Nintendo Wii Review: MySims Racing

In the world of car racing games, there are two styles of gameplay a publisher can go with: the Gran Turismo realistic-simulation style or the wacky fun-for-all-ages Mario Kart style. New racing games rarely enter the genre trying to break the mold for racers. Instead of taking the risk to create something revolutionary, publishers opt to throw a theme on top of your standard cross the finish line and time trial races.

MySims Racing is the latest EA venture into the world of Mario Kart style racers. Despite some neat customization and car upgrades, Sims fanatics won’t find this title to be anything close to the traditional Sims franchise. While on the racing front, this title makes no apologies in avoiding the creation of potential nuances to kart gaming. However, whatever your taste in gaming, if you’re looking for a new kart game to try your hand at, MySims Racing will provide you with an entertaining gaming experience.

MySims Racing takes advantage of the Wii’s strengths without calling attention to the console’s technical weaknesses. Graphically, this title features the cartoony and comical style block-shaped characters now inherent to the MySims franchise. The colors are crisp and vibrant, helping the characters to pop out of the screen. I didn’t experience any flicker and texture pop, which I have almost come to expect with any Wii games that involve fast motions.

Gamers have three choices of gameplay: story, quick race and multiplayer. The story mode shouldn’t really be considered a story at all. You begin the game posed with the task of revitalizing a town through racing. That’s pretty much it. So, if you’re looking for a great story, you won’t find it here. Gamers have a lot of customization they can do with both their characters and car. I’ve played several Wii games where you only get three or four complexions and about two different styles of eyes, so having so many character options to choose from was refreshing. Your car also has several customizable features, which you won’t find in Mario Kart.

Whereas in a Sims title, you’d expect more interaction with NPCs, this racer will rarely present any additional personalities to warrant the Sims name. While venturing from race to race, various MySims will show up on your overhead map simply asking you to complete a number of different activities. Most of these amount to either racing against the clock or picking up a bunch of misplaced items. This quickly gets redundant, so try to spread these out between actual races. After each race, you will collect MySims currency that can be used to upgrade your vehicle. This is probably the best feature of MySims Racing, because each car upgrade is immediately felt, as your wacky mechanic fixes up your kart. Get to love your mechanic and the bizarre MySims meaningless language he uses since you will be visiting his garage frequently throughout the game.

The gameplay makes use of the left and right wheel turning movements we were presented in Mario Kart. Unfortunately, just like Mario Kart, you’ll probably want to stick to using the controller or analogue stick to navigate your racecar. It’s just a better gaming experience. So far, Excitebots, from Nintendo, is the only racing that was really able to take advantage of the Wii-wheel style of gaming. You’ll notice a distinct improvement in kart handling as you continue to upgrade your kart, making the Wii-wheel style of gaming better. However, the analogue stick will continue edge out the Wii-wheel by a long shot.

MySims Racing comes with the full package of Mario Kart style attacks that can be used during races. So, you can do everything you’d expect to botch your competitors racing ambitions from lobbing objects at opponents to making them skid. There are two nice features that stand out. The first is a seed you can throw out and have it immediately spring into a tree, creating an obstacle for opponents. Just beware, you can also crash into the tree you planted, and getting it to fall in the right spot is a task onto itself. Also there is a tornado attack, where the controls and screen are inverted. This is great to do to opponents, but having this done to you will just make you frustrated.

Unlike the DS version of MySims Racing, which feels sluggish most of the time, the Wii release has a nice “vroom” factor. So, gamers will actually feel the momentum of the boosts and drifts. However, the DS quickly trumps the Wii when it comes to multiplayer action. The Wii comes with your standard four-player split screen for local-player competitive racing. However, there is no online component. Both Mario Kart and Excitebots had superb online features, so there really is no excuse for EA to have left online gameplay out of this title. Why they made sure to include use of WiFi for the DS and neglected online for the Wii is baffling.

MySims racing won’t break any rules in the world of racing games. However, it still has its fun moments and is a nice addition to the MySims franchise. Lack of online play is a severe strike against this title, especially since it’s executed almost flawlessly in other kart style games on the Wii.