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EA Playground harkens back to a less litigious time in our American history — when dodgeball and tetherball were played freely on our nation’s playgrounds. Well, you won’t find those games on a public playground anytime soon, so you may as well pop in the disk to EA Playground and enjoy these games and more — all without risk of lawsuit, lost teeth, bruising or road rash.

The Sticker King will be the first to welcome you to the playground. He will give you the lay of the land and introduce you to the sticker- and marble-based economy. For now, at least, he is your friend and source of Super Stickers. Eventually, of course, that all will change, but for now, enjoy his munificence.

If you’ve ever played My Sims (and you should if you haven’t already), you’ll recognize the quirky character and building styles. Your playground avatar isn’t customizable like your My Sims character, but they sure have a similar look. Even the way the characters babble at each other (they talk, but it’s not really recognizable words) is just like My Sims. I really enjoy the graphic style. Yes, it’s cartoonish, but the characters are so distinctive that they make me smile.

Before you dive into all of the EA Playground goodness, you’re going to need to create a profile. This is pretty easy. You pick your character from a pool of eight kids — four boys and four girls. You can accept the default name offered or give yourself a custom name. I was glad to see that you can have up to three different profiles at one time. Multiple saves are an important feature to me. I can’t imagine trying to referee the game with multiple children without them.

With profile in hand, you are shown an array of play options. You have single-player, multiplayer, quick play, extras and my profile.

The nongame options are extras and my profile, so I’ll mention those briefly first. The extras area is where you’ll find the game credits, as well as a preview of the Boogie game. Boogie is out now, and it is incredibly fun, but if you wanted to have a sneak peak, here’s your chance. The profiles section gives you the stats for each of the existing save games. You are actually assigned a letter grade depending on the level of your stats. You start as a D student and have nowhere to go but up. For those of you that are curious about such things, the potential maximums you can earn are 24 golden stickers, 24 super stickers, 65 total dares, 75 hidden marbles, 27 high-fives, 2 bug hunts, 4 dribbles and 3 free throws. But what does this all mean? We’ll get to that soon enough.

There are three gameplay options. The single-player mode is the adventure game. You start as a lowly new denizen of the playground. You need to learn the games, hone your skills and eventually hope to challenge the Sticker King for supremacy. The multiplayer game lets you set up challenges between you and one to three of your friends. The number of players possible depends on which of the playground games you choose to play. Finally, quick play lets you choose a game and dive right in to the action.

There are seven different main playground games you need to master. You’ll be playing Dodgeball, Kicks, Slot Car Racing, Tetherball, Paper Racers, Wall Ball and Dart Shootout. There also are a few secondary games scattered around the playground — Dribble, Free Throw, Bug Hunt and High–Five. All of the games are played using the Wii-mote, so you won’t have to worry about the younger child (or older, all-thumbs adult) juggling multiple controls at the same time. So far, I have found the use of the Wii-mote to be incredibly intuitive for each game. The motion expected from the player corresponds really well with the motion needed within the game. When you dribble a basketball, you’ll be flicking your wrist and dribbling the ball. Flying your paper airplane, the Wii-mote will be balanced on top of your hand, held carefully by thumb and forefinger — just as if you were about to launch a paper airplane.

Since you won’t find some of these games (for the most part) on the modern playground, allow me to describe them briefly for you.

Dribble is what it sounds like. You are dribbling a basketball. The cool thing is that if you meet the dribble challenge, you get to run around the playground while dribbling the ball. Free throw is just a straightforward shot at a basketball hoop. Bug Hunt shows up in the second playground. You get a net and run around like mad collecting little sparkling butterflies before time runs out. The High-Five lets you share some props with the other playground denizens.

Dodgeball has the kids divided into two teams. Each team is on one side of the field. You start with a small number of balls placed in the center of the field. At the whistle, each team races to the center to hopefully grab a ball (since there aren’t enough balls to go around). Ball in hand, your goal is to throw the ball to hit someone on the other team and knock them out of the game. Last team with any player standing is the winner. Along with the basic running and throwing, you can try to dodge out of the way, block the ball if you’re already holding a ball or even try to catch the ball. You even have a key option to try to fake out the other team with a fake throw. I had a lot of fun with Dodgeball. I probably didn’t win half the time, but I still had fun playing. I like that even if my character is knocked out early, I automatically get to take over one of the computer-controlled characters on my team. As long as the game is still going, there’s no sitting on the sidelines and watching things unfold. I think this was a great design decision by the developers.

Kicks is a game that I had not heard of before. It’s kind of a cross between soccer and volleyball. There’s a net down the middle of the field and a goal at the back of each side of the field. You pass the ball around and try to shoot it over the net and into the opposing goal, all without using your hands. Head — yes; feet &msash; yes; hands — no. Got it?

Slot Car Racing is my daughter’s No. 1 favorite game, and she is really good at it. It’s a wild little track racing game using tiny remote-controlled cars. Of course the real life slot cars probably don’t have crazy power-ups or get to do aerial tricks. I bet you never got to drop tacks in front of the other races or toss a firecracker onto them during your slot car races (and if you did do such things, I really don’t want to know).

Tetherball is basically a ball on a rope attached to a pole. You and your opponent face off against each other from opposite sides of the pole. You have to whack the ball hard enough and often enough to wrap it around the pole. Your opponent is trying to wrap it in the opposite direction. Timing is oh-so-important in this particular playground game. I really whacked at the ball, but if I didn’t time my swing just right, I continued to miss it. Grrrrr.

Paper Racers is racing a paper airplane through an obstacle course. You want to keep it in the air, not crash, grab various bonuses or upgrades along the way, and finally make it through the target at the end of the course before you run out of altitude and ideas all at the same time. The steering really takes some finesse. You can’t do sudden moves and expect your little plane to respond well.

Wall Ball is basically racquetball but without the racquet. You’re bouncing the ball off of a wall, hoping the other player can’t hit the ball back on the rebound. Luckily for you, you’re safe from earning any actual road rash while diving for the ball (unless you get a little too into the game — but you’ll have to work that one out between yourself and your parent or spouse).

Dart Shootout is a game requiring you to be fast on your feet. You need to throw your darts and hit the mean-face signs without accidentally nailing any of the smiley-face signs. Meanwhile, there will be other kids trying their dart skills out on you. You have a shield to hide behind, and of course, you are free to lob a few shots back in their direction. No, I can’t quite picture this on any school playground, but it sounds a lot like what big kids do in other places — only they call it paintball. Sure, paintball has a slightly different implement of destruction, but it’s the same basic idea.

In the tradition of pretty much all adventure games, certain features must be unlocked by doing other things in the progression of the game. EA Playground is no different in that regard. Happily for us, at least the locked things in EA Playground will tell you exactly what you need to acquire or do to unlock them. It may take a bit to meet the conditions, but at least you’re not left wondering what the conditions are in the first place. There are two games you need to unlock — Wall Ball and Dart Shootout. The kids running these games in the first playground tell you exactly what you need to do before you can play against them.

Marbles are your currency in this adventure. There are marbles hidden around the playground areas, and you can earn marbles from some of the characters in game. One of the miscellaneous actions you have, for instance, is the High-Five. Basically, you run up to any of the characters with the little thought-bubbles and do a high-five motion with the Wii-mote. If you do it right, they high-five you back (and it has a really cute little animation). The first time you high-five each different person, they give you a bag of marbles as a present.

The first time you defeat each of the bosses in their chosen sports, you earn a sticker for your book. These are the golden stickers. Golden stickers can unlock other things in the game. You need your first three golden stickers to actually unlock the gate into the second playground.

The marbles you’ve found and earned can be traded to the Sticker King for super stickers. These stickers give you additional abilities to use in the various games. Since the bosses get harder as you progress and the goals get more challenging, you’re really going to want to buy these super stickers to unlock game abilities.

I would say that EA Playground really matches the oft-quoted description, “easy to learn and difficult to master.” The rules and controls are easy enough for your child to jump right into the games. Fighting their way through ranks will take some skill. Not only do you initially just have to defeat the kid offering the game, when you come back again, he or she will have a dare situation for you. The first time I did Paper Racers, I just had to make it through the course alive. The second time, I was challenged to guide my little plane through all 14 red rings along the race course. I’m still working on that one.

While EA Playground is designed to be a kid’s game, it is definitely a game for kids of all ages. You get to relive the glory days of playground games — without worry about any of the downsides of real playground games and politics. No, it’s not going to take the place of Wii Sports for me, but it’s a fun game with its own unique set of challenges. I strongly recommend EA Playground, with one small caveat for parents. I have an old inner-ear condition — and I got a little motion sick when running around the playground. The games themselves were perfectly fine, but steering through the maze in the second playground kind of got to me. Inner-ear issues aside, EA Playground is great fun.