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MySims Racing Review for Nintendo Wii

MySims Racing Review for Nintendo Wii

The original Mario Kart for the SNES was an amazing and influential title. As new consoles emerged to replace their predecessors, Nintendo managed to continue to improve upon their entertaining formula of karts and combat in the numerous subsequent Mario Kart titles. Seeing the success of this franchise, many companies have tried to duplicate its signature gameplay and style with varying degrees of success over the years. Alas, Mario Kart remains the king of kart combat racing games despite another valiant attempt to dethrone it, this time coming from EA in the form of MySims Racing.

MySims Racing screenshot

With a game like Mario Kart Wii already available for the system, MySims Racing seemed doomed to failure from the get-go. Thankfully, despite the stiff competition, MySims Racing actually manages to teach the old genre some new tricks by adding some long sought after features. One of the first things you’ll notice when you start the game is that there is a story mode. Granted the story isn’t incredibly deep or interesting, but it is a nice addition that attempts to create an in-game world rather than just letting you participate in various races with the driver of your choice.

The storyline involves a bet between two racing rivals from many years ago that remains unresolved. With one of the betting men now missing, it is up to the player to save their city and racetrack from becoming a landfill. But, instead of just choosing to race in a single event or even a cup, players can actually tool around a few different towns from an over head map view while finding friends to help, foes to battle, and eventually events to race in order to progress to other cities.

The characters are all done in the MySims style and range anywhere from a pizza chef to a goth boy. There are a ton of eclectic and somewhat humorous characters to bump into, but, unfortunately, their cute style and dialogue do little to make up for the repetitive and tedious challenges you’ll need to complete for them. With only a few variations such as collecting a specific number of objects scattered around a race track, speeding through an obstacle course, or just plain beating someone in a race, the story mode becomes stale very quickly. Making matters worse, each person you bump into on the map will want you to do between two to four of these recycled challenges each. If you wish to actually complete this mode, expect to spend around six to eight hours doing the same six to eight events, with only minor differences like different tracks, differing items, and cart customization to keep things interesting.

MySims Racing screenshot

Cart customization is something that fans of the genre have wanted for awhile now and MySims does a fine job with it. When you start the game, you’ll have the chance to aesthetically customize your three carts (small, medium, and large) by changing things like their wheels, bumpers, lights, mirrors, and spoilers. There are quite a few options right from the start, and players will earn more throughout the course of the story mode by successfully completing challenges or by finding random blueprints hidden on each track. There are a plethora of parts to be found and unlocked, with some focusing on the look of your vehicles while others on attributes such as top speed, acceleration, weight, and handling. Luckily, once you’ve got your cart just the way you like it, you can also save it directly to your Wii-mote and take it to play at your friends’ houses, which is a great feature if your friends are also playing the game.

While this customization is a nice addition and may keep you coming back despite the challenges’ repetitive nature, it certainly won’t distract you from MySims Racing’s biggest failing: its gameplay. Once you get on the track, as you might assume, the game plays very much like a Mario Kart game, but far worse. The core mechanics are all there, stay on the track, hop over obstacles, run over speed strips, chuck family-friendly weapons at opponents, and reach the finish line first. Unfortunately, none of these things ever feel as entertaining as they should.

MySims Racing screenshot

The general speed of the game seems to be stuck on molasses. About the only time you’ll feel as though you are moving faster than a snail is when you unleash a burst of nitro or run over a speed strip. In stark contrast to the majority of the race, which is generally spent creeping slowly towards the end, nitro very briefly rockets you forward at an almost uncontrollable velocity. Of course, actually accumulating nitro can often be difficult as well, since it is earned by collecting crystals scattered about the tracks and by power sliding. The main flaw with this is that unless you’re in first place, most of the crystals will already have been collected by other racers, and at the speed at which you sputter without nitro, power slides are rather difficult to pull off and sad to watch.

MySims Racing screenshot

Most of the weapons in the game can be directly paralleled to Mario Kart staples as well, while the originals don’t add much to the game. Instead of squid ink from a blooper obscuring your vision, it’s hearts that need to be waved out of the way. Three soccer balls that roll in a straight line once fired feel an awful lot like green shells. Heat-seeking watermelon, hmm what does that remind you of? In fact, the only power-up that felt completely original was by far my least favorite in the game. The one I’m speaking of turns your screen completely upside down in the middle of race for a period of time. Not only is this incredibly confusing when you don’t know it’s coming, it is also about the most nauseating experience imaginable.

Sadly, even with the nice additions of a story mode and a fairly robust cart customization aspect, the gameplay itself is the biggest deterrent of MySims Racing. It’s not that the game can’t be fun at times, but it definitely gets tedious quickly, and with the excellent Mario Kart Wii already available on the same system, it gets hard to recommend picking this one up. It becomes even more difficult if you’re planning to play it with friends online, as MySims Racing doesn’t support this option and only allows for up to four-player split-screen action. But, if you’ve already played your fill of Mario Kart Wii and are looking for something new in the line of a cart combat racing game, MySims Racing will certainly keep you busy for awhile.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.5 Graphics
The tracks are bright and inviting for the most part, and the MySims characters add to the visual appeal. 3.0 Control
While the steering is generally fine, power-sliding is clunky, and the motion needed to wipe off your heart-covered screen is about the same as needed to perform a jump. Get ready to unintentionally jump off of tracks. 3.2 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The music can get annoying, and if you’re not a fan of MySimlish, you may just want to mute or invest in some ibuprofen. 2.6

Play Value
There are definitely many hours of gameplay to be had here, but it’s all fairly slow-paced and the challenges seriously lack variety.

3.0 Overall Rating – Fair
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Race to the finish: Face a variety of tricky MySims opponents on a huge variety of exotic tracks.
  • Four-player racing: Up to four racers can compete for prizes and bragging rights.
  • Strategize to win: Use drifting, boost control and driving strategy to get an edge on your opponents.
  • Build your winning car: Improve power, acceleration, and handling by mixing and matching engines, suspension, and steering components.
  • Awesome Power-ups: Get ahead of the curve with awesome power-ups like the heat-seeking watermelon or a bubble dropper.

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