"Okay so its a little bit better than real life."

Looking for place to go to when you're down? A nice getaway from it all? A place where you are your boss and you make the rules? Maybe even where you are the master of your relationships and your own towns upbringing or downfall? Well then Animal Crossing Wild World for the Nintendo DS will fit all you're better than real life needs.

In case you don't know what Animal Crossing is I'll tell you, but at a price. I need 158,789 more just to get my mortgage paid off. Yeah that's right you heard me, you have to pay a mortgage. EEEEWWWWW adult stuff, boring. You may think so but not in the world of Animal Crossing. Let me explain, AC (animal Crossing) is a real life sim.........Sort off. You start are yourself (if you want to be) and you leave home (not literally) to find a place of your own. After you get your name and gender and appearance by a few questions asked by an odd looking cab driver you find yourself in a new town. The local shop keep gives you a place to stay in which you can furnish, enlarge or customize any way you want (from the inside though). But unfortunately its well... quaint, yeah lets say quaint. And on top of that you got to pay off a mortgage too it. But luckily you can do many odd jobs for the shop keep to earn money, plus after that you can do lots of crazy things for the denizens of the town. Oh yeah about them. You live with animals (figuratively and literally) these guys (and gals) are crazy wacky zany and some are just plain rude too. They all of different personalities and are all interesting in their won way. Did I mention that they're hilarious? Well they are and they have enough lines to fill a CS Lewis book. I'm going to get to the main point of the review now K.

Story 7/10
It's generic basically what I said was that you are a kid who moved out of their home and into this town. The story is what you make of it. Whether the townies like love or loath you is up to you. You can talk to them be nice or mean to them. Give them gifts and do them favors and it all determines who likes you around and who doesn't. There isn't too much of a story but its ok anyway.

Graphics 8/10

Not bad for the DS looks about equal to the GC one. There isn't too much to say here though. It's just nice to look at them since it's so colorful. That's about it.

Sound 8/10
Well you have generic lil' tunes playing in the background which are just nice to have their. They add a whimsical air to the game, which is always good. Also you get to write your own town tune (it plays when you enter a store or talk to a townie) and if you know music theory then your good. You can write them yourself or put an existing song their. The music is nice to have but not ground breaking LoZ or FF7 style.

Game play 9/10

A yes the meat and potatoes (mmmmmmm meat and potatoes) of the game. The most crucial element there is. AC WW is unlike most games you've ever played. Let me start off by saying why. It runs completely in real time. Days in AC are 24 hours here 24 hours in the game is still how ever many minutes 24 hours is. You even have weather in the game, and plus you get holidays too (but they took out Christmas Thanksgiving and Halloween, why I cant imagine) this is one of the cool things about the game. Since it even plays when you're not. Time passes, animals miss you, weather changes, weeds grow, and months go by, all this happens and more. The bulk of the game is doing what you want though. You can go fishing; collect bugs sell them to nook (the shop keep) and get money. Dig fossils and chat up the townies. Buy everything from chairs to spaceships (for decorative purposes only) to furnish your house with. Design clothes and wear them' (maybe your design will catch on and the animals will wear it too). You can chat up the townies all day (though they might get bored off you). If you want stop by the local museum and donate a fossil a fish a bug or maybe that art painting you just bought. There's always something new to find and plenty of ways to make money. I listed only a few (there's way more), one of the fastest ways is to find foreign fruits (fruits that are not native too your town) from your friends and sell them or plant them and get a tree full of them and sell them for higher than your native ones). But there's enough furniture to fill a mansion 1000,000 times over (slight exaggeration). And its always kooky and weird to see what you can find or buy next, or what surprises and characters are around the corner.

Controls 7/10
We have the option to use the d pad or the stylus. I've yet to meet someone who prefers the awkward stylus control. Most of us just use it for selecting items to sell faster or to design a pattern. It works fine but isn't fantastic.

Online 8/10
I think when we heard Animal Crossing was going online we all flipped out and got really excited. But unfortunately Nintendo still wants to be as kid friendly as possible (not a bad thing), see you cannot hook up with complete strangers and go to their town. You have to know their friend code first then you can play together. This isn't too hard; ask people on this site almost all of us will tell you. The online is fun but we have little in the way of trading items, without easily being scammed. See we both have to drop the items we can't just go into a menu screen and do it. Often trust is the most crucial element when online. Its still fun, but we really wanted maybe a voice chat or something.

Replay value 7/10

The game has good replay value.... For awhile, you see the thing about being able to play a game forever is that eventually you run out of stuff in the game you can do. I've had the game since a few days after launch and now I've gotten kind of bored with it. I can still enjoy playing online and just hanging out with friends, but lots of the fun nuances of the game have left thanks to hackers making constant giveaways of money and rare items. But still there still fun to be had in the game.

Rent? Buy?

Buy!
Despite the replay value, I highly recommend this game to anyone who owns a DS. Well if you don't like games like this or Harvest moonesque games then you may be out of your world here. But still at the very least rent it and try it out.

Final verdict 9/10

There you go. Hope you buy this game.

Maybe one day we can hang out online and talk about my review.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/27/06