SimCity Creator (Wii, Nintendo DS)

The ever-expanding Sims universe bulges a little more with SIM CITY CREATOR, which lets players build and manage their own municipalities. A series of 15 tutorials lays down the rules for such activities as city zoning and utilities allocation. Then players are left to explore the game's broad array of functionality on their own. You can design and construct cities however you see fit, working within a modest budget to build infrastructure and municipal buildings that will attract residents, who will in turn start businesses and grow the city's economy. But watch out for potential disasters; an earthquake or fire could demolish massive portions of the cityscape and leave you struggling to keep citizens satisfied.

Despite its all-ages rating and the kid-friendly Wii platform, Sim City Creator, like many city building games, can feel dauntingly complex. While the basics are pretty straightforward -- make sure all of your buildings have power, that there are measures in place to deal with garbage and pollution, and that roads exist to make citizens' commutes as simple and short as possible -- learning how to manage the costs of these projects by altering tax percentages, taking out multiple loans, and buying and selling power and waste, is a formidable challenge. Staying in the black without prompting a citizen revolt in the form of a union strike or population exodus can be extremely difficult.

Complicating matters, the game's controls are finicky at best. Attempting to create a new zone by using the Wii remote as a pen to paint the land a certain color is a clumsy process and can take minutes to complete. And if you aren't careful to keep the remote pointed at the center of the screen during play you may suddenly find the map scrolling off to one side or another. What's more, the Wii's relatively modest graphics processing power and standard definition output make for some muddy looking cities. Indeed, Sim City Creator would have benefited greatly from the precise control of a mouse and cleaner graphics, making one wonder whether perhaps it should have been developed as a PC title.

A small group of city-building fans will likely have fun tinkering with Sim City Creator's surprisingly deep features, but casual gamers would be better off looking elsewhere for their interactive entertainment.

Available on: Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS
Not available online
Genre: Simulation
Released on: September 22, 2008
Price: 30-50
ESRB Rating: E for Alcohol Reference, Mild Violence, Tobacco Reference