System: Wii
Developer: Electronic Arts
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Life Sim
Players: 1-4
Ever wanted to own your own forest? Neither have I, really - but in SimAnimals that opportunity is now here, complete with all sorts of creatures ready to further your quest for world dominatio- ….I mean pamper and take care of so they lead happy and productive lives, produce baby creatures, and make the forest happy in general – including the plants and trees.
SimAnimals starts off its woodland adventures outside Snobby Manor, with helpful tips given along the way to get acquainted with life in the forest. The controls use both the Wii-mote and Nunchuk, with the initial area generally holding the player's hand as they get to grips with the controls – which can be difficult to get used to. Players can move around using the Nunchuk's joystick (or by pointing and dragging with the Wii-mote, which wasn't particularly helpful unless moving within a very limited space) and zoom in/out with the C/Z buttons. Camera angles can also be changed with the D-pad on the Wii-mote. I found the camera to be fairly clunky and difficult to get used to, and the zoom levels inadequate for viewing what was going on – zooming out even partway made it hard to interact with the animals, and getting closer in made controlling the game restrictive, even when the camera was locked on a specific animal.
The main goal in each area is to fill the 'Happy Bar' at the top of the screen (which can be toggled to show a large emoticon at the right of the screen - shown above). Partway along is a padlock icon, which when reached unlocks the next area of the forest; some animals are native to specific areas, however once unlocked there's no restrictions on where the animals can live (for example, rabbits live near Snobby Manor, but can also be found in later areas in the game). The more animals living in an area, the easier it becomes to unlock the next. Animals and plants produce 'happy energy' which magically floats towards the Happy Bar, and disgruntled creatures and plants produce 'sad energy' - which has the opposite effect. While this is a novel way of progressing through the game, in my opinion it would have worked better had the happy and sad energy icons simply appeared on the Happy Bar itself, instead of floating across the screen – they have a tendency to get in the way when working with flora and fauna. They do have their advantages though - when pressing the A button on a floating happy/sad face, it can take you to the creature or plant producing it, which is handy for finding problem spots that need fixing up – so they're not all bad. In later levels, the ability to cast thunderbolts to remove trees and plants and frighten nearby animals can be obtained, which require a prerequisite amount of happy energy (and a water source) before they can be cast. Gaining happy energy is fairly easy to do, unless you're deliberately setting out to make animals dislike you – I was able to unlock three or four new areas fairly quickly.
Making animals happy consists mainly of keeping them fed, providing them with locations for possible homes, and bringing in other animals for them to interact with. To make it easier to work out what animals want, the game has a feature titled 'Discovery Mode' (which is accessed with the "-" button). Zooming in on an animal in this mode provides more detailed information, such as their mood, preferred diet, relationships with other animals, their home area in the forest, whether they've found shelter, and their trust level with the player. There's also an encyclopaedia that has some information about the species itself, in a diabolical move to bring *gasp - dramatic music* ...education to a video-game. Each level also has certain objectives to complete, with new animals unlocked as these are attained – most of these are fairly easy, but become more difficult as the game progresses. Animals move in once they've gained enough trust with the GIANT DISEMBODIED HAND™ which acts as your conduit with the SimAnimals world.
Each animal has foods they particularly like – some prefer acorns, others like blackberries and some animals even like to eat other animals, which can cause significant frustration when trying to complete some later objectives. Giving each creature the food they like increases their trust level – once you've reached the second level of trust, you'll be able to give the animals belly rubs, which are performed by waggling the Wii-mote left and right while hovering over an animal. Enough of this (it keeps going as long as you waggle the Wii-mote) will gain the third trust level and a message that this animal has 'moved in'. This trust level also affects how the animals interact with the Hand. Antagonise an animal enough and it'll attack you in some way – try picking up a newborn bear cub and watch its parents chase the Hand, eventually savaging it in a G-rated assault of teeth and parental ursine rage (complete with squeak-toy noises from the Hand) once they get close enough. It's the best 'being eaten by a bear' simulator on the Wii so far.
Most animals will basically take care of themselves, making friends with other animals and finding food, so once enough trust has been gained they can be left to their own devices. Animals can also be 'introduced' to each other as well – this builds their relationship with the other animal and is essential if they're the same species and you're aiming to get them to mate. Friendship in the SimAnimals world (even between birds and animals) seems mainly to consist of head-butting – introduce animals to each other and they'll end up causing self-inflicted headaches in their zeal for companions. Some animals can befriend each other without your interaction as well – one objective required two deer to mate, with the two already producing Bambi before I'd gotten enough trust to introduce them.
Some animals eat others (as mentioned before), so at some point predator and prey will get into a fight – some prey animals can survive a few of these, but generally they won't last the first argument. Frustratingly, there's no way to separate them once they do, so if there's a particular animal you're trying to keep around (either to complete an objective or simply because you like them) it's best to keep a close eye on them when there's possible predators nearby. This happens more often in the later levels, particularly when creatures such as dogs and bears are unlocked and has proven to be one of the more irritating aspects of the game. If an animal dies they also contribute negatively to the happy bar, sending sad energy from the point where they were killed. When it comes to baby animals though, this predator/prey behaviour can be slightly altered – introducing a baby predator to a prey animal can influence them and make them less likely to eat others of the prey's species when they grow up (somewhat like those feel-good stories on the news with a squid and an elephant growing up together in a cardboard box under some stairs, and becoming stars in a Hollywood action movie).
To keep plants and trees happy, they must be in the right soil (either dry, normal or muddy – some species of plants can be grown in the water). As they grow, the plants and trees produce seeds – butterflies hovering around a plant or a tree indicate that a seed is ready. Certain plants have special effects on the animals they're given to, such as altering the colour of the animal, so players can have green cats or purple robins in their forest. Much the same as giving animals a belly rub, waggling the Hand over the flora will result in a lone seed leaping onto the ground nearby. This seed can then be replanted (with the same action as harvesting – almost all interaction in SimAnimals uses this action somehow) or it can be thrown in your Backpack. The Backpack stores all of the seeds, berries and other collectables that you'll find in the forest. Once you've earned enough trust with an animal you can also throw them in your backpack, and bring them out in another area – even larger animals such as bears and deer can be safely stored away. This comes in handy when protecting an animal from being eaten, or if you've got a problem animal that you want out of the way while you tend to the forest. The Backpack is easy enough to use, but it can get confusing to sort through when you've amassed a large collection of seeds, berries and other items – having each category of item separate would've made things easier, but they're all massed in the one list.
Three secret animals can be unlocked in the game through the use of codes (accessed through the pause menu). All of these are self-explanatory – type in 'ferret' to have one join your motley crew of merry animals, or start your own panda-breeding program with the 'panda' code. The final code, 'red panda', allows you to meet the similarly-named (but totally different) creature of the Himalayan mountains. These aren't anything spectacular though – each one is simply a re-skin of an already-existing animal from the forest (the ferret is a re-skinned weasel, pandas are normal bears with a new coat of paint, and red pandas could be mistaken for sunburned raccoons). They do have their own characteristics when it comes to likes and dislikes, however.
Later on in the game, the waggle ability gains a new function – tree lopping. Waggle a tree for long enough and it'll fall over, leaving a stump and a fallen trunk behind. Both of these can be broken down into sticks, which the resident beavers can collect to create dams across the narrower stretches of water. This can change the landscape dramatically in some levels, leaving less room for land-dwelling plants and trees, and cutting off the water flow to downstream areas. Hollow logs and stumps can also provide shelter for homeless animals if they're broken down to a certain level.
SimAnimals was fairly easy to get into. The game can be gotten through reasonably quickly (particularly if you move on to the next forest area once it's unlocked), but it can also provide a decent amount of gameplay should you choose to stay in each area once completed, due to the game's open-ended design. If you don't linger once completing objectives or unlocking the next area you could get through it in a few days, but stay to complete areas fully and improve upon them and you'll be there for a while. The graphics aren't the best for what the Wii can do – the textures on the animals themselves are blurry and don't stand out too well, and the shadows look pixelated even on the most zoomed-out camera view. The sound is one of the better aspects of the game, with authentic-sounding animal noises (although there are some strange ones, and others can get irritating at times), however there's a lack of background music throughout – music only seems to play on the map and loading screens (featuring some light-hearted tunes that sound like they're from a childrens' cartoon), or when a significant event happens (such as an animal fighting, dying, or moving into the area).
The environments show a good variety of design; there's areas with lakes, deserts, and giant stones, all with the appropriate flora and fauna that would normally be found in these places, with most areas being fairly large and able to accommodate numerous animals – which also makes them harder to maintain and keep an eye on the animals within. There were also some control issues, such as the Hand not focusing on the right objects – attempting to interact with animals, harvest seeds or plant new ones could be easily interrupted by other animals moving close to the Hand, or even a different plant situated nearby. This, coupled with the clunky and restrictive camera controls, made the game significantly less enjoyable. Although it makes the game simpler to control, I also thought there could be more variety using the motion recognition – moving the Wii-mote in a different way depending on what was being interacted with at the time instead of the same action for plants, trees and animals – which could possibly have overcome the interference issue.
SimAnimals started off as reasonably interesting, but after a while became somewhat repetitive, although (or perhaps because) there's a large amount of animals and plants to keep an eye on – there's around 30 species of animals and an unknown quantity of different plants. After unlocking the animals and completing the objectives in each area, there's not a lot to continue with – unless you're into being a virtual forest ranger (or you want to raise the Happy Bar as high as possible in each area) – but Sims fans and younger audiences will more than likely lap this one up. It's best tried as a rental first, though.
Review by TheChimp
FIFA 10
