Nintendo Wii Review: Animal Crossing: City Folk

To be honest, we all should have known something like Animal Crossing: City Folk was coming the second the Wii was announced. Nintendo would have been stupid to leave one of their biggest crossover titles – that is, titles with appeal to both new and core gamers – on the sidelines with their new console and their new approach to gaming. The real question, though, is whether City Folk would deliver the kind of experience the first Animal Crossing and the follow-up DS title Wild World did. The answer is yes, and that is perhaps a double-edged sword.

If you’ve ever played an Animal Crossing, then you already know the basic story behind this game: you play as a young human being, off to live in a village far away from home amongst a bunch of anthromorphic folk, including squirrels, birds, frogs and a raccoon who lends out subprime mortgages (okay, maybe he doesn’t do that, but Tom Nook is still sneaky).

The basic goal of the game is to live your life as you wish, whether that means never paying off your loan to Nook, buying all of the clothes from the Able Sisters and putting them on display or just spending your days fishing the time away. There’s no ultimate ending to the game, no final boss to beat besides the boredom that so often takes people away from Animal Crossing and on to other games. There is a bit of continuity, as you can move your Wild World character into your City Folk town, but at the cost of having to start over again. It’s a neat little feature, but not one I’m sure will be really used a lot.

City Folk offers about as much to do as any of the past games in this series, meaning it’s as long of a game as you make of it. Most of the same animals, festivals and things you can do in your town return, which, if you haven’t guessed by now, is starting to become a recurring theme. Get used to reading it a few more times before this review is done.

All of the items from past Animal Crossing games return, with the only addition being the inclusion of silver items. The silver versions are a step in between the gold and regular versions of items like the shovel or watering can and offer a slight boost in usefulness over the regular items. The Wii remote is somewhat used with these items, in that you can actually cast a line or swing your net with the Wii remote’s motion-sensing capabilities, but outside of that, motion-sensing isn’t really used.

Article Author: Brian Szabelski

Brian Szabelski is the Assistant Gaming Editor at Blogcritics.org as well as Associate Editor at Tomopop. He also maintains his own blog on IGN, "The Minus World".

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