"The real reason why the chicken crossed the road"

Imagine a world where all you do all day is nothing but talk to your neighbours, catch insects, fishing, buying overly expensive furniture from a raccoon to decorate your house, or buying designer (read, your own design) clothing. Nothing that a housewife can't do. Repetitive? Yep. Boring? Certainly not. Far from it.

***** Plot *****

Plot is of no importance in this game. As a matter of fact, there is no plot. It is similar to The Sims where you have just moved into the neighbourhood and you have decided to settle there. It is open ended, so you will never see the end of this game.

***** Gameplay *****

For an open ended game, there must be enough activities to entertain the players. In Animal Crossing: Wild World (ACWW hereafter), it does not disappoint. There are million of things to do in ACWW.

You can catch insects, go fishing or dig up fossils. All of which can be donated to the museum where naturally, an owl is the curator. The museum will only accept one of each insects, fish or fossils, so if you catch or find any more of them, you can sell them for much needed Bells, the in game currency.

If you don't like that, you can plant all kind of flowers and trees. You can grow hybrid flowers or even plant money tree. Of course, you need to nurture them by watering them everyday and clearing out weeds.

Still don't like that? Geez, you are a hard one to please. How about talking with your neighbours, giving gift, writing them a letter, etc.? Best of all, if you don't like your neighbours, you can ignore them, and eventually, they will leave your town.

These are only a potion of what you can do in ACWW. You can design your own clothing, decorate your house, collect furniture sets, put things up for sale, enjoy the festivals and even create a constellation in the sky. If none of these activities satisfy you, I don't know what will. If I was to describe all of the activities that you can do in this game, I might as well write an FAQ on it.

Most of the things that you find can be sold at the local (one and only) store, owned and operated by a raccoon. With the Bell you have, you can purchase whatever is on offer in the shop, or pick a furniture from the catalogue. Each day, the shop has different things for sale. You (and whoever human player you have with you) are its only customer. That's probably why it charges you ridiculous amount for them.

Besides the furniture store, there is also a clothing shop next door. A pair of hedgehog sisters runs the joint. Besides the clothing and accessories that are on offer, you can design your own and wear them around town.

At the beginning of the game, you start off with a small house, so there is not much room for you to put your furniture. A closet or a cupboard will help with the space problem, but even then, that gets filled up fairly quickly as well. Buying more closet will not help as they all share the same inventory space. That is one of the minor shortcomings of ACWW.

As you obtain more Bells, you can renovate your house to make it magically bigger literally overnight. A bucket load of Bells later, your modest two stories house will eventually turn into a mansion. You can decorate each room in any way you like. You can have a Japanese theme going in one room, with Samurai amours and swords; and in the next, juicy fruits furniture fill the room.

Every now and then, your house will get inspected by the house inspectors who will judge your house based on your fashion sense. Fashion is a very subjective thing, so it works on a point system. You get certain points for putting certain objects in your room. As you collect more objects and furniture, you will put them all over the place. Obviously some of the combinations are just plain wrong. Green never goes with Pink. You get bonus points for collecting the whole set. If you have enough points, you will be awarded with a trophy that you can put on display which will earn you more points towards the next trophy.

With the Wi-Fi capability of the Nintendo DS comes big possibilities. If you have a friend code, you can invite them over and interact with your town. That has not been possible with the previous AC games on the GameCube. In fact, it is encouraged as the ultimate raccoon shop upgrade requires a friend from another town to purchase something from it. There are even real-life 'weeds cleaning' services that you can acquire that will clear out the weeds from your virtual town.
There is a multi-player mode that you can play using just one console. But you cannot interact with your house mates as only one of you can be 'active' at any one time. Also, if one of house mate put an item into his/her own inventory, that item will become unavailable for all other players.

Another feature of ACWW is the use of the internal clock. Remember when you first turn on your DS, it will ask you to setup the date/time and other info? Well, ACWW uses the clock to determine the time of day. If you play the game at 9pm, it will look like 9pm; if you play it at 10am, it will look like 10am. Depending on your taste, you would either like it or hate it. Dates are also set, so the game would know a holiday or season change, and reflect them accordingly.

Some insects and fish will only appear during a certain time and/or month, so if you want to collect them all, you will have to play it all year round.

Being a game aimed at children, the animals are presented in their bright, cheery selves. There are supposedly fierce animals like the tiger, but you would hardly ever notice it. You can't do anything 'bad' in ACWW. The worst you can do is probably ruining your own town by neglecting the needs of the animals and ignoring the growing problem of weeds.

AI is intelligent enough. The animals in town do their own stuff and if you are within its sight, it will sometimes come over for a friendly chat. Sometimes, they will ask you for a small favour, like delivering a letter to another animal because they are too shy and/or lazy to do it themselves. Like the TV salesman says in his cheesy voice, "if you send it in the next 15 minutes, we'll throw in a free set of knives". Ah-hem, right, no, you won't get a set of new knives for your kitchen, but you will get some gifts, though. It could be a piece of a furniture or a piece of clothing, etc.

Leave them to their own device and the animals will go on their own business, sometimes you might even see them interacting with other animals.

***** Graphics *****

Bright colour palettes are used throughout the game to give off a cheery atmosphere. 3D animal models are cute, and the furniture are done in great details. It's not just the colour that differentiate the furniture, either. The developers have made the extra step to make the furniture all look different from the next piece, and that is great.

There are only a maximum number of animals that can live in your town that spans across the vast land, so you will never feel crowded. The ground is not set on a flat surface, but rather, on a curvature, much like the Earth. So when you move upwards, you can see the buildings and trees and whatnots coming up from the horizon.

The sky is coloured accordingly according to the time of the day. It's not just the difference between day and night, either. It has the whole show, from early morning to midday to evening to night.

***** Sound *****

BGM are nicely rendered and catchy. Sound effects are appropriate and plentiful. From the sound of the sea, to the sound of fireworks, ACWW has it all. The most interesting sound effect will have to be the insects. As you stroll around the great outdoors, you will sometimes hear the cry of the insects. This is to let you know that an insect is nearby. It's also your cue to get the net ready for some bug catching.

There is a bar in the basement of the museum, and every Saturday night, a dog will come and play the guitar. It's an event you don't want to miss. Even though the dog doesn't sing, the songs are great, and easy on the ears.

***** Replay Value *****

Open ended games like The Sims has tremendous amount of replay value. ACWW is the same. There are just so many things that you can do in this game which will keep you coming back for more. No two days will ever be the same, even though you might do the exact same things.

The beauty of it all is that you can do what you want. You don't get penalised for not doing something. You can make the town a beautiful garden full of flowers and trees, or you can make it a pig stye if you so choose to. It is only limited by your imagination.

***** Overall *****

Animal Crossing: Wild World is a very addictive game that will require your attention everyday. You can spend days and months mesmerising in the beautiful world of animals. It continues to sell in the tens of thousands every week in Japan and elsewhere two years after its launch, and it sells for a good reasons.

It doesn't have mini games or objectives to achieve. It is all in your hands. Make a nice town, and the animals will move in and stay. Cruel to your neighbours, and they will leave.

The world is not terribly big, so you can walk from one end of the map to the other in no time, and in between them, you can go fishing, catch bugs, talk to animal, search the bins, post a letter, stir up the bees, plan a tree, water the flowers, etc., etc.

And if you are bored, you can invite a (real) friend over via local Wi-Fi or over the internet, or visit their place instead. In many respects, it is just like The Sims with animals, but play it for a day or so, and you will discover its true form. At least now, you don't have to worry about the animal busting for a toilet.

Good:

* Detailed graphics
* Many, many, many things to do
* Great replay value

Bad:

* Never enough space to store all your belongings
* Make use of the internal clock which forces you to play the game at a certain time of the day

Score (out of 10)

Gameplay: 9
Graphics: 8
Sound: 8
Replay: 10

Overall: 9

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/06/07