Review: Animal Crossing: City Folk

Sick of shopping at Nookingtons? Hop on the bus to the city in Nintendo’s third installment in the Animal Crossing series, Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Nintendo Wii.

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Wii

Animal Crossing first made its debut on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. It was an innovative look at a real time life game: players, as a young person, decide to set out on their own and make a name for themselves in a town full of animal characters. In a time where games didn’t have much new to offer, Animal Crossing took us to a place where we could relax and just hang out with our friends. In 2005, Nintendo did it again by offering a version of Animal Crossing for the DS system. Animal Crossing: Wild World was very similar to the first in setup and game play, but it also included the added WiFi capabilities that allowed players to visit one another’s towns. Now, Nintendo has done it one more time, with the long anticipated Wii version of the game, Animal Crossing: City Folk.

The premise of the game is the same as the previous two versions. You are a young adult ready to strike out on life on your own…so you hop on a bus and head to the closest village to start out make bells, decorate a house, and become friends with the neighbors. You don’t have a place to stay when you arrive, but that’s okay. Thanks to the sly Tom Nook, who will happily allow you to choose which house you wish to occupy, you will find yourself set up quickly. Do you want to live by the sea or near town hall? AC:CF lets you choose which house you live in, instead of the previous versions whose housing options were quite limited. It sounds like a nice arrangement, but don’t let old Nook fool you. Like in the predecessors, Tom Nook won’t give you a house without a short period of indentured servitude in which you have to run errands and do mundane tasks for him.

Once you’ve finished working for ‘ol Nook, it’s time for you to explore the village. Your village, which you name during the start of the game, is inhabited by an assortment of animals with varying personalities. The developers added some new characters for your village, so you shouldn’t get bored with the possibilities. You can have a maximum of ten neighbors in your village and if you run enough errands and make enough friends, you’ll be there in no time. Much of the other game play is the same as previous versions as well: deliver messages, run errands and find some time for fishing, bug hunting, collect shells along the beach and shooting down presents from the sky. The differences in these tasks lies in the controls. You now have the Wiimote which allows full experience fishing along the river and ocean by physially swinging the wiimote to cast your rod, and jerkin it back quickly to haul in your catch. It also vibrates to let you know when you’ve hooked the big one! Bug catching is much the same, with you swinging your remote to swing your net. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work so well when you’re trying to dig, but that’s okay, one thing at a time.

You still get your assorted visitors in your village on various days of the week. Wendell the hungry Walrus shows up to give you patterns, Sahara will trade old carpet and old wallpaper for some of her fabulous designs, Gulliver appears in his spaceship and all of your various holiday guys show up as well. Particularly amusing is Franklin on thanksgiving. The poor turkey thinks that he has been invited by the mayor, Tortimer, for dinner…and he has, just not as a guest. You can kill a couple of hours playing hide and seek with him to collect all of the harvest furniture and decorate your lovely abode. K.K. Slider still comes along at the cafe in the museum, much to my enjoyment. He won’t take a request on the first night, but after that, anything is fair game. He still gives you bootleg copies of his songs to play at your pad (there are some new additions to the song lineup) but you may have to look online to find them. The coffee in the museum stil runs you 200 bells a cup, but this time there is an advantage to spending a lot on your coffee. If you spend enough on enough days, a gyroid storage area will be open to you, which is great for collectors of the interesting artifacts. If you stay on the main level, Blathers can identify fossils and take donations (although he still hasn’t gotten over his phobia of bugs) and his sister is still upstairs gazing at the stars. At the town hall, your feathered friends are ready to help you mail a letter and answer any of your questions.

Located in the town hall, in this version of the game, is an ATM which allows you to pay off your debt without having to deal with Nook and save money. If you’ve got a few extra bells, talk to Pelly about donating to the “Town Fund.” When you donate enough bells, your town gets some cool things: a fountain, a windmill or a lighthouse. If you’re itching to get out of the village, the town gate and the helpful guard dogs are there. You still have a friend list and have to exchange codes to visit, so make sure you make some friends who don’t mind you popping by. If you can’t get out over wifi, you can still leave your village.

The name of the game is Animal Crossing: City Folk, and they do incorporate a city. All you have to do is hop on the bus, and Cap’n will be happy to drive you to the city. Despite the way the villagers will hype up the city, it’s not all that exciting. It’s a nice change of scenery but after a couple of visits, it gets old. Occasionally, you will find the Prize guy who will give you a balloon to accessorize with, you can interact with other possible villagers and see who you would like to move into your town next and if you’re lucky you can even find Mr. Resetti’s secret lair (if you don’t mind his ramblings.) The biggest draw to the city are the stores. Shampoodle has a shop set up that will allow you to get a hairdo, or even a complete makeover, which will allow you to use the face of your Mii as your AC character “mask.” The sly fox, Redd still runs his CRAAAZZYYY shop. I’m not sure if the prices are hot, or if the merchandise is. If you want some expressions for your character, you can always catch a show at the movie theatre in town. You can change the color of your shoes at Kick’s stoop. You can also visit Katrina for town charms or to get a palm reading. The biggest draw, however is the auction house and Gracie Grace’s.

The auction house is a new addition to this version of AC which allows you to sell items to your friends. You place your items up for auction, set a minimum bid, and let your friends have at it. It certainly beats trying to organize trades/sales on the online Animal Crossing websites. Gracie Grace’s store is the big store right in the middle of the town, and man, does it have some awesome items. The only problem is the price. Gracie is an awesome designer and she knows it, so she charges you an arm and a leg for any of her items. I do believe that I payed upwards of 1000 bells for a pair of glasses! (They were really cute, so sue me).

Another interesting addition to City Folk is the inclusion of the Wii Speak device which allows you to chat with people who are visiting your village and people that you in turn visit. Basically, the device is just a giant microphone that allows anyone in your room to speak with anyone in another room far away. I liked that Nintendo is trying to create an online gaming community and allowing the room microphone is a good step. My only complaint is that this device did not come with every copy of the game, as you had to purchase the special edition to get it. This made using the device difficult because many of the people I met online to play with didn’t drop the extra $20 to get the Wii Speak. Hopefully, they will think of some other games to use this device with in the future, as it has great potential.

When you’re done with the city, you can head on home to your village and begin the next day again. I love that this game plays in real time as it adds to the feel of the game as a sim. It’s a lazy sort of game that can kill hours of time just doing everyday things. The foundations of this game are sound and it adds a few elements to the series that we know and love. That being said, however, I must say that I was a little disappointed. I felt that there was so much more that they could have done with the game, instead they just performed a few minor tweaks. All in all, it is still enjoyable but could have been so much more. If you enjoyed the previous two installments, or you just like these lazy simulator games, I definitely recommend this game.

SCORE:8/10