Post by George Darling on Jan 11, 2009 13:23:47 GMT -8
Animal Crossing has quickly become one of Nintendo’s flagship franchises since the first installment, Animal Forest, was released back on the Nintendo 64 (the first Western release of the series was dubbed “Animal Crossing”, and was merely a port of the Nintendo 64 game “Animal Forest” released on the Nintendo GameCube.) With a non-existent story, simplistic gameplay and a go-at-your-own-pace goals it was a quirky break-away from saving princesses and kingdoms, fighting Space Pirates and other common fair associated with Nintendo’s biggest titles.
While Animal Crossing lead to a sequel on the Nintendo DS (Animal Crossing: Wild World), I never had the opportunity to play this series until the recent release of Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Nintendo Wii. From what I’ve read on online forums, this game has received some negativity, with fans basically disgruntled that it’s basically the exact same game Nintendo has already released twice prior, with only very minor updates and additions between the games themselves. Though, since this is my first experience with the series, I can give an unbiased opinion. Whether it’s the exact same game as the previous two or not – it’s all new to me.
Gameplay:
Gameplay is very linear, yet at the same time there are always a lot of different things you could be doing. When the game starts out, you’re on a bus on the way to what will become your new town. On the bus you’ll meet Rover, who asks you a series of questions which determines your character’s gender, name, appearance and the name of the town you’re moving to. Once you arrive, you must select a house in which to live, introduce yourself to the townsfolk and then do some odd jobs for the town merchant, Tom Nook, to help pay off a small fraction of the mortgage which follows your house-buying. After these events, however, it’s all free reign. Nothing is set in stone, and the player isn’t required to do anything. You have unlimited time to pay off your mortgage, after which time you can continue to upgrade your house, paying higher and higher mortgages, yet expanding your house more and more, but this is optional (though highly recommended, naturally). You could literally not pay a dime toward your house payment for years, and Tom Nook wouldn’t even say a word of protest.
“Well, I do have that mortgage payment, ah, what the hey? I can always pay it next month; give me that second shot of Espresso, Brewster!”
Activities you can indulge in include fishing, bug-catching, decorating your house, creating custom designs for shirts, hats and umbrellas for your character to wear, as well as using the designs for other uses (such as wallpaper or flooring for your home, making custom designs for outside, such as roads, etc.), speaking with your neighbors (which can lead to errands and other activities, such as games of hide-and-seek), gardening, harvesting fruit, digging for fossils and more.
From reading the above paragraph, I would wager most anyone who never played the games is thinking “Well, jeez – that sounds fairly… boring!” And, admittedly, it really doesn’t sound very entertaining. But the pure and simple fact is that it is entertaining, almost to the point of the game being addicting. Even though the majority of your ‘adventure’ is limited to a single area (your town), the sheer amount of things you could be doing is guaranteed to have you hooked and playing for hours on end. The easiest way I can describe it is that this game is like a less stressful brethren to the series “Harvest Moon” – and, in fact, Animal Crossing clearly owes a lot of its gameplay mechanics to said series. But while Harvest Moon has high-end goals with brutal repercussions should you fail them, limited actions allowed in a single day and quite a lot of hair-pulling catastrophes (tornados destroying the green house you paid three months worth of harvest profits for, anyone? Or how about your prize, bread-winning chicken croaking because you didn’t get a chance to feed it?), Animal Crossing is far more laid-back, which leads to a more enjoyable experience overall.
Try and sting me, will you?! Eternity as a decoration on my second floor, for you!
Collin proudly displays his latest catch
A feature which has made Animal Crossing unique is that everything occurs in real time. Using the Wii’s calendar, the games keeps tracks of the time and date, and the game responds to these accordingly. If you start playing the game at 3:10pm in the afternoon, it will be 3:10pm in the game. Certain characters, stores and other events are only available between certain time frames. This feature, however, is a double-edged sword. It basically means that if you operate during normal business hours, you’ll get the most out of this game. If you, however, have a busy lifestyle filled with responsibility to work and/or school, you can potentially not have the time to meet many of the game’s deadlines, which can be a real drag.
The game also uses the calendar to cycle through seasons, with certain fish and bugs to be caught, as well as products to be sold and the overall aesthetics of your town, to vary depending on what time of year you’re playing. Holidays are also present within the game, with special, holiday-themed characters appearing on said days and offering rare, exclusive furniture or other nick-knacks to players. Bearing this in mind, it generally means that it would take a player an entire year to witness every season and seasonal event – and not many games can claim to have that level of replay value.
Building Snowmen is a Winter-only activity - And some of them have some rather amusing dialogue to share
City Folk features a commendable amount of customization, to boot. You can decorate your house with an assortment of hundreds of different furniture items, wallpaper and flooring, change your character’s hair, and clothes – or even use one of the Mii’s faces as a mask, chop, pull and pluck trees and flowers and plant new ones when and where you deem fit, lay down roads or paths in your town, and even determine special catchphrases and greetings in which your neighbors use when they speak to you. All-in-all it lets you really tinker around with things and feel less constrained, since nothing is set in stone (at least aesthetically).
The Angry Video Game Nerd is clearly the poster child for family-friendly entertainment, as shown here
Shots of Collin's humble abode, complete with underground aquarium (work in progress)
This latest Animal Crossing gem incorporates Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection to allow players from around the world to get together (provided you can get each other’s Friend Code, mind you) to experience the game together. Not only that, but as of this review this game is the only Wii game compatible with the new “Wii Speak Microphone” accessory which allows players to verbally converse rather than using a keyboard. This adds an entire layer of fun to the game, as taking it multiplayer allows friends to share items and custom patterns, explore each other’s towns and speak to their differing villagers, check out each other’s custom set-up houses and fish and bug-hunt together.
A male character is proudly wearing his Alice in Wonderland dress, so clearly this must be Joe's town
Joe (left), Collin (center) and Amanda (right) all pose for the camera holding their freshly caught Football Fish
Joe (left), Collin (center) and Amanda all pose in front of Joe's Town Fountain for a photo shot
Joe and Collin watch some TV as Amanda proves that she's invulnerable to 8-bit fire
As you may have expected, the subtitle “City Folk” suggests that you are able to go to the city – and you can. I don’t have a whole lot to say about the city, really. It has a few shops and features, but generally is rather small and probably won’t make your list of daily stops. Many of the boutiques and businesses within the city could have just as easily been incorporated into your main town somewhere (and, in fact, some of them, such as Crazy Redd’s and Katrina’s have been outside of the city in past titles).
The city is also where you’ll find one of the game’s most wasted features – the auction house. Here, you can place bids on lots or put up an item of your own to auction, which will be put-up on NFC for other players to bid on. While this sounds like a good concept on paper, in truth it was bogged down to such an extent that it’s hardly even conventional, much less enjoyable. The amount of time between auctions is far too long, with the entire process taking two full weeks to complete. Furthermore, only people you’ve added as friends can see your items up for auction, and vice versa. If it weren’t for the unacceptable length of time between auctions and the restricted feel of how much or little you can bid on, this feature would have gone far.
Characters:
As the name “Animal Crossing” would suggest, the majority of the characters within the game are animals, with the only exceptions being player characters, which are human, and perhaps Kapp’n, whom is actually based off of a mythological Japanese sea creature (still animalesque though, right?).
No one seems to mind that you're a human, thankfully
Since a large amount of the game involves around building a rapport with your neighbors, naturally the characters had to be important representatives of the franchise – and, rest assured, there are a lot of them. In addition to default ‘story’ (I use the term loosely) characters which are present in every copy of the game and whom fulfill specific goals within the town or city, there are also randomly generated villagers who act as your neighbors. There are tons of these characters, and you never know which you’ll get when you first start out in your town. By befriending them, they become friendlier toward you and are more inclined to ask you for favors, or to do favors for them, as well as other activities such as inviting you over to their houses to hang out and giving you gifts. On the other hand, if you ignore them or are rude to them, they will not warm up to you, and may eventually even move out of town.
NO ONE expects beer from a present like GASTON!
As Collin speaks to Pate the duck, Joe thwacks her in the head with his bug-catching net
I knew you were holding out on me, Pippy
While there are numerous character models for the random villagers, there are actually far less personalities, which is a drag. What this means is that you can potentially have two completely different animal characters, yet they will speak the same dialog and have the same personality. That aside, there are at least enough different personality sets where this shouldn’t be too impactful on your game, and if you really dislike a character you can always torment them until they move away (rude as that may be). Plus the ‘story’ characters are brimming with their own unique personalities, which are well-defined and give the seemingly one-dimensional characters depth and character – which goes to show that you can’t judge a book by its cover. They may be cartoony, disproportioned animals, but they’re all just overflowing with charisma.
Blathers simply adores insects and arachnids, as you can clearly see
Graphics & Presentation:
Animal Crossing has never been big in the graphics department – but that’s just fine. A game such as this isn’t really the type which needs to be subjected to big-budget, 3-D wireframe models and photorealistic environments. As a matter of fact, I think that if any number of the characters within this game were made to look photorealistic that the game would be disturbing to a point of unplayability.
All the same, there are some aesthetics which seem to be basic almost to the point of programmer laziness, such as certain items being little more than 2-D images – some of which have reportedly been in use since the Nintendo 64 games, such as the garbage the player can hook while fishing.
While some things, such as the Museum Aquarium, are appealing to the eye, other aspects of the game aren't quite so visually alluring
Music
This one is hit or miss. While some of the tunes played throughout the game are catchy and memorable, others can be downright repetitive and annoying. On the whole, Animal Crossing doesn’t seem to be cutting edge when it comes to the soundtrack. The majority of the music is very brief scores which can last only a few notes, which then repeat… continuously. Though there are a few noteworthy musical praises I can bestow, including many of K.K. Slider’s gigs. The music which plays within the Museum and also with the coffee café contained within (The Roost) are also enjoyable melodies.
K.K. Slider can dig it - Can you?
In Closing:
Coming into this game, I wasn’t really sure what to make of it. My initial skepticism was what I feel many gamers went through – “So you… run around, fishing and catching bugs… selling them… talking to villagers… and, that’s it? No goals? No missions? No objectives of any sort?” – but, rest assured, if you can get past the novelty of the concept and gameplay, I assure you that this game will prove to be one of the most addicting titles you could ever get into. In all honesty, I don’t think I’ve ever been this sucked-in to any game which wasn’t an RPG.
Once Animal Crossing sucks you in, you’re hooked. Fair warning, potential buyers: only purchase this game if you can accept leading a second, virtual reality while having loads of fun.
All right, all right... I'm finishing up now. Sheesh.
Gameplay - 9
Characters - 9
G&P - 7
Music - 6
Total Rating: 31/40
