GamesRelay

Name: MySims Agents

MySims was originally a spin-off of the original Sims but produced for the Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS, involving the same principles as the original games, MySims saw you creating a character, building a house with furniture and other various godly tasks bestowed upon you by the game. If you have seen the cover of MySims Agents, you'll no doubt be wondering where the tag lines "Live the Adventure" and "Uncover the Mystery" fit into the Sims universe, you see, MySims Agents has taken a different approach to the Sims franchise, now there's a plot a story and a case to solve.

You start the game as a private detective which you get to name and customize before starting off. Your detective is first tasked with various menial missions around the city, but when a new villain comes to town and starts causing havoc, the Sim Protection Agency get on the case. As the story sets off, you become deputized and tasked with figuring out what's going on with this villain that is causing chaos everywhere. Your mission (if you choose to accept it Agent Bond), that's right, every agent should be named bond, is to find the all powerful "Crown of Nightmares" before the head of the evil MorcuCorp do, sounds simple enough then.

One of the great things about MySims Agents is its simplicity, while that would usually be a bad thing, thankfully in this case it isn't. Usually in anything with the name Sims in it, it's daunting upon first inspection and a learning curve there on after. With the original MySims, players spent a lot of time interacting with various other characters to move the game forward, this however has been reduced to simply talking to them about the case you're working on, cutting out most of the non-essential information. This is where the good simplicity ends however, the main gameplay involves the same tasks repeatedly in various fashions which usually involve the following; Follow footprints from the scene of a crime, try to reach a ledge by shifting blocks to get to it, repair machines with a simple connection of gears and pipes type puzzle, analyze any materials you come across which appear suspicious – this being in the form of placing orbs on a grid in a specific pattern, then having you hack various electronics by going through a maze with the Wii Remote and/or picking locks with another type of blocks puzzle. While these simplistic puzzles are great for children, for adults, its repetitive nature can soon take hold and you'll be wondering why you bother. Though the game is aimed for children this is strangely something they could enjoy, the puzzles have a varying degree of difficulty attached but seeing them complete one to move the story forward looks satisfying enough, especially when it keeps your children entertained.

The game is broken up from these repetitive investigations by giving you your own spy headquarters. Your five floored HQ can be customised and decorated to your own liking with furniture you'll discover during your missions. This being a Sims game in name and by type, the customisation is in depth enough to keep players interested but keeping it simple enough for the younger generation to happily play with and enjoy. Solving the cases you get sent on will also get you some junior agents which can be sent out on cases you don't want to do yourself, this in itself can be a hindrance unfortunately however since all to often you'll be getting text messages from them asking for advice on the case they're working on and how they should handle it. While it adds a layer of a strategic thinking to the game, as junior agents can be teamed up to be more effective, it can become annoying quite often, especially when your investigating your own mission.

While you have to baby sit your junior agents, your character does help you as well, whenever you're on a case and come to a point where you should start thinking "What do I do next?" Your character writes down what you need to do in a convenient journal, thus removing the need for you to think about what you should do at any given moment. It's this kind of help which can sometimes spoil the game, with this level of help it negates the point for you to question the crime scene and inspect the clues presented before you in such a way that you will end up coming to your own conclusion upon the events which unfolded.

The overall look and feel is cute and attractive, very similar to the Mii characters of the Nintendo Wii. With its ease of accessibility, the game should provide an ample amount of enjoyment for the family even with some of its repetitive puzzles and simplistic gameplay, though the game is aimed more with children in mind over the more mature generation, it's really something you should be buying for your kids and not for yourself, unless of course you like playing children's games.