Video Game Review: Animal Crossing – City Folk for the Nintendo Wii

Imagine a video game where you can live your life, doing random things that make your day go easier, if not quicker.  Now, imagine this in a village with various anthropomorphic animals talking to you about life, asking for favors, and even giving you things.  You can fish, plant, and even catch bugs.  Such is the gist of Animal Crossing.  When this game was released on the Nintendo GameCube, it was received with great reviews, and massive appeal.  For a game to have been cancelled for the N64 to come to the GameCube as a port with better polish, it had a tremendous following, especially when it had stiff competition from The Sims and its games.  Afterward, Animal Crossing had its first sequel…for a handheld.  Dubbed Animal Crossing: Wide World, it was essentially the same as the first, but with more content, slightly more characters, and an improved ability to travel from town to town.  Initially, you had to save your town on a memory card and the only means of travel was to access the travel function and go to another town on another memory card.  In Wide World, travel was allowed via the internet or locally from DS to DS wirelessly and with wires.  It made for a better and more expansive experience.  You could imagine the speculation behind Animal Crossing – City Folk for the Nintendo Wii.  What would be added?  Would it be as popular?  Why should I care?  Well, I cared and here’s my review.  I can only hope it’s as good as the first.

Graphics

Graphically, the game really hasn’t changed all that much.  In fact, it looks completely the same.  There were some additions made and tweaks when it comes to the size of things.  For instance, you don’t move from screen to screen in a grid format.   Instead, you move like you are on a sphere, spanning the globe.  Also, houses are significantly bigger or wider.  Other than that, the game is still very polygonal.  If a person were to see you play this in a room, they’d think you were using Animal Crossing for GameCube on your Wii.  Perhaps a change was in order for the game, but due to its popularity, I don’t think anyone would have minded the graphics.  They didn’t on the DS, right?

Sound

The sound remains primarily the same all around.  The theme song has changed dramatically, along with other songs, and they still remain catchy and addictive.  The sound effects are very cute, and like The Sims, allows for a different type of language to be conveyed by the animals in the villages and towns alike.  It’s all very quirky and charming.   Not much else can be said, really, unless you can’t stand that type of speak….

Control

The game moves the character in about two ways.  You either do a “point and click” approach, or move with the analog stick.  You can run as well.  As for using items, motion control comes into play when doing things like swinging axes, catching bugs, and fishing.  I believe the transition between the styles of moving is very smooth and you don’t have to choose between the two.  All in all, the controls are very solid and don’t leave you completely befuddled.  There aren’t any issues with delays in response, either.

Etc.

This may very well be the best part of the game, or the worst, depending on who you speak to.  The story is that you control a human being and you are moving into a village where animals walk, talk, act, and live like human beings do.  It’s your job to live with them, co-exist with them, and enjoy your time there.   The twist to this game is that you can now travel to the city and do some of the things you can do in that village within the city limits.  Sadly, you can’t live there.  I can see that if you did, it would cost much, much more than living in the village.   Every day, something happens, just like in the original game, and you don’t have to play every day for things to change.  People move into town, move out of town, etc.    The extras of the game all lie in how you live your life.  The game can’t be finished.  It all keeps going.  It’s up to you if you want to do the various things to add to your life.  But, these things aren’t really necessary if you don’t want it.  With that said, the extras include things like new wallpaper, sets of furniture, different fruit for planting, different clothes for wearing, including hats this time, and so on.  Personally, my favorite extra to get is the museum model, after I fill it up with paintings, fish, bugs, and fossils.  This is a stumbling block for me, however, when it comes to this game.  I say this because as much as I tried, as much as I stayed within the guidelines of finding what I could, I couldn’t find anything new.  The fish, bugs, and whatever never changed.  It got very annoying.  Then, it occurred to me that maybe I didn’t get much change because I was the only person I knew that played the game in my household.  My sister had a character, but she never got back to it.  I guess with more people, you get more chances at rare things.  You could put money back into the town to add something new that random animals mention.  However, the amount of money to do such gets rather exorbitant soon, as it is much more than, say, your house fee.  Without other players, this seems like a hopeless cause.  This leads me to the lasting appeal of the game.  Initially, when my brother, sister and I played the first game, we all were very enthused about playing it.  After a while, I was the only one still crazy about playing the game with all the things I could pick up.  They thought the game would be like The Sims.  How wrong they were.  No one died and life didn’t change too much for our characters.  After a while, they lost interest.  So, when I brought in the sequel, they lost interest almost immediately.  And yes, I did consider using the Wii Speak for the game.  For those who don’t know, the Wii Speak is the broad microphone the game comes with that allows you to talk to other people who come to your town by travel.  Of course, this could be done by accepting the friend codes of whoever is playing the game along with you.  It is Nintendo’s way of safeguarding systems and servers, I guess when connecting to the internet.  Sadly, I couldn’t find anyone willing to buy the game, let alone log on and share friend codes with me so travel and speaking was possible.  I’m sure Wii Speak has other uses in other games, but I wouldn’t know since I don’t own any of them.  With that said, I have a practically useless peripheral.  So much for the game’s lasting appeal, I guess.  If I can’t find what I want and get others to join in to increase my chances of such, what’s the point of playing, let alone owning, this game?

Final Verdict

Animal Crossing – City Folk is a fine game, to say the least.  All the great things you could do in the previous Animal Crossing games can almost be done here.  However, this game would work best if you never got the first two games.  If you have the GameCube version, you’ll see that not much was added to this game to keep you wanting more, sadly.  All it brings to the table is slightly improved graphics, a city to travel to, motion control, a chance to speak to people if they are in town, and a chance to travel via the internet.  However, that’s all it brings.  It’s not as deep as say, The Sims, when it comes to content.  If that’s what you are looking for, this game will leave you disappointed.  Heck, the game no longer has Nintendo games to play in it.  I’m sure you can thank the virtual console for that one.  However, if you have the DS game, you’ll see that more was or can be done in that game than, say, in this one.  It makes it seem as if making Animal Crossing portable was the best idea for the franchise.  Since its release, no sequels have been planned, and I’m glad that’s the case.  I honestly don’t think you can get more out of this game idea.  Sure, you could add your Mii face in this game, but it’s a mask.  So, no live avatar representation in town.  I found this game very disappointing really, as I found myself in no particular hurry to get back to it after about, say, 3 or 4 months of play.  It’s a shame, really, as the potential for this game idea could be far-reaching, if only tested.  However, Nintendo was hoping for the same type of demand that the first game brought.  The only problem was that it was the first of its kind, with a level of charm to it.  You can only be charming for so long before it gets tedious.  That doesn’t take too long in this game.   So, to review, it’s a fine game, if it hasn’t been done before.  But, if you haven’t done it before, give it a shot and hope you can get others to do the same with you.  Otherwise, you’re just a lonely guy surrounded by animals, walking through life.  Since that’s not so different from real life (save for the talking), what am I missing here?