As my fingers struggled with the unnecessarily confining plastic wrap that surrounded my copy of SimCity: Creator for the Wii, I felt a subtle shudder tremble through me. I was holding in my hands not just a mere video game; no ... I was holding in my hands digital godhood.

Spurned forward by my homebrew melodrama, I tossed the instruction manual onto the coffee table with élan and popped the disc into the consul. Instruction manual? Faugh! I was playing SimCity games more than 15 years ago; that petty manual has nothing to offer me.

OK now, first, my Sims need power. So I think I’ll put the power plant right ... here. Um, no; I wanted it to go here. No, wait, just a second, I didn’t click here, I clicked there. Wait, come on, where’s the stupid little arrow going that indicates where the power plant is going? It’s completely off the map, and I can’t even find it anymore!

OK, boss, settle down. This just seems tricky now, right? I mean, this is all going to be OK. You’re just getting used to a new system here. It’s not that bad — kind of like when you put down your Atari joystick and picked up a Nintendo control pad. Just a little practice ... you’ll get it. Remember, man, “digital godhood,” right?

Now, let’s play this game.

Look, even God had at least one day of rest, and I didn’t get a minute. Everything you do in a city builder revolves around precision, and the Wii-mote was crapping my style. For example, if I wanted to build a road and then connect it to a building that fills a certain amount of space, then I better make sure that the road is exactly the right space and area, or one click off and the whole thing goes to pot.

Whenever I got a single building to go exactly where I wanted, it felt like an accomplishment. After a half-hour of attempted precision planning, I just kind of gave up building an actual city and decided I was going to just build buildings and see what they looked like without caring what happened.

Now, in SimCity: Creator, buildings are divided into three categories; industrial, commercial and residential. You gotta have your Sims live in residential, which is near commercial but not too near industrial. Of course you need industrial somewhat nearby to power the commercial and residential, but if it is too close, then your Sims get unhappy. So let’s make sure you keep things precise.

So I was right back where I started.

I would try to section out a grid for commercial and discover it was overlapping parts of the residential or bisecting the roads. All my plans of creating the perfect city with tightly made, well-laid-out plans were all falling apart. The Wii-mote didn’t want to cooperate. I was doing my best, but every section of the grid was going all over the map.

Looking for something to distract me from the pain, I started thumbing through the instruction book. There seemed to be a lot of information in the book that discussed fires and earthquakes and other unnatural disasters (like monsters and alien attacks) — which might be really cool if my ultimate plan was to destroy the perfect city. But my plan was to create the perfect city, and my plans were going quickly awry.

Meanwhile, the controls were driving me nuts. I know what you’re thinking, though: “Maybe you can’t do it, but I am a master of the Wii-mote. I will have no problems with this game.” But, good reader, I beg to disagree, because there are other problems with this game.

Nintendo, the parent company of Wii, has been a problem for me as young as age 13. It was at that time I started getting sick of the childlike design and production that is Nintendo’s hallmark. Determined to make video games “for kids,” Nintendo has so homogenized its games that it is very hard for me, as an adult (hell, even a teenager), to enjoy them.

The cutesie-poo graphics were turning my stomach, and the music that was playing in the background seemed like a reject from a toddler’s elevator. They both seemed to function as a vicious example of macabre juxtaposition with which this game was rife.

Did the makers of this game intend me to be a benevolent creator of a lovely town? If so, they should have spent more time articulating the graphics and sound to coincide with that plan. And if the ultimate purpose was to destroy the city in a violent apocalypse, how about giving me some tunes that made that seem more fun?

In the end, I threw up my hands in disgust. A game should be fun, not frustrating. This was frustrating. The Wii-mote was a hindrance in coordinating precise details. The music was boring and monotonous. The graphics were designed to look campy and cartoon-like, so it didn’t feel like I was building anything really impressive. And if I was supposed to have fun destroying the buildings instead of creating them, that task should have been made fun. The creators should have introduced a little blood-in-streets craziness. Burning Sims falling out of the windows of fire-scorched buildings would be hilarious, not offensive, if it was all done with the “cute” graphics that filled the game.

In the end, it’s a bit too complicated for young children, but I think too cute for older children to enjoy. SimCity: Creator needs to figure to figure out its target audience and sell it to them better. As it is, I think it will leave both young and old gamers unsatisfied.