DS Review: MySims Party

While Maxis/EA Games have created quite a franchise empire with the Sims series, one of their newest endeavors has been the MySims line of games. Maybe the Wii versions of these are better, I don't know, but as of yet, I haven't been too impressed by a single MySims title yet.

As you may have surmised by the title alone, MySims Party is basically yet another Mario Party rip-off. Everybody's gotta jump that bandwagon while it's still rolling, right? In this (and any MySims) game, you'll notice that the characters look absolutely nothing like their regular Sim game relatives. They're much shorter - chibi form, really - and cuter than normal Sims. There's a heavy Japanese anime interest here. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is your own call. I personally think they're awfully cute, but at the same time, think they're trying to appeal to a much younger age demographic here.

So, here you are, placed in this new Sim Town (oh, am I allowed to call it that? I remember the actual Sim Town game...) and you create your own character. You'll find yourself doing this quite a bit - you'll need at least 3 characters to build teams with later on in the game, but I don't think there's any limit to how many you can make. So knock yourselves out - make a bunch of MySims with varying skill levels! (I personally made 4 different MySims, and true to form, I based them off real people. "Team Liza Minnelli" had a nice ring to it. ;) I made Liza, Judy Garland, Goldie Hawn, and Gene Kelly for use in my teams.) Your level of customization is both limited by what clothing and hair style items you've purchased for usage as well as the game itself not having a huge variety in styles either. That was one downside to me.

Now, you can cruise around town, chat with other villagers, and generally explore things. This is mostly unnecessary, but it's a good time-waster. What you really need to do is go to the center of your town, inside the huge castle. Guess what? Now you're REALLY in the game. You'll find each time you go in, a new festival has opened up for you to play.

What's this? Festivals you say? Yes, festivals. Each one has a certain number of mini-games which you must play and beat to win the festival. This, more or less, is what the entire game is all about. To continue in my review, the rest of my focus is going to be on each of the mini-games, as this is where 99% of your gameplay is going to take place.

• Pass and Check - You're more or less playing teacher's aide here. You compare the top and bottom screens and place a check mark when the documents match. If they do not, you slide the document to the left. Very easy game, it should give you a quick win!
• Hush Hush Library Rush - You clean the floor of the library, but if the librarian catches you making too much noise or running, she'll come yell at you, costing you precious time. It's a pretty simple game once you get the hang of it.
• My Mix Masters - It's more or less a record scratch beat game. If it worked correctly, I'd probably really like it. It doesn't always pick up when you hit the correct buttons though.
• Haunted Hunted - This sort of makes me think of what I thought "Ghost Hunters" was going to be all about. You go inside a haunted mansion, equipped with a gun. Don't hit or run into the ghost, or he'll attack. Try to hit the other players for points.
• Sushi Scramble - Memorize customers' orders and make sushi! Customers get upset if you're slow, or you get their order wrong. Ever played Diner Dash or Burger Island? This mini-game is a lot like those.
• Chemistry Calamity - You must mix the chemicals in the same exact order as those on the top screen, and then mix the test tube in the same direction as the directions indicate. As long as you can remember the colors, the only part that might give you any trouble is the actual mixing.
• Spaghetti Spin-Off - Maybe it's because I'm of heavy Italian descent that I viewed this mini-game as painfully stereotypical, but...it is. Not all Italians exist solely on spaghetti. Regardless, in this game you must twirl the spagetti up onto your fork without dropping it, and attempt to eat more spaghetti than any of the other players. It's harder than it sounds...
• Soft Service - Another Diner Dash-esque mini-game. Check the customer's order and place ice cream on the cone. Hurry and bring it back to your customer, and don't get the order wrong! You'll do more running and pushing the other players out of the way in this game than anything.
• Vroom Service - Bring the guest's orders to their hotel rooms! Be sure to check the map on the top screen. This mini-game more or less has a very maze-y feel to it.
• Skull Finder - You get to play archeologist here! Use your pick-axe to chip away all the surrounding dirt from the bones, but be careful not to hit the fossils themselves! You'll also be employing the microphone for blowing away the excess dirt you've already knocked off.
• Clap Happy - Famed MySims fashion designer Nikki is putting on a fashion show! Every time she poses, you must clap (using your L and R shoulder buttons) as quickly and accurately as possible, trying to out-clap the other players.
• Air Guitar Star - I'm pretty sure everyone's familiar with Guitar Hero at this point, so I'll just sum this one up as being Guitar Hero without the guitar.
• Okay Bouquet - Customers come in and request very specific bouquets. Fill their orders, tie the bouquet up with a bow, and ship it off! Easy peasey.
• Petal Platform Peril - I don't like this one much. Jump from platform to platform, collecting as many flowers as possible. But watch out! The other players may jump on your head and knock you down, as may falling boulders.
• Keys to Success - I think they were running out of mini-game ideas by the time they got to this one. Pick up various keys and look at the tip: if it matches the lock on the treasure chest, try it out and see if it opens it or not! Personally, I really can't stand the sound that plays when you rotate the keys. It sounds like a ratchet.
• Mallet Melee - Let's rip off a little bit more from Mario, shall we? This is pretty much a poor man's Super Smash Bros.
  
• Signal Search - Cell phones have become such an integrated fixture in our lives that I'm sure all of us have had to run around, trying to find a signal at some point or another. Why not make a game out of it? Well... EA Games did!
• Spotlight Please! - Maybe it's because I'm a theatre geek, but I loved this one. You have to follow the little Shakespearean actor around the stage and try to keep the spotlight on him at all times. But! He immensely enjoys messing with you, so be prepared for him to randomly bolt across the stage at any given moment, just to make you sweat.
• Sim-Fu Showdown - Try out your kung-fu --er, Sim-fu -- moves on a bunch of wooden robots! ....Yes. I did say wooden robots. (I don't know how exactly that works out, either.)
• Fashion Mogul - Trace the designs on each shirt as closely as possible. If you mess up, you'll be forced to repeat it. This mini-game feels more like work than a game. Is EA Games training kids to work in sweat shops? Hmm...
• Crystal Clear - Oh, I like this one! (Probably because I always win it. ;)) Each player is sat down in front of a dirty crystal ball. Your mission? Clean that sucker up as quickly as possible before anyone else does! You have to rotate the ball to get the whole thing. Be careful not to miss any spots!
• Sudsy Salon - This mini-game, I have yet to successfully win. It sounds simple enough... You're in a hair salon, lathering up a customer's head with shampoo, and then rinsing it. But you have to completely cover 100% of the hair AND finish first. The latter is what keeps messing me up.
• Skater Scamper - Bleh, I hate this one, but then, I suck at most skater games. You're on a skateboard and must perform tricks as well as not run into anything, while at the same time trying to cross the finish line first. Did I mention that you'll have to use the button controls AND the stylus to do this? I think it's that coordination that's rendered this game impossible for me to win.
• Soccer Bounce - Pretty easy stuff - you hit the correct buttons while the soccer ball is still up in the air to hit it again. Don't let it fall to the ground!
• Bus! Stop! - Ummm....you chase after a bus as quickly as you can, trying to make it stop. (What'd you think this game would be with a title like that?) It's a total button masher; you just hit any and every button in sight to run.
• Catch the Crook - This one's pretty fun, albeit a little challenging! Just like it sounds, you must chase after a crook that's on the loose. You can collect power-ups that he drops, but watch out! He also drops obstacles in your way when you least expect it. If you fall too far behind, you're out!
• Clothing Cut-Out - Very similar to Fashion Mogul, you have to trace the patterns on the fabric to cut the pieces out in order to make clothes. A steady hand is absolutely crucial for this game (as is a properly calibrated DS screen).
  
• Pretty Pottery - When I read the title of this game, it conjured up images of spinning clay into fine works of art. Not the case here. All you're doing is taking potted plants and planting them in a garden according to a map of where each plant needs to go. Yawn.
• Gone Fishing - Well, there's not much to say here, is it? It's exactly what it sounds like.
• Hidden Treasures - This one's pretty fun. You're unleashed in a darkened warehouse full of boxes, and it's your job to run around and open them all, searching for treasure! First player to 5 hidden treasures wins.
• Sleeping Sophie - This is another L and R shoulder button game. Use L and R to jump a balloon full of air quickly as possible until it pops and wakes Sophie.
• Pastry Puzzle - I like this one a lot too. You're working in a bakery, and with each order that comes in, you have to figure out which way to place the pastries in the box to make them all fit. (No, you cannot stack them.) Try it! It's more fun than it sounds, I promise.
• Hang Gliding Hurricane - OMG, I hate this mini-game with a burning passion. As an asthmatic, I do not have the greatest lung capacity in the world. In this mini-game, you have to steadily blow into the microphone (for I think 30 seconds or a minute straight) while trying not to crash. The harder you blow, the faster your hang glider moves. I always end up out of breath and dizzy as hell every time I try to play this one. :( I don't like it at ALL.
  
• Fortune Finders - This mini-game takes a little bit of luck to win it. You and the other players are unleashed in some woman's yard to dig and try to find buried treasure. Each piece has a different value. Whichever player collectively finds the most treasure wins!
• Shuffle Cup - Remember that old 'ball under the cup' trick? This is that game...except that it's played in a seedy casino where the power goes out and you're unable to see what's going on for a moment. Hardly fair play by any means.
• Plane Pop - You fly a plane in this mini-game and try to pop as many balloons as you can. Each balloon you pop helps fill a meter at the bottom of the screen. When it's filled, you can use this built up energy to zoom through other planes and birds, which would normally knock your plane out of the way.
• Bumper Boat Battle - I wouldn't have used the term "bumper boats" here - that would insinuate something akin to bumper cars. This is nothing like that. You simply sail your boat around the islands, look out for whirlpools, and try to reach the goal first.
• Fashion Reaction - Grab the clothing from the bottom of the screen that matches the pieces listed on the left, and model them in the dressing room! This should be another easy win for you.
• Perfect Slot Jackpot - This slot machine doesn't so much rely on chance (as real ones do) as it does on good timing on your part. You decide when each wheel stops turning.
• Spotting Safari - The whole point of this mini-game is to spot as many animals as possible. If you find one, quickly hit the A button before it goes back into hiding! If you move around the jungle quickly and have a fast reaction time, winning this game should be a cinch!

And that's all of them! Overall, I wouldn't say that I particularly loved or hated this game, I'm fairly neutral on it. I guess it's alright if you really need something to pass the time, but otherwise, I think I'd leave this one to the younger kids to play with. I'm giving it a 5 out of 10 Mysims rating.

Nostalgia Corner: Felix the Cat (NES)

In thinking about my old NES game collection and remembering which games I have the most fond of memories of playing, Felix the Cat has always ranked pretty highly on that list...even if in part because it was the very first video game that I ever completed all on my own, with no help from either my dad (who was, at the time, the biggest gamer I knew) or from the Game Genie. (I don't think there ever were Game Genie codes for Felix...I could be wrong.) Regardless, upon recently figuring out NES emulation for my DS, Felix was the very first game on my list that I went out of my way to track down a copy of.

Instantly upon booting up the game, I was greeted by that friendly opening screen that I'd seen so many times before during my youth. It made me smile. That aside, once beginning the initial gameplay, I was immediately taken aback by how similar the gameplay is to the old Mario games, or even Mega Man. In modern games, you don't tend to run across side-scrollers too often anymore, so it was quite refreshing to play one again. The premise also reminded me of Mega Man, in that we have an evil scientist hellbent on destruction (who, in this case, is keeping Felix's girlfriend Kitty hostage). So, of course, Felix must save the world. (What else would this game be about?)

So here you are, in this Felix bizarro world of hamsters and cannons and sombrero monsters and walking trees--was somebody dropping acid when they created this game? I'm pretty sure that somebody was doing some heavy drugs. (Then again, this was all based off the old Felix the Cat cartoons. I'm pretty sure that opium was legal back then.) Like Mega Man (and unlike Mario), you cannot jump on your foes. Oh, no. Instead, all that you are armed with is your little yellow magic bag (we'll get back into that in just a second), out of which you can punch with a spring-loaded boxing glove. (It's all based VERY much off the old cartoons, which, if you've ever seen them, you'll understand.) Its range is VERY short, but it'll get you through long enough to either find a random heart or a power up bag.

Oh, what's this? Power up bags? Well, you know how in Mario, you travel through pipes? In Felix, you travel through giant versions of your magic bag. Once inside, you will find many powerups, usually a heart, and some milk cans. With each heart, you power up to the next ability level. (When you hit the last one, any additional hearts will just give you extra lives.) However, their usage is very limited. As soon as you get one of these powers, 10 hearts will appear in the upper left-hand corner of your screen. Each one stays for about 5 seconds, and when the hearts run out, you lose the power and are bumped back down to the next lower one. HOWEVER! You can get around this with those trusty milk cans! Each milk can will give you a few extra hearts, and I think if you manage to hook all three, it powers you back up completely. Not a bad deal....except that when you need them most, you can never seem to find the damn things. Sometimes these magic bags have a second bag on the righthand side of the screen that serves as a segway to further on in the level - again, much like the Mario pipelines.

So now that you've found your first heart, wherever it may have happened in the level, you'll no doubt notice that Felix's appearance has suddenly changed. He now wears a black top hat and carries a cane. No, not a cane, a magic wand. He's a magician now. (But according to my 10 year old sister, it's "totally a cane - Felix turned into a pimp!" Wowwww.) You will notice that when you go to attack an enemy now, you no longer get the springy punching bag. Instead, you throw a ring of stars out around your being in every which direction, creating a brief force field that will hit anything in close enough proximity. Still not a great power, but it definitely trumps the glove by a long shot.

Your next power up gives Felix a car. This vastly increases your mobility speed as well as gives you a projectile missile which shoots from the front of the car whenever you beep your horn. (It's one of the only vaguely realistic sounds in the game that doesn't sound like a bleep or boop.) I think that of the power ups for the regular ground levels (you have different powers in different levels, such as sky or sea), the car is my favorite. It's the most versatile and is easiest to work with.

Once you surpass the car, you get a tank. Sounds pretty awesome, right? It's big, it's heavy, it shoots cannon balls. What could be better? Um... the car. Seriously, the tank is bulky and cumbersome. You have to really work at making sure the trajectory on your cannon balls will actually hit your targets. You can't jump very high in it. It baffles me that this is the top power up in the regular land levels.

Of course, the power ups are different in different levels. In air levels, you start out with an umbrella (think: Mary Poppins) and upgrade to a hot air balloon which looks like Felix's head and throw what appear to be frisbees at enemies, and finally are upgraded to an airplane. I love that little plane... Then in the water levels (above water), you only have 2 power ups: you start out in a little inflatable raft, and you upgrade to a dolphin who you ride on the back of. Underwater, you start out with a snorkel, upgrade to riding on the back of a bubble-blowing sea turtle, and finally to a submarine that, like the hot air balloon, looks like Felix's head. This one, by far, is the best of the underwater abilities, as even though it's big and cumbersome, you can't beat this thing's missiles. They're long range, they shoot straight ahead (which is more than can be said for most of the projectiles in this game), and they're powerful. It's about the only thing that will really help you during boss battles.

It's overall a pretty typical oldschool NES game. You defeat bad guys; if you fall down holes or land in water, you die; your levels are timed, etc. All stuff that usually was a part of any video game back then. The levels are divided up in similar fashion to Mario as well (i.e. 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 2-1, etc) with three parts to a level...in most cases anyhow. There are 9 levels, and I suspect that since this is a game about a cat, 9 levels/9 lives. Get it? The last two are sort of a joke though. As you spend the game trying to reach the Professor, you reach level 8, and I think it only has one part to it. You just fly around in a spaceship and try not to die. (Easier said than done.) Level 9, if I recall, only has 2 parts before the final battle. Should you have had an easy time defeating all of the other bosses throughout the game, this will be a cinch for you. Especially since you have not one, not two, but THREE magic bags in the actual battle screen to duck down into to grab power ups and extra hearts inside of. You can come in completely unprepared and still get the tank to fight the Professor with. He takes a little bit longer to defeat than the other bosses, but it's the same general concept.

There's only two possible outcomes for this game. If you lose, you'll see a screen with a sad little Felix being tossed out into an alleyway while Kitty looks on longingly from the moon. However, should you succeed in beating the game, you'll reach Kitty, who's still all tied up, but hopping around in excitement for you finally have saved her; hearts floating up out of her head. "Congratulations! At least FELIX! You rescued Kitty! I love you, FELIX!" And then you watch a cutesy little sequence where Kitty and Felix fly off into the sunset--no wait, scratch that. They fly back home to Earth together, all smoochy and everything in the spaceship, and "THE END" flashes across the screen. Yes, it's short, but it's sweet, and a lot more memorable than a lot of other NES game endings of that time period. The ending has stuck with me over the years for some reason, and I didn't realize just how vividly I remembered it until seeing it again. This game, which took me all day to beat as a little kid, took me a grand total of just barely half an hour to complete this time around - playing it for the first time in about 17 years, to boot! (Damn, I'm old.) It's a pretty simple game, overall, and I'd say it's still a good early starter game for kids. Know your roots!

This was by no means the greatest ever game created for the NES, but I think it has quite a bit of quality to it that's stood the test of time. I'm going to go ahead and rate this 7 out of 10 little kitties.

DS Review: Imagine Boutique Owner

Okay. With as much as I've whined and complained about the Imagine line of games, you're not doubt asking yourselves why I keep putting myself through this torture time and time again every time they put out a new title. Masochism, maybe? I don't know. And yet, I jumped through hoops to score a copy of this one pretty much as soon as it was released. I honestly can't even answer the "why?!" question anymore.

Anyway... It would have appeared that Imagine finally put out a better title than usual. You play a girl named Katie who inherits the family boutique from her grandfather, and has to keep one-upping and outdoing the city rival, Mr. Cheepo (who looks creepily like Alec Baldwin). This "boutique" eventually turns into somewhat of a mini-mall in which the mayor, the elite (Miss Van der Velt, who looks suspiciously like Paris Hilton), and pop star Ashley all shop at and increase the popularity of. You have to thwart off shoplifters (who are sent to your store by Mr. Cheepo), keep all your customers happy, and generally do a LOT of running back and forth between departments.

I find it interesting that you spend more time having to guess what exactly your customers want to buy than anything else. Even when it fits the bill, there's times when they still don't like what you present them with. What-ever. More curious is in your toy shop, where Katie creates her own stuffed animals, not a single stitch goes into those plushies. You just stick them together willy nilly and they magically hold. (Wow, I hope no kid gets the idea to try this out at Build-A-Bear or anything...) And no matter how you sign your name on your creations - even if you just scribble, it will still use the signature you used on the initial contract you signed when you inherited this boutique. (Better sign it neatly, or it'll mock you in the face every time you sign anything for the rest of the game!)

I guess I have no room to complain here because it's the same way the real world works too, but for every holiday, your boutique gets all pimped out and commercialized for each respective holiday. Which I think is just further perpetuating things a little bit more with the current generation, but oh well. Also, Katie must be awfully uncomfortable. Any time she's not moving around, she automatically strikes a model-esque pose; one leg extended far in front of the other.

Overall, I had very little to complain about with this title. The accuracy of the stylus even seemed to be fixed for this game! The loading screens are a little slow, but anyone can live with that. My only gripe - and this may just have been my cartridge, I don't know - is upon completing the jewelry store chapter, my game ALWAYS locks up. No matter what I do. I even created a new file and started again, and it did it at the same spot, 3 times. If anyone else has had this problem, I'd like to hear about it. Otherwise, I'm going to try and get a refund, or else just sell the sucker on Ebay. What a pity.... I knew there had to be a catch.

Since I don't know whether or not the glitch was because of faulty programming or the cartridge itself, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume I got a dud here. The game, APART from that, I will rate a big fat 7 cash registers out of 10. Which is much more than I can say for pretty much any other Imagine title I've tried this far.

DS Review: Emma at the Farm

You know, I grew up a farm girl. (Horse ranch to be exact, but I digress. We always had lots of animals around.) Even though this game was probably meant for, oh, I don't know... 3 year olds probably, I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and try it out anyhow. Free import from the UK to review. Why not?

Observation number 1: The girl on the cover of the box doesn't even look like the girl in the game, strangely enough. What's this? False advertisement already? The guard is going up, and the game hasn't even begun yet. But the music sounds nice enough, so I'm still keeping an open mind.

There's three difficulties on which you can play this game: easy, medium, and hard. (Truth be told, with the exception of about 2 activities, it's exactly the same thing and difficulty on each difficulty level.) You have to play through the game to unlock each of the upper levels above it... Which wouldn't seem to bad IF THE GAME WERE DIFFERENT ON EACH DIFFICULTY! Seriously, would it have been that hard to give Emma three little adventures instead of...well...one?

Oh yes. You heard me. You play it through just to find out YOU GOT CHEATED. Who wants to play the same fairly-lame game through more than once? Not me, but for you lovely people, I did it anyway. The plot essentially is that Emma has come to visit her Uncle Jules (whose laugh makes me think of Charles Aznavour big time - he seems to be the lone Frenchman in this otherwise very British game) on his farm, and that while she's helping him tend to the animals, one of the mother hens has lost her chicks and needs Emma's help finding him. There's more emphasis on finding the chicks than the chores. The storyline is VERY short, even for a little kids' game. You could seriously complete this game on any difficulty in half an hour, tops. The lasting appeal for re-playing is not very high.

The dialogue in the game is almost laughably English. I keep getting mental images of all these animals (plus Emma) being uppity, snobby characters with the highly upper crust British accents. For example, my favorite line in the whole game is said by the noble horse: "I'll greet this fox with a firm hoof! A good thump with my iron shoe and that will be the end of him!" A close second would be the donkey's poem:

Oh sweet grass on the path of the barn!
You are so nice when I eat you!
When I look at you,
my soul is at peace!
Ah, how lovely it is to graze near the barn!

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I giggled over it. Anyway, throughout the game you go through a sequence of chores: you must collect eggs from the henhouse, catch falling eggs in a basket before they hit the ground, call the donkey to you, collect bundles of hay and place them in a cart, race a bunny against a fox, blow dandelion fluff into the wind, milk a cow, match animal sounds with the animals that make them, feed the animals, round up piglets and sheep, identify different vegetables, water the garden, shake apples out of the trees in the orchard, collect ripe tomatoes, and build a scarecrow.

All of this builds up to a very moral-ish ending of that it's bad to run off to play and leave for somewhere without telling your parents because it will make them worry. (Told you it was aimed towards little kids.) The opening and ending videos aren't the best quality I've ever seen, but they're not too bad, all things considered. It looks really low-budget, but if they'd had more money to play with, they might have been pretty nice.

I'm pretty sure the bonus features take longer to completely play out than the actual game. There's an Animal Families game (which has nothing whatsoever to do with actual animal families - it's a typical memory card matching game), a Dress Up Emma screen (which makes absolutely no impact on what Emma wears in that actual game at all...that was a letdown to me), real life recipes, and a virtual vegetable garden to water and grow. The best of of these is probably those real life recipes, which include:

- Grapefruit cup
- Potato pancakes
- Fruit ice cream
- Pound cake
- Quiche
- Steamed fish in foil
- Orange salad
- Apple tart with a moustache
- Tomato soup
- Beefburgers in breadcrumbs
- Mini-gratin
- Chocolate cake with glasses

Overall, I'm pretty sure I'll rate this game a solid 4 milking cows. Not too strong, but the bonus features are at least a little bit redeeming.