SimAnimals Africa

You’ll love

• Massively cute style
• Tons of fauna facts
• New multiplayer options

You’ll hate

• Not a whole lot else new
• Not very exciting
• Probably won’t hypnotize kids for long

Details over at GamesRadar

The repetitive nature of the game play is a problem. Although there are 8 animals (the DS version apparently has 13), all the animals are effectively the same. Furthermore each of them acts like a dog. You make friends with animals by petting them (Lets ponder for a second the educational value of teaching Texan youths to “pet” digital crocodiles). All the animals have the same personalities and demeanor and react the same way to petting – for example did you know that Hippos twitch their hind legs when you scratch their sides? Educational.

review here

Unfortunately, the Wii edition looks nothing like you’d expect from the machine. In all honesty, I’d liken the graphics to Nintendo 64 fare at best. Some animals have been rendered fantastically, and others should never have seen the light of day. Landscapes are bright and detailed, but this game could have looked much better. Hopefully that polish was put toward making the game better overall, and I believe it was. However, on the flip side, the soundtrack is absolutely well-done. Every animal sounds very much true-to-life, and you can even download the soundtrack on EA’s website should you become enamored with it during gameplay.

Picked up 6 new Wii games last night with SimAnimals Africa being one of them.  Now I have…about 10 Wii games to play and 5-6 I have to review!  Looking forward to playing SimAnimals Africa when I get the chance.

SpawnKill – SimAnimals Africa review

A brief snippet from BlogCritics review about SimAnimals Africa for the Nintendo Wii:

The game has a strong concept, and with the neat African theme it really should have been better. However, the problem is that it all gets boring very fast.  Even though it is not exceptionally long, one will be tired of the game before reaching the end.  I finished it in only a few hours, and after the millionth time petting the zebras until they liked me, it was, simply put, boring. Everything is repetitious, especially the mini-games because there are really only two of them: a ring toss and a drum jumping game. Both are entertaining the first few times, but not after that.  Perhaps if each animal had their own special mini-game it could have been spaced out better. There are only eight species too which is a real problem, especially considering the rich world of Africa they had to explore. In SimAnimals there were almost too many animals, but at least that never got very boring.

review here

The game (as with the original SimAnimals) has one even bigger glaring issue:  it’s a dull game.  SimAnimals Africa is broken down into two play modes.  The first of which is a sort-of “hand of god” mode where you the player can navigate through the quasi-sandbox that makes up each play area and select animals, place rainwater, and shake the heck out of a few trees (oh how fun).  The other mode allows you to take control of an animal once it’s become one of your best friends (how cruel).  When in control of an animal you can play one animal-specific minigame, wander around the land to befriend and/or mate or hunt and kill other animals in the area.  While those last two might sound fairly entertaining (especially the last one), they are deceivingly so.

review here