While playing around with all kinds of new things at EA last Friday, I was greatly impressed with MySims Kingdom. The same cannot be said for SimAnimals, a new exploration for the Sims team. You assume a god-like role and control a small parcel of land with the goal of having various animals move in and call your local home. If it sounds boring, you’re mostly right.

Unfortunately, SimAnimals did not sit with me the same way any Sims title has previously. Making animals and plants happy isn’t my idea of a good time, and the demo seen at EA confirmed my initial thoughts. Even though the game has a good deal of variety with the various animals and topographies, very little excitement is to be had other than seeing squirrels get eaten by bears and wolves.

You use your god-hand (I’d like to refer to it as a pimp-hand and keep it way strong) to grab and move the world around. At the beginning of the game, you won’t have any animal inhabitants since the lot is new and no one trusts the strength of your pimp-hand. You can lure in some creature, such as giving beavers some food, and also use your pimp-hand to pet and pick up animals and even toss them across or out the lot if you so choose. Throwing squirrels is a good time, write that down. Once you get a couple animals in the world, you have to keep them happy or they’ll leave your little land. Some will leave to die, some will just move elsewhere.

In the demo provided by the game’s Creative Director, Charles London, we got to see some of the action. When the EA team got the beaver to move in, his first order of business was to knock down a tree and build a dam. Problem is, the knocked down tree needed to provide sticks, which would normally happen over the course of time through decay. To speed up the process, the game’s producer, Byrt Martinez, took the Wii Remote and rubbed the log vigorously to cause a couple sticks to come off. I was struggling not to burst out in laughter watching Byrt rub this log with a straight face. Not sure if I was only one in the room who found that disturbing; maybe I’m just demented.

You don’t get all of the over 30 animals in the game at once. You have to build up trust and your Lot for animals to come join your foray into environmentalism. Some animals prefer different ecological zones, so they’ll only show up in certain Lots (further Lots are unlocked by filling the game’s Happy Bar, which indicated how well your environment is progressing). Just like in real life, over-population can be problem, so once you reach a certain capacity, animals may start to leave. With so many animals in one spot, you’re bound to get some fighting. You can train animals to like each other, but what’s the fun in that? Let’s watch a bear maul a defenseless bunny, shall we? Unfortunately, you don’t get to see National Geographic type of attacks, just some G-rated swatting.

The DS version had a couple features not present in its Wii big brother, notably extra unlockable features such as wind and lightning strikes. There is also an integration with the DS system calendar where you get certain vegetation growing depending on the season and wolves howling on full moon days. A nice touch, but nothing that makes you yell “Oh snap!”

While the Sims series has always provided me a great deal of fun on various platforms, I can’t say I’m too excited for SimAnimals. Teaching a beaver new tricks and rubbing logs just doesn’t seem like my idea of a good time. I found the DS version to be more enjoyable than the Wii, as the console version seemed too minimalistic to justify itself on the platform. There was plenty there for a handheld title, but for the Wii it just didn’t seem right and was borderline boring. I’m pretty sure I’ll pass on SimAnimals.

Stay tuned for a full review of the final game seen at the EA Sims Media Day, SimCity Creator for the Wii. Since the game has already been released and I’ve had ample time to play with the game at home, we’re skipping the preview stage and going right for the real deal!