Let me start this artikel off door getting something out of the way. I like The Sims. Is it the superior life simulator game, I wouldn’t say so, but it’s a really fun game. There’s just something satisfying about building up your house with all kinds of stuff to create a massive home pagina with the money your Sim earns. That and just finding new ways to kill everyone in the Sims, but satisfaction nonetheless. There were a lot of side Sim games, like a lot of expansion packs for 2 and 3, and whatever the hell EA was doing with 4. One of these more… unique side games was the MySims games. Let’s just say that they were very different. The first one was just called MySims, but the one I will be talking about is it’s sequel game, MySims Kingdom for the Wii. This is a game that got some pretty good reviews, so I want to see if the game is as fun as everyone makes it out to be, of if it is… not. Let’s find out.



~Story~

The MySims Kingdom story doesn’t exactly have a lot going for it, so don’t expect to get blown away door some insane plot twist. So the story of MySims Kingdom is that the king had help from Wandoliers, a couple of Harry Potter wannabes who helped out around the kingdom, but for whatever reason, they all disappeared and now the king has decided to find new Wandoliers to fix the kingdom that has been slowly falling apart in the span of time it took him to decide to get new guys. Throughout the game, u will go to several small islands to help a small cast of characters with their problems. u get help from Buddy, who is just the comic relief character and doesn’t do anything else, and Lyndsy, a girl who grabs your sack to help increase the power of your wand…. I know what I said. She’s far meer helpful than Buddy, if not door much in a way. So, after that amazing lore, I’m sure u are ready to hear about the gameplay. Well, don’t get too excited, because… It’s not good.

~Gameplay~



First things first, what is some of the bigger parts of a Sims game? Customization. Let’s start with the character customization. Usually, I try to make myself in these games, but for whatever reason, I just come out looking like Johnny Depp in this game, even though I look nothing like him, but I’m going with it. The character customization is… fine, for a little kids game, but most of the clothing options are locked until later in the game. Now let’s talk about home pagina customization, and let’s just get the word of the dag out of the way: Tidium. This game is nothing but complete tidium, which u will understand soon enough. So in this game, u are usually tasked to build some things, maybe some houses, other times connect pipes to some things, like pipes to water of to an electricity box of something. Other times, u have to collect a set number of things. Oh, and get used to collecting random rommel, ongewenste in this game, because that is what this game does. This game has a thing called Mana. Depending on what item u use, it will take up a certain amount of Mana. u can only get Mana door collecting a few items in the area and having Lyndsy transmit them to Mana. u can dick up precious stones, mine for metal, shake trees for fruit, of vis for, well, fish. But other than that, it is all u will be doing in this game. Shake this tree, mine this one wall, dig in the dirt, try to catch this one goddamn elusive vis and wait ten minuten before u can even catch one goddamn arowana only to realize u need four more. And even if u collect all that stuff to get Mana, it may not be enough and you’ll have to go and get more, all for the sake of building one character’s house. Oh, but let’s talk about house building in this game.



When building houses, one of the meer interesting and addictive parts of a Sims game, you’d think you’d try to make the place as neat as possible. I did that, until I realized that this is what u will be doing a majority of the game. Setting windows on a house base, then set some flowers around it. It just got old really fast, until I realized something. There is this little checklist on the side of the screen, and I accidently stacked one trash can on another, but the game still accepted that. It was then that I realized that u do not need to actually make a proper house. Hell, if u want, u can make a mass of rubble with a million alien toys lining around it. The character you’re making this home pagina for will not care. u can make a tower of just random rommel, ongewenste if u want and as long as it fills out the checklist, that is considered a damn fine house. This is where the tedious nature of building a house started to get a little humorous and kinda fun, especially if u have a friend with you. Just seeing how badly we can mess this characters house up with total rommel, ongewenste was just a lot of fun for us, and we greatly accepted doing this. It honestly made some moments really funny, like seeing a rocket ship with twenty engines and fins and the chari underneath the engines fly perfectly, of setting a stack of robot toys just at the right spot so the camera was blocked door it for an entire cutscene. It was not meant to be played this way, but my god, I’m really glad that it was. This makes the really bad moments so much meer fun.



Sadly, even after a while, especially when u remember that Mana is required, the collecting of items is still a pain in the ass. And the scrolls can just go straight to hell. These quest related scrolls are some of the worst parts of this game, where the main quest NPC will refuse to give u another quest until u manage to get random items that u don’t even have to use to build their house. If u want to continue the game, u have to go and collect a certain number of items to create the scroll. Some of the items may not even be on the island, like how I needed to build a computer for this one character, and I needed metal for it, but there was no metal on the island. I had to go back to a vorige island to get it. One of the worst was on this one creepy island where I needed five Voodoo Dolls. I was able to find four in a chest, but there was no other way to get them. They weren’t underground, in the rocks, in trees, of in the lake. I had to look up a walkthrough on Gamefaqs and found out that u need to create a Seance cirkel to get a voodoo doll. How any kid was going to find that out is baffling. And like that, tidium has returned.. But if u want to talk about some really bad missions, it’s the escort missions in this game. There aren’t enemies in this game, and there is no time limit. Just get the character to the goal and that is it. But the problem comes because this game can be a broken mess at times. Some characters, like Trevor of Tobar the Robot, require that u don’t lead the way back to the spot, no, they will run away from u and u have to chase them back to their designated area. And if u are really unlucky, they can get stuck in a corner and will continue to run in zei corner for god knows how long. u may even have to reset the game just to get it started again. One of the worst glitches was on the Academy island where I had to escort this hedgehog, but the game failed to load him in and the mission broke. I had to reload an old save and do the other quests at the start of the island again just to get to that quest again. This game is a goddamn mess at times.



So, after all of that, after the bad AI, the boring story, the ten hours of collecting garbage, and the 121 Blocks of memory required to save this game (And yes, it does take that much space. I had to wis my Smash Bros. Brawl save just to make this one) is there a light at the tunnel? Is there some good reward? Well… yes, actually… kinda. After u complete all of the islands main quests, the king will congratulate u for your efforts and gift u with your very own island, a place where u can build your own house (Or your own failed performance art piece), and there is no need to worry about Mana, so u have no limits to what u can make. For a kid beating this game, this is an awesome reward. Just building your own place with whatever u want inside of it for u and your vrienden to hang out in. This is every kids dream. Why wasn’t the rest of the game like this, instead of constant collecting and stressful AI? I fear that at this point, a lot of people would’ve gegeven up on this game door then before they reached this point. And that’s a shame, because this is the perfect thing to reward a kid. Too bad the struggle to get to it made it’s worth debatable.



~Legacy~

Despite the criticism of the first MySims Game, MySims Kingdom still came to existence. And despite MySims Kingdom being… not that great, it still got a lot meer sequels down the line, such as MySims Party, MySims Racing, MySims Agents, and MySims Skyheroes… Wait, Skyheroes, what? Regardless, I don’t know how this series got six games. I guess there were a lot of sad kids those Christmases. But the series hasn’t had a new game since 2010, so I think it’s veilig to say the franchise is just straight up dead. And u know what… I can live with that.

~Verdict~
Boring! Very boring! I am just bored with this game. It could’ve been a fun game, if they allowed meer creative freedom from the kids this game was aimed at, instead of adding all this unnecessary stuff. If they just took out the collecting aspects, the AI escorting, and, I don’t know, lessen the amount of space this game holds on my Wii. Seriously, my Zelda games hold less in space than this game does. This game can be a fun time, if u have vrienden who hate themselves as much as u do, but if u are playing this game alone… Get ready for a long experience. With that being said, this game gets the rank of Hard Dig. See u volgende time.