REVIEW: Animal Crossing City Folk for Wii

REVIEW
Animal Crossing: City Folk
Wii
Nintendo

Reviewed by: Eric Leamen

Animal Crossing has finally hit Wii with Nintendo's release of Animal Crossing: City Folk. While it is very similar to the previous games on Gamecube and Nintendo DS, City Folk does have it's differences, which is why we're here to give you some help judging the game.

The basis of Animal Crossing, for those who don't know, is similar to that of Second Life. Your town and character in Animal Crossing gives you a new life to live, new things to do, and new friends to make. While the concept does sound sort of relaxing and boring, which it can be at times, Animal Crossing can actually be a very addictive game. You start off on a bus headed in to town, where you meet your first friend: Rover the cat. Rover asks you a few questions to establish the name of your town, date, time, your name and gender. Once you arrive to town, you're free to do what you please! You'll visit town hall first, as Rover instructed you too, where you'll be instructed to choose one of four houses, each in a separate location with a different coloured roof.

When you finally choose where you want to live in Animal Crossing, you'll meet Tom Nook, house builder and shop owner extraordinaire! He'll sell you your house for a small mortgage of around 20,000 bells, and tell you that you can pay it off by working at his shop for a while. After completing some mundane tasks for Mr. Nook, such as delivering items, writing letters, or posting on the town bulletin board, he'll deduct your pay from your mortgage and leave you to your life! This is where the game gets interesting!

In your everyday life, there are a multitude of activities to do in your town. After buying a fishing rod at Nook's Cranny, you can go fishing in the many rivers, ponds, or even the sea. Different species can be found in different areas, and are worth different bell values if you choose to sell them to Tom Nook. You can also donate them to the museum and build a pretty awesome little aquarium! You can also catch bugs, collect fruit, talk with your neighbors and more! Selling fruit, fish, and other items is how you'll make a living and pay off your mortgage to get bigger and better houses!

There are also special events and holidays that take place in your town, just like in real life. Holidays like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, and more are celebrated with firework shows, free gifts, even trick or treating on Halloween. You can also participate and compete against your fellow townsfolk in contests like Fishing and Bug Catching.

A new addition to the Wii version of this franchise is The City. it's basically a hub world with a few shops that you can visit. You can shop at Gracie Grace's boutique, but beware of the high prices! You can catch a show at the theatre and learn new emotions, put items up for auction between you and your AC friends, get a hair cut or even a Mii makeover, and gain access to Redd's black market store. However, you can't visit the city with friends, and there are no new stores being added any time soon. it feels sort of like a missed opportunity on Nintendo's part. The City has a lot of unrealized potential.

Online features return in this version of Animal Crossing, which is a fun addition! You can invite friends over, go fishing together, shop together, or just hang out and chat. Which brings us to another new and fantastic addition: voice chat. Animal Crossing is the first Wii game to support Nintendo's new community WiiSpeak microphone. So now, all of your friends can chat together while you hangout in your town. But, the eternal downfall, is that City Folk uses the much dreaded Friend Code system that Nintendo is now infamous for.

The graphics are less than what you'd expect, taking more of a que from the DS than the Gamecube. The rotating world from Wild World returns, which I prefer to the GCN's grid style layout. But overall, the items and character renders are very blurred and pixelated, and should be better on the Wii.

The controls work very well. You can either use the Nunchuck to move your character, or simply point and click using the Wii remote a la DS stylus control. Using the d-pad, you can cycle through your items like fishing rod, shovel, slingshot, etc.

Overall, City Folk is a small step of progression for the series. It could have been a better game if it had had more development time, and some more innovation. If you've never played Animal Crossing before, than get into it with City Folk!

Editor's Score 8/10