To tell you the truth, I don't feel like Animal Crossing: Wild World is a video game. To me, it's more of a hangout. It's a fantasy world you can go to, to escape from reality... especially if you enjoy collecting furniture and planting pear trees. Wild World takes you away from your dull and boring life, to an alternate world full of cute animal characters with massive heads. While you have your own situations in life, so does Animal Crossing.

Having not played the original Animal Crossing game for the Gamecube, I decided to pick this game up for the Nintendo DS and enjoy it anywhere. When I first started the game, I found myself in a car with some pirate-speaking animal named Kapp'n. I had to go through a series of questions so the game could determine what kind of person I was and what kind of town I wanted to live in. Once I was finished with the questions, I arrived in my town to meet a raccoon named Tom Nook, who owned a shop called Nook's Cranny. Tom Nook gives you a home as well as a job. The job that Tom Nook gives you serves as a way of learning about the Animal Crossing universe. Eventually you will gain enough money from selling items to pay Tom Nook back for buying you a home.

Once you pay off your house, you are free from work and Tom Nook's shop. After I paid off my house, I had no idea what to do. In fact, I didn't think there was anything else to do. Wild Word doesn't give you certain tasks, so it's up to you to decide what you must do. What is there to do?

Well, one thing you can do is customize your home. You can buy wallpaper, flooring, and furniture. Objects you can buy can be as basic as a sofa, bookshelf, or chair, but you can also buy some unusual objects such as a space station, merry-go-round, or ship cannon. Each furniture item has its own series or theme that all match.

For instance, the classic furniture series you can collect and decorate your home with will include a classic chair, classic bookshelf, classic sofa, classic table, and etc. A theme is something that brings a certain style to your room, such as the boxing theme. You can collect the boxing mat, red corner, blue corner, sandbag, speed bag, and judge's bell to bring a boxer's theme to your house. You can even get your house rated by an in-game organization call the "Happy Room Academy." The HRA will come into your home and rate your sense of style. Points can be deducted if you have some items that don't match.

Another thing you can do is fill up your local museum. By purchasing items such as the shovel, fishing rod, or net, you can go on a hunt for some objects to put inside of your museum. When you have a shovel, you can find cracked spots in the earth to dig into to find a fossil. Present this fossil to the museum owl and he will mine it. After examined, if you don't already have this fossil inside your museum, you have the option to donate it. Eventually, you will find all of the pieces to a fossil set, and you'll have an entire extinct being in your fossils exhibit. You can also use your fishing rods and net to capture insects and fish to place into your museum.