6:27
As promised, here are some more details of my time in Animal Crossing: City Folk (or Let’s Go To The City for PAL gamers) so far.
It’s fair to say that I’m probably in the best possible mindset to appreciate the game, given that a) I work from home, and b) I didn’t play the DS game all that much. The former means I can simply switch on the Wii once my wife and son have ventured into the wilds of Stockport and potter about my town for 20 minutes, seeing what new stuff Tom Nook has in his shop, chatting to the villagers, doing a bit of fishing and bug-catching, and just having a nice relaxing time before I have to shower and shave and start writing about things for a living. That last bit’s in the real world, by the way.
Even with that in mind, there’s a hell of a lot that’s familiar about Animal Crossing. It looks a little sharper, but graphically this is very close indeed to the GameCube and DS versions. The rolling world’s an improvement on the GC’s flick-scrolling, of course, and the extra screen space afforded over the handheld game mean it’s a simplistically pleasing, colourful aesthetic that retains all the charm of the first two games (three if you count the Japanese-only N64 original).
Gradually, the slight differences begin to emerge - ranging from tiny graphical changes (bells - the game’s currency - shaken from trees now appear as coins rather than bags of loot) to more significant alterations, like the city area. You’ll travel there on a bus driven by Kapp’n, who you’ll remember rowed you to the GBA island in the GameCube game - it’s a real shame there’s no DS equivalent here - and he’ll engage you in brief conversations about celeb-spotting (he’s a fan of gossip mags, apparently) and affairs of the heart. It’s worth making the trip purely for the chat - as sparklingly scripted as ever, the dialogue is just a joy, with each character (perhaps more than ever before) seeming to have their own unique personality. There are apparently over 4000 pages of dialogue in the game, and when you factor in that we’re talking about Japanese characters rather than Western script, you can bet the localised version has a lot more. It means that conversations are less likely to repeat themselves, and cleverly Nintendo has placed slight restrictions on the dialogue offered when you chat to villagers or city folk - you might exhaust the possibilities for a one-to-one within three interactions, but that just means that there’ll be new stuff to talk about the following day, with animals only asking you for favours when they want something. So you won’t be able to just do work for them when you want, but when they want, which seems a little more streamlined and realistic.
I’ve not had much chance to check out the social aspect of the game, with no-one I know owning the game just yet, thus leaving me unable to visit other villages for the time being. But from what Nintendo says, it’s likely that animals will react to your presence in other villages in a more convincing manner than before, and can even move from a friend’s town to your own overnight if you leave WiiConnect24 running.
Meanwhile, it appears from venturing inside the museum that there are many more fossils, paintings, bugs and fish to collect. Having caught quite a few rainbow trout and sea bass, it seems that all the old favourites will be there, but there are plenty more to donate or sell for a hefty profit (not quite so hefty in the case of the sea bass, admittedly).
Ultimately, it’s a very difficult game to judge without playing it for some significant amount of time, which is why I won’t be reviewing this for a long while, instead updating you on my progress with a regular diary each Friday. It’s clearly a game which unfolds its secrets over time, rewarding players constantly in some small way - whether it be a new villager, some new items in fashion boutique Gracie Grace (there’s an entire room setup in there whose items all cost around 100,000 bells or more, while its seasonal clothes are far more expensive than Nook’s tees) or yet more of that wonderfully warm, witty dialogue. It’s perhaps going to be a little too much of the same for those who’ve sunk hours into the previous games, but then those people are more likely to spot the slight tweaks and delight in the little graphical touches - like the yellow bird which perches on the bulletin board when a new message appears. So it’s hard to thoroughly recommend without a few caveats, but then it’d be a cold-hearted individual who didn’t find some joy in this gentle, sweet-natured game.
(And yes, the Mii masks do look a bit odd.)
© Shiny Media - visit Wii Wii for more great content.
Bookmark to:
[www.wiiwii.tv] title="Add to SphereIt">
