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" Release Date: June 6 (Worldwide) Platforms available on: Nintendo 3DS Developer: Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo Genre: Life simulator How exactly do you describe a game as quirky and unique as Nintendo 3DS title Tomodachi Life?  Perhaps best summed up as The Sims and Animal Crossing&amp;#039;s eccentric uncle, Tomodachi Life is a game that throws a bunch of people together on an island to see what happens. Before the craziness begins, however, players must fill their island with Miis, giving them amusing synthesised voices, personalities, nicknames and more.  It&amp;#039;s a time-consuming process - even when importing ready-made Miis - and we would have liked a random generator. But it&amp;#039;s worth adding as many Miis as possible in order to unlock new island attractions and potential relationships. With a fully populated island, players must solve problems, matchmake and offer advice to island residents, which is when things start to get weird.  The inability to properly walk around and explore the island means that while Miis feel alive and brimming with personality, the island itself doesn&amp;#039;t.  It&amp;#039;s not so much the requirements and objectives that are strange, mind you, but more the way in which they play out. The residents of your island desire food, entertainment, companionship and even love, but they desire things while dreaming about giant hats, participating in rap battles and wearing dinosaur heads.  It&amp;#039;s the game&amp;#039;s odd sense of humour that really sets it apart from other life sims and ensures that there&amp;#039;s never a dull moment, even when things start to repeat. The majority of the early game will be spent visiting Miis in their apartment and solving problems. Some want food, others a new outfit or apartment interior and a few might just want to play.  Mini-games largely involve identifying blurred or zoomed-in objects, matching pairs of cards, or table wrestling with toy models.      Fun at first, the same mini-games tend to crop up time and time again, making playtime a tad repetitive, albeit a good place to earn gifts that can be used to help level up. Levelled up characters can learn songs, unlock free apartment interiors and objects to play with, although our favourite bonus is the option to learn phrases. The deadpan delivery of catchphrases in those strange voices is especially funny when you&amp;#039;ve created celebrity Miis or movie characters. Island news reports involving cornflake aerobics and courgette cottages are equally amusing and well worth a watch whenever you find the time.  Relationships form a big part of the game, so many early encounters also involve introducing Miis to other characters and offering tips on what to talk about. Bonds will start to form, best friends will be seen hanging out at the beach or gossiping in the cafe, while some Miis will start to date and potentially get married. Controversially, same-sex relationships aren&amp;#039;t included, and while it&amp;#039;s hard to stay mad at a game like Tomodachi Life for too long, it&amp;#039;s a shame it isn&amp;#039;t better representative of the wider community.  It&amp;#039;s the game&amp;#039;s odd sense of humour that really sets it apart from other life sims and ensures that there&amp;#039;s never a dull moment, even when things start to repeat.  Unfortunately, once you&amp;#039;ve seen Miis fall in love, played the mini-games and attended special time-based events like the daily word association tournament, Tomodachi Life starts to get a little repetitive. It&amp;#039;s a title that&amp;#039;s always amusing, but one that&amp;#039;s limited as a gaming experience. While you do have a certain amount of control over your island residents from an aesthetic point of view, you&amp;#039;ll spend more time viewing rather than playing.  The inability to properly walk around and explore the island means that while Miis feel alive and brimming with personality, the island itself doesn&amp;#039;t. Even when you tap on an icon to enter an attraction, you&amp;#039;ll often have very little control over what happens, save for a retro role-playing game at the amusement park, or a series of &amp;quot;quirky questions&amp;quot; at the tower. You might see a Mii running on the beach or sitting quietly by the fountain, but you can&amp;#039;t actually interact with them or have a chat. The game does a good job of drip-feeding content - even after a few weeks of play I&amp;#039;m still discovering new things now - and there are plenty of time-based events, but it feels less and less substantial as the weeks go by. A bonkers life-sim with bags of personality and lots of charm, the entertaining Tomodachi Life is let down only by its limitations as a gaming experience.   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/gaming/nintendo-3ds/review/a575290/tomodachi-life-review-3ds-a-bonkers-but-limited-life-simulator/>