliver the the same only with newer attributes and possibly better missions that were fun and not so repetitive, like in the first version.

The game starts off similar to the original title My Sims. You build your Sim character, dress him, name him and so on.

The story line is different though of course. This time the story line centers around King Roland who needs help restoring not only his kingdom, but the surrounding islands.

You start off entering a contest at the Kingdom in order to hopefully be appointed a Wandolier. The Kingdom at one time had a lot of Wandoliers who would help other Sims in need. However they have all retired, and now the King needs you to be his new Wandolier.

In order to become the wandolier, you have to complete a set of challenges. You will be competing against a few other AI Sims, however there is no real challenge because you end up completing all of the challenges, while the AI Sims don't even move.

The tasks though are basically a tutorial to teach you how to build things. Players who played My Sims will find the challenge annoying and a bit amateurish. Personally I could have done without it, seeing that the building controls are relatively the same as the original game My Sims.

After you are given your magical building wand. You then set off for your adventure.

Basically for the first 30 minutes I helped a local of the island build a house for an upcoming date.

However in order to build his house, I had to collect essence in order to get a recipe from a scroll that is given to my partner Lyndsey.

The scroll has the recipe of essence that I need to collect in order to finish building the house for him.
Once I gather all of the essence the scroll said I needed, Lyndsey adds it to her magical bag and transforms the materials into new building materials. Such as beds, couches, roofs, etc...

Essence are things you find around the environment, such as cherry's, apples, wood, gems, metal, fish, and other things.

In the original game the essence were used to paint different colors on items, which became very tedious and repetitive. In My Sims Kingdom I liked the new formula. Instead of collecting essence paint colors, I now collected essence in order to unlock the scrolls building materials. Much easier!!!

Your Tasks:
 
Tasks are pretty much the same as the original game, only this time islands are broken up, and you have to take a ship to get to different islands within the large kingdom. Each island has a theme, such as cowboy, Gothic, nature, and so on. On each island your task is to fix everything that is either broken or incomplete. Basically you will need to build homes, fix broken equipment, herd animals, and other simple tasks.

Some tasks require you to get essence in order to build something from a scroll, and other tasks are simple ones such as placing down bridges or making stairs.

Once the island is completely restored, you can then move on to different islands.

Building:
 
I discovered quickly into the game that building things were a little more complex than I remembered from the first game. It is nothing really to do with the controls, because the controls work rather well. It had a lot to do with the camera angles. At some points I couldn't see what I was building, and had to move my Sim around in order to see what was going on in build mode.

It was annoying, but I got the knack of it pretty quickly.

Magna:
 
Magna is also introduced into the game, which was something we didn't see in the first game. Basically they are glowing orbs that you must collect in order for your wand to work. It got very annoying that this Magna aspect was added into the game, because while building I would run out of wand power, and need to go to Lyndsey in order to transform some of my essence into power for the wand.
It gets tedious and pretty quickly.

Follow The Leader...
 
The only thing I didn't really like about My Sims Kingdom was the fact that the storyline had a path I had to follow in order to advance. In the original game I pretty much could do what I wanted, when I wanted. At any given time I had 5 or 6 tasks to complete, from making a dresser to designing a lamp for a house. In My Sims Kingdom I am usually given one task to complete before I am able to take on another. If I don't follow the games path I won't advance and I'd be wandering aimlessly for no reason.

Collecting Essence:
 
Finding Essence is a huge part in the game, and to be honest 90% of the game is based on essence, so you may as well collect it, and as much as you can. There are many different ways to collect essence.

You can cut trees for wood, shake trees for fruits or other weird objects that grow on them. You can fish for different types of fish, use a metal detector to find buried essence, mine for gems and metals, and look for objects around the islands that you can open to discover rarer essence.

Essence can be hidden anywhere though. For instance when I first began the game I went into a home opened the fridge, and had a snack. After eating some snack cake essence was dropped to the floor for me. You can also gain essence by being nice, or mean to other Sims.

Graphics:
 
Now I always give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt when it comes to graphics, because mainly the console is meant to bring friends and family, and together to get them up and active. The console is great but it lacks the powerful kick that the PS3 or XBOX 360 has. The Wii though is also a $250 console, so powerful graphics won't be found here.

Some Wii games though have impressed me with their graphics, while others, they sort of sucked.

My Sims Kingdom is decent. There are tons of bright colors, and lush environments. But the fact of the matter is, some things look blurry from a distance, and cut scenes seem to provide the best graphics the game has to offer.

Music:
 
Simple piano like tunes play lightly in the background, which are not distracting or annoying. The Sim voices in the game though are very annoying. When my boyfriend was playing the game I nearly went nuts trying to focus on what I was doing while he played the game. The voices may be annoying to those around you, but once you are playing the game you won't even notice them. Weird how that works.

Overall:
 
My Sims Kingdom does have a lot of repetitive tasks, and they do get tedious and bothersome after some time. However the game is still fun regardless. It is a game for those who like building things, and hunting for things. Although some gamers may find such tasks annoying, I always liked a good game of hide and seek, and this is sort of what My Sims Kingdom is all about. Finding hidden things.

Personally though, I do not think the $49.99 price tag I paid for the game was a fair price for what you are getting. I'd be more likely to recommend this for purchase had it been priced at around $29.99. For now though, due to the high price tag, I recommend the game as a rent.