Just as I feared…first impressions are in for the MySims SkyHeroes demo that was released this past week on the Xbox 360 and the results do not bold well for the game.  Skyline, one of our friends and readers of the site, passed along his impressions of the demo and the conclusion is pretty much a thumbs down.  Of course – this is just one readers opinion – we’ll have to wait to see the overall views of the game when it releases next week.  I just hope it comes out somewhat with good reviews so the MySims team can carry on making games.  Although I do recommend they should stick with the MySims Agents formula.  I LOVED that game.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4123/4862510919_cfa27a47aa_m.jpgWhen EA announced that the latest in it’s successful “MySims” series i was a bit concerned, but at the same time rather hopeful. I bought the original MySims when it came out in 2007 for my Wii, and thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game, for what is was worth. The game performed well, looked good for the time, and had some really interesting ideas behind it. Now i own all three of the major consoles (Sony’s Playsation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and Nintendo’s Wii) and I tend to play different types of games on each platform. After playing MySims Sky Heroes on my Xbox 360 this afternoon, I think the series belongs on the Wii.

The demo for MySims Sky Heroes starts out fairly promising, in that it only takes up about 300mbs of space, which as demos go is tiny. For what it’s worth you actually get quite a bit of content for the small download. Race and Dogfight modes are included as well as four stock planes, and 3 stock MySims characters. You can also create your own plane and MySim character with the creation tools, which actually seem to have quite a few options. So for a measly 300mb download you get a ton of content.

It’s just a shame that you won’t want to use it. Once you set up your race (Which is quite a lengthy process if you have the desire to change laps, difficulty, etc.) you choose your character, aircraft, and course (Only one course is available in the demo) and you launch into the race. The goal of the racing mode is simple; run through the green checkpoints, while picking up powerups and dodging opponents. It sounds simple enough however all the aircraft handle like absolute garbage. The controls feel unresponsive, and unintuitive, and i highly recommend you go into the options menu and invert the Y axis to actually make the planes pilot-able. I often found myself completely missing checkpoint gates due to the fact that it was almost impossible to steer my aircraft in the right direction. Flicking up the thumbstick will do a flip, it is the only way to easily turn around. Somehow your opponents on the course are not affected by the terrible handling, as they manage to whip through gates rather quickly even on the lowest difficulty. The AI in MySims Sky Heroes seems a bit too rubber-bandy for my taste, meaning that as you do better, so does the AI. They’re always right behind you. The powerups seem rather generic; rockets, lasers, tornadoes, and mines, nothing i haven’t seen before. It should be noted that in most flight combat games, the machine guns are absolutely useless against other planes. This tradition carries through in MySims Sky Heroes as the machine guns are as ineffective as shooting peas at the enemy with a straw.

One particular thing that stood out at me was the abysmal graphical flair the game has. Textures look bland, and low resolution, the menu system looks dated, and meant for a Wii-like interface. Jagged edges can be seen everywhere from the track, to the characters, to the aircraft themselves. I was running the game on my 1080p set, and it looked absolutely terrible compared to other games in my collection. This is clearly just a Wii port that the developers did not bother to put any effort into.

I wouldn’t recommend the demo for MySims Sky Heroes as it is simply a frustrating mess of a game. Poor graphics, both technically and artistically, mixed with a frustratingly slow control system and generic gameplay makes this demo hard to recommend to anyone, even the hardest of hardcore fans for the MySims franchise. If you want to pick up this game when it hits retail this fall i suggest the Wii version simply due to the fact that it wouldn’t look as noticeably bad. If not, wait for The Sims 3 coming to Xbox 360 and PS3 this fall instead.

Posted by Skyline on the Exhibit Sims forum