Go Fanboy - Everyone Has A Favorite

You can’t blame EA for trying to cash in on one of the most popular franchises in gaming history. Since storming onto the PC and giving gamers the chance to live alternate “simulated” lives, The Sims have been a mainstay on retail shelves. That’s why Electronic Arts decided a couple of years ago to try and market The Sims to a younger audience with the MySims spin-off. The result has been a franchise all its own that provides a completely different style of play more along the lines of traditional goal-oriented games. SkyHeroes has the same feel, but unfortunately the title has a bit of difficulty finding its own identity.

There are basically two types of play in the game. You can either dogfight in the sky or race. Now you would think that since this game is marketed to the younger crowd, there would be some form of excitement in the races. By that, of course we mean power ups like you would find in a kart racer along the lines of Sonic All-Stars or Mario Kart. Sadly the racing is pretty much straight-forward and boring with power-ups that do little to power-up the fun. Dogfighting is okay, but nothing that will keep you coming back. So basically the gameplay boils down to a watered down version of two game types you can get in other titles. You can get much better dogfighting and a lot better racing in budget titles.

The controls are fine and do a great job of making the game accessible to children. Adults will quickly get bored by the simplicity. Get shot down or leave the course and you’re almost immediately back on track or respawn. That might be great for a nine year-old, but anyone over twelve will find the lack of any real challenge an insult. There’s nothing wrong with games for kids, but the story in MySims SkyHeroes often forgets who it’s being marketed towards. The confused storylines mixed with simplistic gameplay result in a mash-up of blah.

The graphics in MySims SkyHeroes are below-average at best. If you’ve seen any of the previous entries in the series, you know what to expect – and that ain’t much. If you’re unfamiliar with the spun-off series, picture the LEGO series of games and then downgrade any textures and remove the pretty plastic gloss of the characters and you might have an idea. SkyHeroes isn’t completely disconnected from the Sims though. You can add a bit of your own personality to the characters and their planes through customizing the appearance of each, however all modifications appear to be purely cosmetic and offer nothing to the performance of your ride.

Overall MySims SkyHeroes is another nice effort at providing kids with something to play, but results in being merely worth a flyby. EA wants to provide a coach flight for the price of a first-class ticket. With so many other games out there offering a better version of what SkyHeroes is trying to provide, there’s no sense in picking this one up. If you even bother renting, keep your parachute on, because you’ll be hitting eject quickly. SkyHeroes is available now at retail, but don’t bother.