Animal CrossingLet’s just clear the air right now. This game is not about crossing the street, it’s not about cross-roads, it’s not even about cross-breeding animals (you sick gamer you). Animal Crossing is a game all about life, starting a-new, and making new friends. You start off on a bus with your new narrator buddy, starting a new life in a new small town. Why are you going there? What did you do in the past that forced you to run away and start again in anonymity? Will anyone miss you in your old life? Questions such as these are not asked in this children’s life simulator, just as questions being raised as to why you’re the only human in town, and a little child living on your own to boot aren’t addressed.

With the help of a very special partner more in tune with this game’s target demographic, we set off to explore Animal Crossing: City Folk. The first problem we encountered with this title was the tutorial and explanation of the game. It’s hard to explain how to live a virtual life, it’s even hard to try and explain it to a child. With so many things to do, rules, and mechanics, the high level of complexity doesn’t translate well to younger audiences. In fact, it gets so convoluted that even grown adults have a hard time following the objectives laid out before you (at least I had a hard time).

Another issue stems from Nintendo’s online capabilities. While the PS3 and Xbox 360 have easy access to online play and friends, the Wii lacks this ability and instead players must enter long friend codes, for this reason the average Wii gamer often skips online experiences for their own sanity. This is quite unfortunate as Animal Cross: City Folk try time and time again to get players to come online. Bundled with the Wii Speak microphone players have the option of communicating with their friends in Animal Crossing rather than typing or clicking on individual letters. Convenient, or at least it would be if you could ever find people to speak to in the game or even on the Nintendo Wii Speak channel, which was just as bare as the game. Otherwise, the Wii Speak microphone works and sounds great, a high quality microphone that can pick up sound from far away while resting on your television (or below it), connecting to the Wii’s USB plug, the Wii Speak microphone matches well with the Wii sensor bar and is small enough to not distract the eye during gameplay.

So, you start off in your village, pick a house to buy and immediately you owe Tom Nook an arm and a leg for your two bedroom house, go to his store, work part time delivering goods and exploring the village (essentially learning the lay of the land) and your set to start your life out. The first objective you have is to repay Mr. Nook for your house, sell items you find, shake trees, and do whatever it takes to get that loan shark off your back. As you progress through the game you unlock new items and decorations to renovate and improve your house with, and eventually buy up to four different houses as you live your virtual life among the animals.

Two things make animal crossing unique: one are the characters within the game, wacky animals are the driving source of entertainment for me when playing this game and every time I meet a new zany creature, a small smile crosses my face. The second feature is that Animal Crossing: City Folk, runs on real time, whatever time it is where you are, it’s that time in the game, whatever day it is in real life, same day in virtual life, weather, ditto. This is key as some items only appear during certain times (such as Halloween), granted, players can always change their Wii clock to get special items, but otherwise, timing is similar to real life. Another feature lies in the name of the game, city folk. Eventually you can go visit the city and explore new areas while meeting an abundance of characters that can be sometimes hard to find in your village, basically it seems to be for players who can only play Animal Crossing at specific times but want to meet everyone at any time.

Graphically the cartoony boxish looking characters and environment lend to the young demographic this game was made for, while the Wii is capable of much higher graphical capacity, this simple art style allows for much smoother gameplay throughout. The colours are vivid, and characters goofy looking, but I feel this was exactly what Animal Crossing: City Folk were going for. Sound wise we see a similar direction; while no characters talk, they each have their own voice and music. This music provides a sense of personality as each one is unique and portrays how they act. The music within the game is simple and relaxing, not overly annoying as other children games might have, however at the same time not so dull that you do not even notice that music is being played. The Wii Speak microphone works extremely well and perhaps in future games this peripheral might make more use than just sending voice messages to past Wii friends.

Overall Animal Crossing: City Folk provides hours of entertainment and innovation into the gaming world, while the Wii does not really lend much to the game in terms of graphic, online or control capabilities, it’s still a welcome addition to the Wii library, especially for OCD gamers. City Folk has a lot of entertaining things to do, it also has a lot of mundane tasks to partake in. Gamers can live their lives playing City Folk, or they can move away to a new city and LIVE out City Folk in real life. Just remember, there’s no reset button in the real world.

Gameplay: 4/5

Graphics: 3.5/5

Sound: 4/5

Replay Value: 4/5

andPOP Rating - 4 Stars

 






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