We've finally gotten a good look at EA's mysterious MySims, the blockbuster series' offbeat Wii rendition. Our first glimpses of the game suggested something along the lines of Animal Crossing, with surprisingly cute characters and a bright, colorful world -- and now that we've played a little of an extremely early build of the game, it seems those first impressions were partly correct.

But only partly. There's much more to MySims than a simple Animal Crossing rip-off. On the contrary, it seems to embrace the entirety of the "life simulator" genre, with nods to Harvest Moon (players are tasked with bringing new vigor to a run-down town) and even its own heritage -- running errands to build relationships with NPCs (a la The Urbz) and rebuilding the town (kind of like that one game, SimCity). By all appearances, it's a new perspective on a long-running series that promises at once to be refreshing and faithful.