If EA’s popular game The Sims and Nintendo’s long time favorite game Mario Kart had a child, then MySims Racing is what their progeny would look like. Recently we got a copy of MySims Racing, and for the past few days we’ve been putting the proverbial pedal to the metal and burning rubber in this new Mario Kart style racing game. It’s fun, addicting, and quirky.
The game unfolds in a story style. You are the former racing town Speedville’s last hope to save it from becoming a giant landfill. The last famous racer disappeared in a freak hot air balloon accident. You help bring racing back to Speedville by traveling around and helping out your friends with their requests and racing for them in various tournaments. As you help them they give you blueprints for more advanced parts that you can have built and installed on your car to make it faster. It’s not much of a plot, but it sure is fun and who plays racing games for their plot anyway?
This seems especially designed to be female friendly since you constantly get to decorate your car and change things on it, or even your character. There are even a few girly tracks, like the one where you visit a salon to get your helmet head taken care of. Or one of the things you can send to your fellow racers is a pink bunny called Bunny Love. It covers their screens completely with pink bunnies so they can’t see anything, and you can rush past them.
Fans of kart style races won’t be able to help but see the similarities to Mario Kart for Wii. Instead of red shells, you have a heat seeking water melon accelerator. Instead of turning into a bullet to get back in the game, you get picked up by a UFO. Instead of banana peels, you have slippery pumpkins. You can drift, jump, and superboost as well. There are secret pathways with goodies on each track too.
If you are a Mario Kart racing fan, and you can do all the tracks forwards and backwards in your sleep, then you probably will want to check this game out. It offers all the racing fun of Mario Kart, while letting you customize your own character and car. Overall’s it’s a lot of fun. However, it seemed that the controls lacked the precise control and real feel of driving that Mario Kart offers. The game also lacks the ability for online play, which would have added a ton of re-playability. However, you can play with up to four players. Also, a Nintendo DS specific feature allows you to race up to four players using a wifi connection.
Don’t get us wrong, this game is fun and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Kids ages 8-12 (the target audience of the whole MySims genre) will absolutely love it. But if you are a Kart racing purist (if such a thing exists…) then you will probably want to play Mario Kart before you go and buy MySims Racing. However, if you are just starting out in racing, this is a great first time racers game. There are so many training and easy courses that its easy to feel like you are doing really good. At the same time, you can opt for the more challenging ones and win more upgrades and goodies. This retails for about $40. That is without the racing wheel, although it was very easy to play without it.
The good: Characters and cars are fun to design, graphics are great, plenty of fun power-ups.
The bad: No online play. It could use to be a little more challenging.
