Animal Crossing: City Folk Review

When the first Animal Crossing released on the GameCube, Nintendo had already sewn the seeds for its mainstream mommy-blog-friendly Wii. The evidence for this could be seen in my very own living room, where my wife regularly raced home from work to set aside reality and visit the world of Animal Crossing. Her best friend was a certified addict, hell-bent on collecting fruit, digging for fossils and building house add-ons. Together, they tried to convert the world to Animal Crossing and convince everyone that pulling weeds was not so bad, and that cashing-in on bluegills was a great way to build a stash of Bells. The simplistic “animal town simulator” was a pleasant surprise for a struggling console and an unexpected franchise in the making.

Animal Crossing: Wild World surfaced on the Nintendo DS in 2005, which introduced not just a handheld version of the game, but the innovation of the in-game world going from a flat surface to a 3D scrolling mini-globe. The game also introduced the ability to visit others’ towns via a WiFi connection, opening up a whole new type of gameplay filled with exploration, item collection and swapping.

So with Animal Crossing: City Folk on the Wii, I expected some serious upgrades. After all, the Wii has innovative capabilities that neither the GameCube nor DS can touch. Tack on two years of potential development time, and there would be no excuse for City Folk not to blaze new trails for young and old alike. Yet rather than pull together its creative resources and brainstorm new concepts, Nintendo has brought for an Animal Crossing on the Wii that’s just plain lazy. The Wii’s casual-gaming audience expects bells and whistles to top previous efforts; what they got was a beat-up old party blower.

City Folk looks and feels like a direct port of Wild World, right down to the scrolling world and once-new-but-now-recycled music. Textures are presented as frighteningly familiar because they have barely changed in the past six years. Sure, it has voice chat support, but even at best, Animal Crossing: City Folk is a mere bundle of its predecessors with a shiny new box. This isn’t a big deal for the thousands of Wii owners who never previously owned Animal Crossing. But Animal Crossing fans who were waiting years for Wii’s motion control and Channel capabilities to uncover new possibilities will be sadly disappointed. Why not capitalize on the physical capabilities of the console and use the Wii Remote to literally shake fruit out of trees? I suppose it’s just easier to churn out an existing product with small tweaks rather than risk damaging a bestseller by making improvements that may only appeal to hardcore fans.

While the basic blueprint of City Folk is virtually unchanged there are new intentional (and unintentional) additions that are good, bad and inconsequential. The obvious and most recognizable expansion is identified in the game’s title suffix, City Folk. Nintendo added a bus that will take you to a downtown “city.” Unfortunately, this city is little more than a small town square surrounded by shops.

The shops are mostly new to the series with a couple revamped and relocated from the past. Series regular Redd’s Shop is now always accessible instead of appearing only on certain days; the Animal Crossing version of Neiman Marcus where furniture and other items cost ludicrous sums of Bells; a familiar shop to change your hairstyle or wear your Mii character’s face as a mask (looks spot-on); an interactive auction house where you can buy or sell items; the Happy Room Academy where you can check out a featured room following the selected decorating theme on a weekly basis; a theater to watch a poorly written comedy performance that earns your character an emoticon; and a fortune teller offering what else, a random fortune.

What sounds like a lot of new activities offers little incentive for return visits. One trip to explore will be enough for most players while others wanting to return for an auction or something else might ponder the inconvenience of the multi-minute bus trip each way. The vast majority of gameplay will still take place in the familiar Animal Crossing map where it has resided since 2002.

The other obvious new additions are tied into optional peripherals use. First is Wii Speak, a small speaker/microphone allowing an entire room of players in one home to converse with players in another home. In order to use this feature, one family must visit the other family’s town. You do not have to be standing next to each other in the game so proximity on a map does not matter. As long as you are in the same town, Uncle Bill can be donating a fossil while Cousin Ted is in Nook’s Shop and both parties can debate the declining cost of Turnips in real-time with real voices over the Wii Speak. This small gadget plays into the social gaming dynamic Nintendo is seeking by allowing armchair players to actively participate. A headset would obviously limit that communal atmosphere.

The other welcome improvement via peripheral allows a keyboard to be used for typing various messages and e-mails. By default the Wii Remote allows keys to be pinged one at a time via point and clicking rather than futzing around with a D-Pad, so either new option should please players who are hoping for increased letter writing speed.

However, the speed improvements made in conversation are washed away by the two-to-five second load times players experience when entering and exiting any new building or room. Considering how often you have to enter and exit areas, these load times dig under the skin before completing Tom Nook’s apprenticeship as a part-time worker. The previous two games weren’t subjected to such lengthy periods of blackout so their appearance in City Folk is unexpected, unexplainable and unappreciated.

Nintendo’s announcement that DS Wild World data would port seamlessly into the new Animal Crossing: City Folk should have sent up a red flag signaling wasted innovation. Series newcomers, whom will number in the tens of thousands based on the number of sold consoles and lack of another viable Christmas gift option this year for Wii owners, won’t care. They’ll enjoy City Folk for the solid game it is because of their ignorance to the series’ roots.

For players like my wife and her friend, Animal Crossing: City Folk is a disappointment. It is a lazy effort which lacks innovation and continues to spin the same old song and dance. Nintendo’s failure to capitalize on the same innovation Wii is built upon is a crime. The story has “been done” and there isn’t much incentive to play the new version unless you threw out your old GameCube and just wanted to kick it “old school style”. It is more of the same with the added inconvenience of persistent load times.

Sure, my wife and her friend will spend a few nights playing together online for a while. However, once the novelty of Wii Speak wears off, there really isn’t any added incentive for them to continue. Will they stick around long enough to pay off the mortgage on their first home? No. Not a chance. I’d bet Bells on that.

Buy the Animal Crossing City Folk and Wii Speak Microphone Bundle at Amazon.

— Dan Bradley