Animal Crossing: City Folk

"It's Like Déjà Vu, All Over Again, For The Third Time!"

Animal Crossing is a great franchise. It's an incredibly addictive and rewarding game that caters to both the casual masses and the fans. Nintendo his the nail on the head with the original for the Game Cube and also did a stellar job for the DS, but as a long time fan I can't help but feel disappointed with the Animal Crossing: City Folk

Story
As always you are a bright-eyed smiley kid ready to face life in a new town. You hop on a bus, chat with a cat and supply all the basic details you need to in order to play the game. When you finally get to town you must pick out a house, claim it as our own and then get slapped with the same old debt from Nook. Then of course to get you acquainted with the game you must do some jobs for Nook and then you're on your way to living life in whatever way pleases you.

Now this isn't a bad set up for a game that has no story the problem is it's the exact same thing we've done before. Heck, the tasks you do for Nook are identical to the ones you do in Wild World. It's just a shame that Nintendo couldn't have put a wee bit of effort into changing the tutorial around to make it a little less monotonous for those of us who have done it at least twice before.

Graphics and Sound
Animal Crossing has always had a very distinctive charm with its graphics and sound. They somewhat cutesy character model and the unique villagers has always been very easy on the eyes. And of course the music is great. Nice background themes that change every hour give the game a very pleasant atmosphere. The style and sounds of Animal Crossing have always been near perfect combination and while City Folk does have this combination it's not exactly what I want.

Let's start with the graphics. City Folk has the exact same style as the GC and DS versions and when I say the exact same style I mean the exact same graphics. The only noticeable difference between the Wii and DS version of this game is that some of the textures are a little sharper, but that's it. Just for clarification, this is in no way an exaggeration. The trees, the outside of your house, Nook's shop, the grass, the rivers, the fish, the bugs, the villagers and even the furniture looks almost identical to that of Wild World. I understand trying to preserve art style, but Nintendo easily could have kept the style while updating the graphics. The furniture, environment and items in the museum could have easily gotten a significant update, but instead everything looks exactly the same. It's incredibly disappointing to see Nintendo refuse to even put any effort into pushing their console's graphics.

Now the music. City Folk has some admittedly catchy tunes, but those of you who played Wild World will find them very familiar because the hourly background music is the exact same stuff used in Wild World. Now I'm not saying the music is bad, because it isn't, but in a game that get's so much personality from its music it's disappointing to see the exact same music from the last game.

Gameplay
Like with the story, graphics and music almost nothing is new here. If you played the past games at all you'll know exactly what to expect here. Collect furniture, pay off a debt, collect fish, collect furniture, collect bugs, collect fossils, talk to some animals, participate in some holiday events and oh you'll also be collecting furniture. It's basically that collectathon that made the two past games so successful again. The game also still plays in real time so when an hour passes in real life an hour passes in game, even when you aren't playing. There is one new element and that's the big city.

The city is a nice feature, but that's about it. It's basically a large plaza that random villagers who don't live in your town wander through and some buildings you can go into. Some of these buildings are, Gracie Grace, a large store where you can buy some unique and very expensive furniture and Gracie's exclusive clothes, Redd's shop, where you can buy shady, but sometimes unique furniture, Katrina's, where you can get your fortune told, the theatre, where Dr Shrunk will teach you how to perform a certain action and Shampoodle, where you can get your hair changed or a Mii mask slapped on your face. You can visit the city once a week or so for about 10 minutes, get everything you need out of it and then you don't even need to think about it. So it's a nice feature, but it's very minor considering it's in the title of the game.

I do have one major problem with the city however. Redd, Katrina, Dr Shrunk and Gracie were all special NPCs who randomly visited your town during weekdays. I always excitedly turned on my game during the week curious to see who was visiting my town and what benefits I could reap from it. Now that they have shops in the city they no longer visit your town. This really cheapens the feel of getting your hands on exclusive Redd item or a special piece of Gracie clothing. The worst part about this is that Nintendo didn't introduce a new host of special visitors, so you no longer get a visitor every day, which is just another big disappointment.

Visitors aren't the only spot that Nintendo neglected to add new content to. Furniture, one of the main focuses of the game, really didn't get too much new content. I spoiled myself and browsed through catalogs of furniture posted online and aside from a couple of new sets and individual items I recognized just about everything. Then there's interacting with villagers, like with everything else, it's the exact same or maybe even not as good as it was before. No longer can you pester a villager asking them if they need help or even say something like “never mind” if you didn't mean to talk to them. If you talk to a villager they'll say what they have to say and they'll say nothing else until you leave their general area and come back. Now the museum, which still has the same old fish, bugs, fossils and paintings. It really would have been nice to have a new wing with some new and exciting things to collect and donate in it. Also a quick browse of a list of all of the fish in the game showed a disappointing lack of new fish. I'm still hoping that Nintendo will support this game and toss us new content through DLC but Nintendo and DLC have never been best friends so I'm trying my best not to get my hopes too high.

Two other quick complaints, your town can only have 10 villagers in it while in the Game Cube version you could have 12 and they took our villager pictures. Those two problems just really bug me. Honestly I see no reason for Nintendo to have done those things.

Now I'm ragging on this game awfully hard due to it's lack of new content, but it's still Animal Crossing and it's still a great game. You still get to expand your house, decorate it in any way you want and enjoy the game for a heck of a long time because that's just the nature of Animal Crossing that we all know and love. And this game also has its online mode like in the DS! Visiting another person's village is as easy as exchanging friend codes. So the active trading community will thrive and it's always fun to just bum around a friend's town for a while and see what life is like on the other side.

By far the best part about this game, and all other Animal Crossing games for that matter, is its longevity. If you invested a little bit of time every day you could easily play this game for years by filling up your museum, paying off your debt, filling up your house and just relaxing in your town.

Final Thoughts
For most of this review I spouted negatives about this game, but it's still Animal Crossing, it's still a great game, and because of this the game doesn't deserve too low of a score. Nintendo's laziness just makes a fan like me feel like they don't really care about the franchise anymore, which is extremely disheartening. I can see no valid excuse for why they didn't make better use of the Wii's graphical abilities and storage space on disk and giving us a game that's almost identical to something that came out years ago on a handheld platform is just a shame. Still, it's Animal Crossing and I am going to get enjoyment out of it for a long time.

So, should you buy it? If you're a long time hardcore fan of the franchise then you've probably already bought the game, so why are you even reading this review? If you're new the series give it a shot, but if you have a DS you might want to check out Wild World since it'll be a good bit cheaper than City Folk. If you're someone who played Animal Crossing on the DS or Game Cube a while back, enjoyed it, but didn't obsess over it then it's a toss up. It's a great game, but you might just be better off starting a new town on whatever version you own right now. If you're looking to give your Wii some action for a long time and you like collecting obscene amounts of furniture, then pick this up whenever you get a chance.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 12/05/08

Game Release: Animal Crossing: City Folk (US, 11/16/08)