BGB at EA: Sim Animals (Wii)

1pm. Lunchtime. Sitting with a rather nice sandwich on a possibly over the top Dell XPS. I mean, seriously, surely this defeats the point of a laptop? I’m not saying everything should be an Eee PC, but… ah, right, yes, EA. We’re probably almost half way through the day, and so far I’ve seen Sim Animals, SimCity Creator and a tour around the massive EA campus. So, let’s kick things off with the first game: Animals.

Coming out January on Wii and DS, this is a game primarily aimed at the tween market (whatever that means, possibly aimed at the characters in The Tweenies..?) – where as the large, mysterious flying hand you are in control of various areas out in the wild, trying to attract animals and keep them around. It’s really based on a simple trust mechanic: feed the animals, play with them, build up trust and they’ll stick around, like you, and play with eachother – really taking the personal relations idea of The Sims in a different direction, and one that is quite charming.

On Wii, the game is very simple to control: it’s all done by pointing and waggling. Not loads of confusing gestures, just… shake, really. You shake to rub the bear’s tummy. You point and click to pick him up. And then you throw him across the level in to the water.
One of the more interesting elements is the potential balancing act in the game, with the different needs of the animals, which ones you’ll actually want to stick around, and things like if the beaver builds his dam, it’s going to stop the water flow to later areas, is the type of land right for the tree that’ll have the food the bird wants and oh, what’s that? The bear has taken an interest in the bird? This is the middle of a demo, damn it bear, let the nice man show us the rest of the game, we’ll just pick up the bird and throw it over ther-
…ah, the bird just got eaten. I think we fed it to the bear.

It’s things like that which will help to keep the interest of the younger audience, making them not get bored by the learning elements of it (there’s bits about water pollution, different plants on different land types…), but still be involved in the game, keeping up with the simplified animal needs. It’s a bit more hands-off than The Sims is tradionally, and that stems from the subject matter really. These animals aren’t domesticated, they’re wild, and they don’t need you to click on this or look at this meter to keep track of their basic needs, if they’re hungry, they will take care of that… providing you’ve got the right food available from a tree.

I would have to say the main word to describe this game is relationships. You’ll have to build relationships with the animals (of trust), but they also will have to between each other – and if we had introduced the bird to the bear when they were both little, the trust built when younger would override the real world natural predator instincts. So we know what side the game takes in the Nature vs Nurture debate.
The game is playable by up to 4 people simulaniously on one console, meaning that each person gets their own crazy magic hand to play about with… but each one might get different reactions from the animals, as the game will track each player seperately: if player one throws the hedgehog across the map, if the trust is there, your spiky friend could find that fun, and a game – but if player two has previously been a wanker towards the animal, it could end up attacking that person’s hand out of hate.

This multiplayer mode is strictly offline only: infact, the whole game is too. We were told that this was so they could make a ’smaller, better game’ and not just throw online in for the hell of it: but this is the sort of game that would be perfect with WiiSpeak, the type of social multiplayer reminds me of Animal Crossing.

Frankly, if marketing do their job correctly, this could be an absolutely massive hit: it’s a game that is very family friendly – perfect for a parent to play with a child, for them to play on its own, with a good balance between thinking, learning and just messing around. Besides, what would a Sims game be without a bit of chaos? If I want the squirrel to fight the bear, it ruddy well will.

But it’s kind of pointless. The squirrel has no chance.

Unless it’s on the DS version. But we’ll explain how it could win next time…