SimAnimals for Wii Reviews by Gamers

Ah, SimAnimals. You lured me in with your cuteness and simplicity, but I left you for your ineptitude and ... well, simplicity.

SimAnimals for the Wii bears a remarkable resemblance to Viva Pinata for the Xbox 360, as both are essentially "wildlife simulators". You interact with the environment to lure certain species of animals to appear or visit, then you accomplish some other variables to encourage the animals to remain in the area, and then there are other variables to cause the animals to interact with each other. If only SimAnimals also had the graphics, control, storyline or actual gameplay of Viva Pinata, then this would be a nice addition to anyone's Wii library. As things stand, however, this game might have a hard time actually finding a market willing to play it.

I know that the developers could have squeezed some more power out of the Wii, but they didn't have to make it so glaringly obvious with the unremarkable graphics. The animations for the animals seem very jerky and out of place, especially if you know what they SHOULD look like.

The gameplay controls are awkward and definitely take some time getting used to. There is no ability to strafe - you must go in one direction and one direction only, then stop and turn if you want your camera somewhere else. It's more frustrating than it sounds, especially knowing that there were enough unused buttons on the Wii remote that could have allowed for one of them to be mapped for a camera strafe. Oh, and a button for actually interacting with the environment, instead of waggling your disembodied hand over EVERYTHING. That got annoying fast.

I suppose that if you didn't have an Xbox 360 and you wanted a simplistic game for your child that has a chance of marginally encouraging strategic thinking, SimAnimals would be okay. Just be prepared to console the child after a text pops up on screen telling him that his pet robin, Twiddles, whom he's loved from the start, just got devoured by Fluffs the cat.

You should notice that by the title that its about animals but you might not think thats all there is. And thats all there is. I love Sims games and i honestly dont know why theyre making so many weird Sims games recently. I think that the first type of Sims games where there's actually people in it are better than this one because it actually keeps me entertained. But really with this one you feed animals and then they start to trust you, so they get more comfortable with you and then you can pet them and stuff like that. And once they like you enought you can take them with you, which i still dont understand, but whatever. Theres a pretty big variety of animals and once you get enough animals to like you, you get more areas and stuff like that, but there really isnt much to it. There isnt any online mode. The graphics are average Wii graphics. I really wish EA would start making the normal type of Sims games, but they really need to stop making these weird and honestly useless Sims games. Try it out, but you prouble wont like it enough to play it for more than a few hours.