People are in trouble! They need their farms saved from monsters, their furniture built, their cat-bunnies rescued. And you're their only hope. In each of these new family-friendly videogames for Wii and Nintendo DS, there's a town in trouble and only your good deeds can save them. Won't you help?
If you're wondering if there's a code to get the hot-tubbing Sims naked in this game, you're a bad, bad person. Also, no there isn't. (I checked.)
View Slideshow 
Screenshot: Electronic ArtsMost games in the Sims series place you in the role of a god with a budget. MySims for Wii puts you in the role of a single, specific person with boundary issues. Your main job is to create housing and build furniture for your demanding fellow citizens, who have apparently never heard of Ikea.
"Building furniture" is literal in this case. When one of your friends demands a chair or a couch, you assemble it from blocks using a frustrating, buggy interface. The game presents a 3-D outline to fill in, but you can flip convention the bird and design your own furniture if you so choose. Unfortunately, neither option is very satisfying.
The other aspect of the game is collecting "essences." If you shake an apple tree you can get "red apple essence." If you go fishing you can get "clown fish essence." If you go prospecting you can get "purple crayon essence." Yeah, I don't get that last one either. Essences are incorporated into furniture as a weird pattern, a solid color or actual apples, fish and crayons you can build into the furnishings in place of blocks.
The essence system is almost, but not quite, enough to make this a solid, if flawed, game. There's an enjoyable "catch them all" aspect, but while being able to build a refrigerator out of bacon is admittedly pretty rewarding, it's not worth the hassle.
You also have the option to interact with your neighbors in other ways, hugging them or dancing with them or telling them to get out of town, but in the end it always comes back to the damn furniture.
– Lore Sjöberg
WIRED: Pulling bacon and cake out of the ground is more fun than it sounds.
TIRED: The videogame world was not crying out for a furniture-building simulation.
Price/maker: $50, Electronic Arts
Rating: 
- - -
The map in Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon is more of a suggestion than an actual guide.
View Slideshow
Screenshot: NatsumeIt's the original formula of the cutesy farming-simulator series, but Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon for the Nintendo DS sticks in a bunch of turn-based combat. Apparently the townspeople don't just want lettuce and butter anymore: They need you to kill all the monsters around the city with your farmer ninja skills.
As in most Harvest Moon games, you'll spend most of your time here restoring a farm that's fallen into disrepair. Tend crops! Plant seeds! Raise livestock! You might also go fishing at the beach or chop wood to use for new construction on your property. It's curiously soothing to settle into the routine of your average workaday farmer.
Well, if by "average" we mean "fights monsters in caves after sundown." The combat is simple but still satisfying, as you swing your sword or cast your spell to take out the ugly beasties infesting the local caves. It's not terribly deep, but it breaks up the routine of farming quite well. Once you add a Monster House to your property, you can recruit the monsters to help out on your farm, too, adding a slight je ne sais Pokémon to the proceedings. It's certainly an odd blend, but not an unpleasant one.
For all its improvements, Rune Factory is lacking in character development. The shopkeeper's daughter's vocabulary barely extends past "buy something" – not nearly as charming as previous installments in the series. But there are so many other fun things to do in Rune Factory that you probably won't notice your neighbors are dull.
– Susan Arendt
WIRED: Huge environment; lots of activities; attractive art style.
TIRED: Somewhat unsatisfying character interaction.
Price/maker: $30, Natsume
Rating: 
- - -
You collect coins in Drawn to Life to buy new music and color schemes, which are the main things I spend coins on in real life, too.
View Slideshow
Screenshot: THQDrawn to Life for Nintendo DS is one of those games that takes a gimmick and runs off with it like a pig thief in a nursery rhyme. The gimmick in question: You get to draw your own character.
At the beginning of the game, you're given an outline and a few basic drawing tools, and you're invited to create the videogame protagonist of your dreams, whether that's a cute squirrel, a space soldier, a naked lady or a naked space squirrel. Whatever you draw will be converted to a convincing if somewhat stiff character for you to direct. This is easily the best part of the game.
Technically, your creation is merely a mannequin you control. You, yourself, are the Creator, charged with helping a small town of adorable cat-bunny people return to its former glory. This help takes the form of a fairly standard 2-D platformer: You run, jump and shoot your way through the level, rescuing stranded cat-bunnies and collecting the sheets of a celestial coloring book that you use to improve the town.
Not only do you have to overcome obstacles, you have to create them as well. Every so often you'll come across an outline of something that you need to draw, like a cloud or a growing vine. This is fun approximately five times, and then it just gets tedious. Once the novelty of being able to bounce around on crass anatomical graffiti wears off, it's just work.
A good 2-D platformer feels like an intricate, moving puzzle as well as a test of reflexes. Drawn to Life feels like a mediocre platformer with a cute gimmick.
– Lore Sjöberg
WIRED: Be anyone from Mario to Mario Batali.
TIRED: Actual gameplay is the very definition of "average."
Price/maker: $30, THQ
Rating: 
Screenshots: Drawn to Life, MySims and Rune Factory
Graphics Enhance Gameplay in These Next-Gen Games
Halo 3 Balances Hot New Guns, Old-School Cool
