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MySims Hands-On

We finally get our hands on EA's game of creativity and craft.

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At EA's recent summer showcase, we got to check out a new playable version of MySims for the Wii. We got to run around town, build stuff, meet people, and build those people homes.

For our first act, we played around with our house, removing windows here, adding doors there, and marveling at the simplicity of it all. With the Wii Remote, you can simply grab any element of a house and remove it. Underneath, you'll see blue pegs upon which you can hang new items, which are featured at the bottom of the screen. For instance, we removed our house's spooky door and replaced it with a happy-looking fun door almost as easily as if we'd physically plucked the one door off to plop down the other.

For our next act, we built an arcade cabinet. This took us to a screen that showed the translucent apparition of a girl playing at a machine, just to give us an idea of the space and proportions with which we'd be working. From there, we stacked various blocks into a roughly arcade-looking shape, adorning it with some fish and a dog. Then we painted it like bacon. Why? Because we could.

With our newly constructed cabinet, we headed to the local arcade to see the proprietor. Opening our handy map, we located the place and plopped a beacon onto it, which showed us the way in the normal view. Once there, we walked in, told the proprietor a joke, which he didn't find very funny, and then gave him the new arcade cabinet as a gift. Overjoyed, he bestowed us with lots of angry essence. We know that sounds like a bad thing, but in the MySims world, anger is like a currency for fun people. So if you want a chair fit for a fun person, it must burst with fury. We don't know what that means, but it sounds funny, and that may very well be the point.

With our newly acquired essence of anger, we proceeded to place our arcade cabinet. We simply rotated it with the D pad and set it against a wall with the Wii Remote. Then we noticed that the arcade's inside wasn't painted in an interesting way, so using some geeky essence we'd acquired from previous deeds, we made geeky paint and redid the arcade interior with a few easy strokes. The proprietor, seeing our Space Invaders-inspired work, leapt for joy.

After that, we went outside and shook some trees by literally shaking the Wii Remote then gathered some essence that fell. The presenter told us it was possible to get eyeballs, plant them in the ground, and then grow eyeball trees, from which eyes could be harvested as currency for spooky people. But we didn't have time to hunt for a person with spare eyes, so instead we searched for minerals and rocks with a metal detector, in a simple game of "Hot or Cold."

Satisfied with our haul of rocks and dug up magic eight balls, we went to the hotel to see if anyone was interested in moving into our town. The goth kid was interested, but he said he needed a place to live. Because there were no open lots in town and we didn't want to evict anyone (though we could have), we built the goth a house in the desert. The house was complete with creepy windows, a gargoyle, and a pink rosebush for him to secretly nurture in the backyard.

And that's a taste of what's in store for you in MySims for the Wii and DS when it launches this September 18. It may sound random and silly, but there's method to this madness. By socializing with your town's denizens and producing various crafts, you'll eventually build an awesome town where any of the game's wacky denizens would want to live. We'll let you know more when this game launches later this month.

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