SimAnimals chugs along at a pathetic framerate while the denizens of the forest get stuck in tree trunks and other objects. Sometimes they’ll even levitate several feet above the ground. When an animal approaches food, the nourishment simply vanishes like an 8-bit item on the NES. The choppy, decrepit animations are an abomination of nature. Ironically, the animation toolkit used in SimAnimals is called Granny 3D.

It didn’t take long for the controls to get on my nerves. The remote is used to point and select objects while the nunchuk handles movement and camera rotation. Pointer control is very finicky, often making it difficult to select animals or enter menus. To do some planting or heavy petting you have to waggle your onscreen icon over a seed/animal, but the game won’t always register your actions. Worse, if a seed lands in a bed of flowers or is similarly obstructed you can’t even get at it.

IGN gives the game a medicore score of 5.3