MySims Agents Review
EA were one of the first to truly embrace the Nintendo Wii with their MySims franchise, a franchise that blended their already successful Sims, with Nintendo's Mii concept. It's now a few years since that started though, and there have been quite a few installments into the franchise. MySims Agents is the latest addition and in keeping with the MySims ideal, it has once again gone in a completely different direction to the previous games, while keeping some things consistant of course. This time, the MySims play Special Agent, and dive into a world of crime, mystery and adventure.
As is typical with the MySims, and indeed Sims franchise, players must create their own character to start off the game. This involves choosing a name, as well as picking hair colour, facial features and clothing. Compared to some other games out there, it's all very basic, but the options are unique enough to allow players some flexibility. It's also possible to change a character's appearance at almost any point throughout the game, so it's definitely not restricting in that sense.
Upon deciding on the character, their world and predicament are introduced while eating some of Gino's pizza. His restaurant is the current base of operation for the MySim, and Buddy, his sidekick. They're waiting for their big case so they can become Special Agents, and take a case to decide who a dog's owner is. It doesn't necessarily seem like the case that would propel them into the life of crime fighting, but this is MySims, and it turns out that one of the potential owners is Morcubus, an evil megalomaniac. Impressed by this, an agency gets in contact with the MySim and promotes him to Special Agent, granting him access to some neat gadgets and his own Headquarters.
While the story is very basic, it has a certain degree of charm to it, and the characters present throughout the game are definitely endearing. Each of them have their own distinct personality and it helps to give the game is own personality. Whether this is Jenny's dry sense of humour, or Esma's almost misplaced evilness, there are none that feel boring or bland. Due to the nature of the game, the story is unlocked by solving various mysteries, and the way it develops works rather nicely. Some crimes seem completely irrelevant, but after progressing through them, the plot eventually thickens and the MySim edges one step closer to discovering exactly what's going on. The only real downside to the story comes with the ending, it's extremely anti-climactic, and while it is possible to continue playing after the credits to get a more definitive resolution, it just fells unnecessary.
Gameplay is generally very basic. The majority of it revolves around the MySim moving around, asking people questions or examining objects to find out more. The motion controls are barely used, other than to access menus, like the notepad, which reminds players of their current objective. Solving the mysteries is generally very simple, and often doesn't require much thought. It's generally a case of speaking to the right person, or examining the right object. There are no speech trees to worry about, or attempting to trick people into saying the right thing, dialogue related to quests only pops up if it's relevant and will further the case. It feels a bit under-developed, but for the intended age group it was probably done to stop tedium.
However, sometimes interaction is required. If some machinery is broken, the MySim first has to salvage parts - which actually can become quite tedious - then fix it. This brings up one of the three mini-games that appear throughout the game. In the Repair mini-game, players must solve a puzzle. There are cogs, electrical cables and light beams, and the players must make sure that all of the targeted components work. To do this, they are given an array of parts that can be used to achieve this. While these start off relatively simply, they can actually get quite challenging towards the end of the game. The other three games are used to hack, analyse samples, and pick locks.
