MySims Kingdom for Wii Reviews by Gamers

I had a very good time playing this alongside my 5 year old, He did the fishing and the treasure hunting and I did the building and such. GREAT game to play with your little one :)

I'm sure that some or even most of the kids who played and enjoyed the original MySims will find this sequel even more fun. For me as an adult and as future father looking for games that would actually stimulate my children's brains, it was a terrible disappointment and I put it down after a couple of hours, never to return, and extremely glad I'd got it on GameFly instead of buying it.

On the good side, the game world is larger and the gameplay is much more directed with stronger storylines. There is a minor "puzzle" element with the addition of mechanisms where the player must construct mechanical linkages from power sources to machines, but these "puzzles" are no challenge and uninteresting because there is insufficient freedom in solving them - there is one obvious solution and not much room for further experimentation.

But for children and adults who enjoyed the original for the chance to build things on their own and choose their own activities, this is a big disappointment.

There is no longer a workshop and there are no blueprints. Furniture items are atomic units with specific costs in materials and essences (which are no longer distinct categories). Character requests are specific ("Needs a house with three points of "structure", two of "domestic", and one of "fun"), not open-ended preferences.

The essence gathering parts of the game have been tweaked in some ways, and the wiimote is used in most of them for basic gestures. But with the most creative time consuming activity in the game gone, most of the game play consists of tediously gathering materials.

My overall impression is that EA listened to a massive chorus of parents saying "This game is too intellectually stimulating for my little TV consumer. A proper brain-dead child can't be expected to explore, experiment, or design, let alone to choose their own goals given lots of choices. Please just spoon-feed them with what they should do like all the other games I give them.