The Sims DJ

Fashions in music can move faster than the skirt hemlines. Rock's still in the ascendancy, but even within the genre there's been subtle shifts from wannabes buying guitars to hasbeens purchasing drum kits. The twin-deck DJ explosion of the late 1990s has been put back in the box, biding its time for the next renaissance.

Maybe The Sims' fanbase isn't worried about being in the vanguard of musical trends, though. The game is its own phenomenon, especially on PC and console, and with The Sims DJ, it's looking to extend its reach on mobile.

As you'd expect, the set-up is straightforward and revolves around the idea of becoming a top DJ, although in practice all this entails is a good sense of timing. Players assume the persona of an up-and-coming tunemeister, learning the craft and reaching the top by creating mixes and playing them to baying nightclub crowds.

Different clubs require different mixes, of course, and the trick in The Sims DJ is to match up the tracks in your catalogue with the kind of music the crowd wants to hear. Get it right and – just as importantly – mix it well, and the dance floor will fill up, helping to spread the word and ensuring you get gigs at increasingly impressive venues. Tied in with EA's obsession with personalised avatars, you've got a typical Sims package.

The only problem is the developer forgot to include a game. While all of the above sounds like a perfect slice of fun on paper, in reality it all comes down to repeatedly tapping the phone's soft-key at specific moments. Almost all of the game's interactive elements require nothing more than a keen reaction and a good sense of timing. That is, perhaps, an entirely apt quality for what's primarily a rhythm action title, but it doesn't generate much fun.

Still, down to business. Making your tracks is a matter of placing together four different elements: bass, drums, and two special effects sections. Set loops are available, so it's simply a case of matching them up. Unsurprisingly, any combination will do, as the loops are designed to fit each other, but fusing the elements together is the game's highlight, even though, again, all that's required is the repeated tapping of the softkey along to the timing of the four components.

With incredibly clear signposting throughout, making a mess of these activities is fairly unlikely. The biggest problem most players will face is accidentally pausing the action, which, annoyingly, resets the game. Nevertheless, once the tracks are in the bag, it's off to the various clubs to play your set.

To that extent, mixing the tracks together is more about choosing appropriate tunes for the club's patrons than anything else. Fading one track into another, yet again, requires nothing more than a tap of the softkey when sliding bars representing the two tracks meet in the middle. The end result is a selection of mixes that are more likely to be heard in hotel lifts than swinging nightclubs, but given that this takes place in The Sims' universe, the game's toytown approach to music is to be expected.

What's more strange is that the game doesn't actually mix the music. Instead, there's an awkward pause and an often juddering start when the tracks crossover – something that, given the formulaic nature of the tracks in question, surely wouldn't have been too hard to smooth out.

There are some nice elements, though. The ability to take said tracks – childlike or not – and turn them into ringtones is a smart, if logical, decision. It might have been better to extend this and allow players to use their own tracks rather than fusing sterile loops together, though it presumably would be tricky to integrate this within the game's framework.

So the end result is a title that intends to expand the appeal of the already mammoth Sims franchise by getting you to press a button at the correct time. We hardly think Grooverider, let alone Tim Westwood, would approve.