GENRE
	Simulation
	DEVELOPER
	EA Redwood Shores
	PUBLISHER
	Electronic Arts
	NUMBER OF PLAYERS
	1
	WI-FI ENHANCED
	No
	DS COMPATIBLE
	No
	BUY NOW AT

Last year's MySims, an offshoot of the Sims franchise originally developed with younger and more casual Nintendo players in mind, released last year to mixed reviews but solid sales. The development team knew it was on to something potentially bigger, so for this year's MySims Kingdom, the experience is refreshingly enhanced and, with its added content and features, seems to have found the missing, magic ingredients to make this new franchise just as much a keeper as it was last year a sleeper.

visuals

MySims Kingdom maintains the incredibly charming visual design of its predecessor, from Lego-like, blocky Sims to chubby, round animals that beg to be made into real world toys. Yes, the cute factor is on overload, but it's so consistently well done and married to complementary and creative game environments, that the style's easy to enjoy and admire. Another advantage of MySims Kingdom in this ongoing era of PlayStation 2 ports is that, while simple and clean, character models and the game world's textures are sharp and appealing.

Bringing the world to life are various in-game cut scenes and character animations that pack more variety than expected, since a MySim can engage in everything from persuading other MySims to rave dancing to riding zero-gravity rides. Whether main characters or secondary, the MySims are expressive and often just fun to watch their physical actions as well as facial expressions.

The camera that frames everything for the gamer can be swiveled around as desired, and intelligently zooms up higher whene construction or fishing is engaged. At times, outside of construction, the camera does seem a little too oddly angled and would have felt less constricting if it were higher and tilted more towards the horizon, but this is a minor issue.

audio

The music and chatter of MySims Kingdom is supremely pleasant. All the MySims speak in the franchise-spanning "Simlish," though every character has his or her own voice, and the intonation and speech delivery neatly match up with the appearance of the MySim. A country twang can even be heard from MySims living on the Wild West-themed isle, and the gothic emo kid on the Spooky isle speaks with an appropriate air of disaffectation. In a demonstration of broad customization, the gamer's own MySim can have one of four distinct voices, but each of those voices can be pitch-shifted via a slider from deep to high, allowing a multitude of vocalizations for the game's main character, and that voice can be changed again and again whenever the gamer likes.

The musical themes are another stand-out-- subtly integrated but smartly composed and frequently catchy. The electronica songs that accompany a rave and the slow-dance song (complete with swoony vocals) later on are great. Best of all, whether atmospheric or melodic, the musical compositions fade in and out depending on proximity to certain areas, so audio always feels fresh and seldomly too repetitive.

gameplay

While put together in roughly ten months, MySims Kingdom feels even more balanced and focused than the original MySims. The two main changes-- ditching the construction mode's workshop environment and adding a stronger story-- are significant but create a cleaner, more seamless experience that is often hard to turn off thanks to its accessible gameplay and tidy, quick missions that satisfy appetites for exploration, collection and problem solving. Sometimes MySims Kingdom feels like a regular Sims game, sometimes it feels like an exploratory 3D platformer and sometimes it feels like something out of The Incredible Machine, yet by distilling all those into a single experience, Kingdom maintains an original vibe.

The heart of the game is still customization and creativity, however, and that is addresed right from the start when the gamer creates the game's main character. The main character, while constrained to one gender or the other (the original MySims's main character could swap gender at will with a simple face change), can be defined and redefined again and again via faces, hairstyles, face paint, and many unlockable costume pieces. After his or her initial creation, the main MySim is revealed to be a lowly pig farmer providing care to a crabby old woman's pigs on the Renaissance-themed Capitol Isle. The overall kingdom these people live in is a cluster of over a dozen islands, all with wildly variant themes, whether prehistoric, gothic horror, community theater or irrepressibly (perhaps artificially) cute, to name some. Unfortunately, all these isles have fallen into neglect with the gradual retirement of the kingdom's "wandoliers," so the King decides to appoint a new wandolier, who will begin a kingdom-spanning journey to rebuild and redecorate to prosperity.

Islands are unlocked, usually in pairs, as the gamer solves the main needs of an unlocked island's residents. And nearly all problems are solved by the wandolier's magic wand, which can produce homes, furnishings, bridges and plants out of thin air, as well as move and frequently paint many of those items at will. Yet not just a workhorse, the gamer's wandolier will also tackle social challenges via persuasion mini-games that require navigation through multi-branching conversation trees to shift nonplayable characters' moods from raving or aloof to receptive and agreeable. Fueling the magic wand and its creative abilities are mana and "essences," which are basically raw materials that are gathered from shaking trees, fishing, mining and metal-detecting. All of the collection tasks are motion-enhanced, but thankfully most don't require movement-- digging a hole or swinging a pick axe can be accomplished by either remote yanking or button tapping. And lest the term "item collection" induce cringing, MySims Kingdom's harvesting is very simple and provides abundant amounts of material with minimal work. Fishing is the only collection task that's tiresome, as sometimes a very rare fish or ocean-bound element is needed, and since fish are pulled out one at a time with random results, getting one particular fish can be time consuming.

Yet one word-- "variety"-- is the true magic of Kingdom. Bored with fishing? Go back to metal detecting, which can now be done on any part of the island instead of the small patches that were in MySims. If that gets old, trees can be chopped down and replanted to grow different fruit, or a structure can be redecorated over and over... the possibilities are vast and so easy to engage in that even folks with short boredom fuses will be hard pressed to tire quickly.

The tasks that the MySims actually send you on are also just as varied, and often have just enough of a hook to always feel fun. Gamers can look for a book with the meaning of life, build sets for a hammy community theater actor, teach a cookie-selling entrepreneur the importance of appealing to target demographics, act as middle-man between an overbearing mother and her timid son, or put on a rock show in a stone temple to bring unicorns back to a forest. The breadth of tasks-- sometimes fantastical and sometimes cleverly disguised real world grown-up issues-- is massive and endlessly appealing. Plus, as mentioned above, tackling each quest doesn't ask for a large amount of time, egging on a drive to take on just one more task before turning the Wii off. Completing tasks rewards the gamer with scrolls that increase the number of things the wandolier wand can make-- provided a small quota of natural resources are harvested first.

Meeting the requirements of other MySims often requires construction of some sort, whether it be an actual building, interior decorating or outdoor landscaping. This is all done right within the game world without having to run into a workshop like in the last game, and getting instant results is rewarding. Yet perhaps even more fun are new, mechanically-inclined puzzles that require constructing elements to make machines work again, gates open, provide electricity to machines or water to fountains. Appropriately, like a magic set of Legos, gears, pipes, electrical wiring and more can be summoned and snapped into place to accomplish objectives. A tomato garden may need water sufficiently piped overhead to make sure all plants are receiving water, or an astronaut training ground may need its gravity accelerator and computers' power restored. Thanks to the interchangeable parts, these puzzles can be solved in as many ways as the player can imagine, and they're consistently entertaining. Further, if the gamer doesn't like how his solution is coming together, previously layed gears, piping or wiring can be deleted with a click and the mana cost of those items restored back into the wand.

multiplayer

There's no multiplayer in MySims Kingdom, but the flexible, puzzle-solving nature of its gameplay and generations-spanning appeal make it an ideal title for parents to play with their kids or fellow gamers to enjoy together, regardless of family status.

overall

MySims Kingdom is actually not a traditional sequel to last year's MySims. While Kingdom retains the cute, colorful visual design and many non-playable characters from its predecessor, the new game's experience is altogether different: there's a journey to take, varied objectives, more social interaction and Incredible Machine-like puzzle solving. Grouping that with some frequently amusing dialogue, this infusion of structure, story and new gameplay makes for a winner.

8.5/10