SimAnimals
SimAnimals, take the wild world of animals into your hands. Embrace all the adventure, fun, and mischief that await you in the vast forest. Feed a bear what he craves. Pick up a rabbit or hedgehog, and bring him to his friends. Discover what other creatures lurk in the wild. You have the power to reach out and touch, pick up and move everything in the forest from squirrels and foxes to trees and flowers. Make your wild animals happy and maintain a forest that lets them flourish as you venture further into the forest than you’ve ever been before. Engage wild animals, experience life in the forest, and let your creativity run wild in SimAnimals.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars A Marginal Attempt At Strategy
Ah, SimAnimals. You lured me in with your cuteness and simplicity, but I left you for your ineptitude and… well, simplicity.
SimAnimals for the Wii bears a remarkable resemblance to Viva Pinata for the Xbox 360, as both are essentially “wildlife simulators”. You interact with the environment to lure certain species of animals to appear or visit, then you accomplish some other variables to encourage the animals to remain in the area, and then there are other variables to cause the animals to interact with each other. If only SimAnimals also had the graphics, control, storyline or actual gameplay of Viva Pinata, then this would be a nice addition to anyone’s Wii library. As things stand, however, this game might have a hard time actually finding a market willing to play it.
The graphics are rather unremarkable, even for a Wii game. I know that the developers could have squeezed some more power out of Nintendo’s underdeveloped box, but they didn’t have to make it so glaringly obvious. The animations for the animals seem very jerky and out of place, especially if you know what they SHOULD look like.
The gameplay controls are awkward and definitely take some time getting used to. There is no ability to strafe – you must go in one direction and one direction only, then stop and turn if you want your camera somewhere else. It’s more frustrating than it sounds, especially knowing that there were enough unused buttons on the Wii remote that could have allowed for one of them to be mapped for a camera strafe. Oh, and a button for actually interacting with the environment, instead of waggling your disembodied hand over EVERYTHING. That got annoying very fast.
I suppose that if you didn’t have an Xbox 360 and you wanted a simplistic game for your child that has a chance of marginally encouraging strategic thinking, SimAnimals would be okay. Just be prepared to console the child after a text pops up on screen telling him that his pet robin, Twiddles, whom he has been nurturing and loving in game since the beginning, was just randomly eaten by Fluffs the cat.
1 Star Seriously, Nintendo, seriously?
This game is just beyond embarrassing; I’m more than certain that the head folks over at the Nintendo Corporation are just laughing all the way to the bank. Not just with this, but with the vast majority of the wholly useless games they’ve been releasing over the course of the Wii’s release.
“Hey, see this game? Not a lot of story or anything of interest, but you can wiggle the wand, now gives us $50.”
For shame, gentlemen, for shame; when is Nintendo actually going to start releasing games worthy of time, praise and, most importantly of all, the money? It might be a while.
3 Stars I love all Sim/Tycoon games, but this one was disappointing.
Let me start by saying I’m a huge fan of the Sims games. I have been a fan of them since they started making Sim City and Sim Theme Park for DOS. And like many of you, I really like The Sims, Sims 2 and pretty much anything Sim related on any platform. But I was disappointed in SimAnimals (for the Wii). I guess I was just expecting a bit more from the game.
When you start the game, your in what feels like a tutorial mode where it explains what to do step by step. Giving squirrels acorns and petting them to make them your friends. Then after making so many animals happy by befriending them and putting food in front of them, it opens up another area of the map for you to explore.
This is the part where you think to yourself, “Ok, now to really play the game and see what’s out there to explore”. Quickly I realised that the second spot on the map is just another area of the woods, where you make some more animals your friends by feeding them and petting them, thus making them happy so you can open another area of the map. Through out the whole game you never quite feel like you leave the tutorial mode.
When going to a new part of the map, you are basically just opening up new (usually larger) animals to befriend and new plants to feed them. I was left wishing for more to do in the game.
If I had known the game was this (for lack of a better word) dull and had so little to do in it, I would not have paid $50 for it. I really wish I had a nicer way to put this, because I LOVE Sim/Tycoon games, even the simplest ones, but this one was just not worth the money. I wish I had waited until some reviews were out and realised it was not worth the $[...]. My kids will play it some (8 year old twins, one boy, one girl), but seem to tire of it quickly and move on to something else.
If you want to get this, I recommend waiting a little while and perhaps the price will drop to make it a better price for what you get.
5 Stars Beautiful graphics and an interesting game
Even though the Wii isn’t noted for it’s graphics this game takes full advantage of what is possible and the graphics are some of the best I’ve seen on any Wii game. The animals and their settings with all the plants and trees reminds you of a Disney movie. The movement is a little jerky at times, but not really bad. Being able to interact with the animals is really cool. I played this with a friend’s kids, but I have to admit there was an attraction to the game even as an adult.
The animals are wary of you to begin with and you have to earn their trust. Then again, if I saw a big white hand coming out of nowhere I’d be frightened too! You earn their trust by offering them food and interacting with them. You can interact with the plants and trees too, by picking them up and moving them or planting them. You have to take care of them so that they grow and keep the animals from eating them when they’re small. You quickly learn to plant the types of things that each animal likes in order to attract them. If you don’t make friends with the animals they’re afraid of you. One thing that was a little disturbing to me (but the kids thought it was cool) was that the animals can eat each other, just like they do in the wild. So you have to plan their environment and puts plants and other animals around that they are compatible with. The kids wanted to smack the animals too (!) but this makes them afraid of you and you can end up with a terrible environment as well as a good one.
There is enough game play here to keep kids busy for a long time and provide entertainment for adults as well. It is much like the other Sims games where you have control over the environment and can make it turn out any way you want to. If you like the other Sims games I think you’d probably like this one.
All in all, it’s a charming family type game and would be a good addition to the Wii library.
1 Star Boring and it doesn’t look like the trailers we saw and loved
My 8 year old got bored with it the first day and I get motion sickness every single time I play it and that never happens to me. I wasted $50. on this game, next time I will rent every game before I buy it.
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