Note: This is part III of my write-up of EA Sims Bloggers Day. You can read Part I, Part II and Part III here.

MySims. You play as a wide-eyed chibi, thrust into a run down town and given a goal: attract citizens. You do this by building furniture, houses, and unlocking super-computers and pin-ball machines. Once you’ve got what people want, you’ve convined them to return home.

When we saw this game demoed, it was hard not to notice the gap between this and MySims Kingdom. In MySims Kingdom, the producers talked about how they’d elimiated the annoying loading screens. Moving from that into MySims PC, you see the loading screens first hand. Everytime you switch between building mode and town mode, in fact. Where the PC port does come into its own though, is the online arena.

Each player gets given a little social zone to invite their friends to. You can build there, so you can each get your own ‘hangout’, there are the usual chat-programs and minigames - tag being the version we saw - and the whole thing is like a slicker, cuter, smaller, faster-loading Second Life.
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Note: This is part III of my write-up of EA Sims Bloggers Day. You can read Part I and Part II here.

We all love animals, right? Sure we do. Witness the success of all the various animal games out there. Neopets. Catz and Dogz. Nintendogs. Tamagotchis. Pokemon. If it’s cute and furry, then we want it. End of story.

So, the Sim franchise is the best selling franchise that EA have. It’s not that surprising. In the Sim world, you’re God. You can build - and you can destroy. That’s something that appears in every Sim game, from Sim City (unleash Godzilla, anyone?) to The Sims (I know you set one of your Sims on fire. Don’t lie to me.)

So what happens when you mix the Sims and animals together? You get SimAnimals, an upcoming EA game for the wii and DS that enables you to explore “the backyard and beyond”. Basically, you get given a plot of land and you’re supposed to get animals to move in and make friends with you. You manage to befriend the wildlife by treating them nicely - giving them food, shelter, water and all the rest of it, until they trust you. You can then use this trust to make them become friends with each other, leading to the unlikely scenerio of wolf cubs buddying up with squirrels. Eventually you get given more plots of land, each yours to look after.
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Note: This is part II of my write-up of EA Sims Bloggers Day. You can read Part I here.

If you’ve played the original MySims, you will know the characters already. Family-friendly, cute voiced, and stylised - the MySims took the super popular Sims franchise and gave it a Nintendo spin.

MySims Kingdom takes the core gameplay from MySims - that of building things - and uses it within an RPG-styled storyline. Unlike the original game, you follow a series of quests, meeting up with many recognisable faces and unlocking various new lands as you go. These lands are themed - one is a wild west frontier, another is a mystical fantasy land. Tim LeTourneau, the Executive Producer, compared the design to that of Disneyland.
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Now that we’ve touched upon the scenery and epic scale of the new World of Warcraft expansion, it seems like a good point to go into more detail about the content you’ll probably be spending a future paycheck on. As the beta test continues, more and more videos are posted to youtube while the unwitting watchers cry about the lack of balance between the classes. Specifically death knights. Before I go on, let me remind everyone that the expansion is still in the beta testing phase. Nothing is particularly set in stone in terms of talents/spells/etc. The developers have been very good about watching the forums and taking in new suggestions as well as listening to concerns that the players have.

Beta warning aside, I’m not going to get into most of the class mechanics, mainly because I’ve only played three of them in depth. Because of that, I feel I’m unqualified to theorycraft or whine on the unfairness or imbalance in the game. Besides, like I just said, they’re not finished yet.

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The internet is all a-twitter with excitement over Blizzard’s recent release of the Wrath of the Lich King beta. People are bouncing between extreme anticipation and extreme disgust. Some are whining about beta keys and others can’t wait to get their hair cut. Seemingly forgetting the fact that in a couple of months (this is me making a wild estimation) the expansion pack will be readily available for everyone. But I digress.

With a shaky hand I double clicked on my beta shortcut (after the long download, of course) and the sight of the new title screen coupled with the befittingly chilling new music only served to further my tingly anticipation. I would not have said this about The Burning Crusade but this time Blizzard has done it. They have managed to re-capture all the excitement and epic qualities of World of Warcraft into an expansion that will blow both old and new players away.

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It’s that time again, dear readers! Meeeeerrry Christmas!

What’s that? It’s summer, you say? Haven’t you ever heard of the time-honored tradition of celebrating Christmas in July? It’s the perfect time for stores to gear up to sell you your Christmas necessities and for everyone to celebrate the holiday season while lounging in the sun sipping on some delicious iced tea.

It’s also the perfect time to take a look at some great releases we’re going to see around the real holiday season this year. Let’s take a look into Santa’s big red bag.

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