So my wife and I rented MySims. She is enjoying it much more than I am.
Here's my review:
First, I have to describe the game. Sims Builder or LegoSims would be a better title for this game as it does not resemble a traditional Sims game at all. There are no bathroom, cleanliness, hunger, happiness, etc meters. The game is somewhat linear as you are a builder who has the power to build with "essences." Essences come in the form of little icons and encompass all sorts of things, such as happiness, rainbow trout, dark wood, cake, video games, action figures, crayons, eyeballs and a few hundred other odd things. You can use them as building blocks or as a pain on your building blocks. The key to essences is that they are the only way to make a block not be plain wood.
So, as the builder you are responsible for creating all the buildings for businesses and homes. You are also the person who builds the tools, such as stoves, beds, TVs, etc, used in the homes and businesses. The other Sims always want essences incorporated somehow. This creates a kind of puzzle because you have to incorporate them into the object without making it unusable.
Anyway, you have to go find business. New citizens will stay at the hotel until you find them and ask them to move in. Then you have to find them and see if they want anything.
The main goal is to rebuild a rundown town into a five star town again. Once you achieve that goal I have no idea what happens, but I figure a couple of more plays and I will have it. As the open housing spaces are limited and there is only so much you can improve a town I have a feeling you eventually hit a point where you just walk around acting like normal Sims game, even though you get nothing out of it.
It is very cutesy, as you can tell from the pictures on the Web, so it appears for children. However, it requires some creative and imaginative thought which is the only thing keeping me playing at this point. Creativity and imagination is not bad for a kid, but when my wife is getting confused I wonder what will happen to little kids who see very cute cartoon like characters and want to play.
Then there are the load times........the game will load for everything......and it will pause just to change the lighting to night.......and it loads to enter your workshop......or to enter a different part of town.......or to enter anyone's home.....or to even open the pause menu. The load times and pausing is absolutely horrible. It is like playing Sims 2 on an underpowered PC.
Anyway, it is fun if you like resource management and Legos, but I quickly become bored with it and even my wife, who thought it was the coolest Wii game ever at first, is thinking it should remain a rental.