Nintendo DS 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 for the DS 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. Unfortunately, you’re actual interaction with them will feel like fetch quests from the 90s RPG era.

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. The character and racing customization is severely diminished in the DS version from its Wii counterpart. You will still enjoy the car customization present in the handheld version, 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 controls make use of the D-pad, with the standard buttons used for acceleration, reversing and breaking (which you’ll rarely use). 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.

Unlike the Wii version of MySims Racing, which gives gamers a nice “vroom” factor on boosts, the DS version tends to feel sluggish. However, the DS quickly trumps the Wii when it comes to multiplayer action. You’ll be able to participate in online races with three players or in single and multi-card play. The games feature your standard races and nothing that really pushes this title to the next level, but it’s still a great addition over the online-lacking Wii version.

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. Unfortunately, the game does feel sluggish at times, and could have benefited from some added speed in racing.