 Preview By: Siou Choy & Andrew Joy |
Developer: | Nintendo |
| Publisher: | Nintendo | |
| Genre: | Simulation | |
| ESRB: | Everyone | |
| # Of Players: | 1-4 | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection | |
| Estimated Release: | 12/05/2005 |
Avid fans of the GameCube's original Animal Crossing may want to invest in a Nintendo DS this December. Animal Crossing: Wild World will be making its debut on the handheld just in time to make it onto your greedy little Christmas list.
For the uninitiated, here's the lowdown: Animal Crossing consists of a weird virtual world filled with somewhat demented old world European puppet-style representations of animals and…well, whatever the hell your main character is supposed to be. These bizarre manifestations of an infantile nightmare reel about in a perpetual state of drunkenness, gibber at you like an early Diamanda Galas record, and generally piss you off by demanding letters from you that they later complain they don't understand and sending you on wild goose chases for items that get passed from one NPC to another like a flu bug. Characters are never at home, and the few times they are, their doors are generally locked for the night, unless you have the privilege of not having to work or attend classes during the day (the game tracks actual time, so unless you keep resetting your GameCube clock, all you fellow night-owls are pretty much screwed). Money is hard to come by, particularly as you can only carry so many items at a given time, including any tools you may need to gather money-making items, and the pawnbroker who gives you cash for said items is both A. a real crook (no likely coincidence that his name rhymes with both "rook" and "crook") and B. always closed, either from short work hours, days off, or on vacation/holiday. And the NPCs continually demand you trade with them, usually for something really valuable, in exchange for some crap you got and sold (or gave away) seven times already.
So much for the actual facts of the case. Here's the ostensible premise, and what the game is supposed to consist of: as you may be able to tell from the last paragraph, Animal Crossing ascribes to a fairly open ended gaming paradigm. You pretty much have your choice of how to spend your days (and nights), be it fishing, collecting bugs, seashells or fruit to turn in for cash at the local general store or to trade with NPCs, though they'd rather take more useful, expensive, or rare items off your hands, pretty much for nothing. Outside of the wild goose chase "quests" and "favors" you can choose to undertake for your generally vain, deceitful and fickle neighbors, you spend your time and money searching and trading for items to decorate and build up your house (mostly so you can store even more junk) or participating in one of the several festivals held throughout the year. Those who laid some extra expense into getting a GBA and a GBA link cable had a better time of it, as you got an otherwise unattainable island filled with goodies, better money, and a second house. This time around, the island is part of the game itself, so there's something to be said for the new version, anyway.
All of this should probably seem to be a very strange, if not distasteful premise for a game, but despite all the aforementioned complaints, once you get into playing, it's easy to become addicted to it (much like your first bitter taste of booze, but without the nice aftereffects).
Everything that would have appeared on a putative GameCube sequel will now be represented in the DS version, and apparently, very little has changed. Time will once again run in real-time, so when it's night in the real world, it'll be night in the Animal Crossing world as well. Seasons pass by in Animal Crossing as they do for you. You can duck out from your real world festivities to celebrate Christmas, New Year, Halloween and Thanksgiving with these somewhat demented creatures as they participate in special holiday events, and there are other holidays as well, some specific to the Animal Crossing world.
One of the more interesting things about Animal Crossing was how you could share your memory card with a friend, and they could move into your town (and vice versa), leaving gifts, letters, and traps for each other as it struck your fancy. The disadvantage, of course, was that only one player could be in town at any given time, effectively making any pretense at "multiplayer capacity" akin to an email exchange. Unfortunately, this somewhat awkward design quirk has not been altered to any practical standard of expectations of the term "multiplayer". Instead, for the purposes of the gamer who chooses to share their gaming experiences with individuals they know personally, Nintendo chose to take the old bandaid-on-the-leaking-dam approach and significantly tweaked this aspect of the game. As in the original, up to four people can share a town, with only one person able to play at a given time. The difference? In Wild World, all four players share the same house, the other three putatively "sleeping" inside when their specific character is not in play. This should necessitate a fair degree of compromise, as any one of the four can make changes to the house (and as anyone who ever tried to live with someone else should know all too well, different individuals will most definitely display different personality quirks, needs, desires, and (more to the point) tastes in décor…). On the plus side of all this, series fans should be glad to know that messages and items can still be left or sent from housemate to housemate, and technically speaking, you should still be able to make visits to other towns, whether populated by fellow Animal Crossing players or not.
Insofar as the much-touted online multiplayer functions of the newest Animal Crossing series entry, budget conscious players are pretty much left out in the cold. This magical feature can only be utilized, true to form for the series, through additional purchases if you don't already have a wireless network setup: in this case, Nintendo's Wi-Fi Connection or wireless LAN equipment. Naturally, there are some advantages to playing the game via the Wi-Fi Connection, the first of which involves the ability to visit a friend's town, much as in the GameCube version, by means similar to the shared memory card trick. As previously, characters from your town will occasionally jump ship from your game to your friend's and vice versa, and all the little tricks mentioned earlier. The difference this round being that up to three more players can join you in a given town at the same time (i.e., to take advantage of any actual "multiplayer" functionality, you have to shell out for the Wi-Fi). So the bottom line here is, if a gamer feels themselves to be conspicuously rich (or just somewhat careless with their money), both said gamer and a "friend" (or more likely, fellow online gaming stranger) can, for example, fish in the same spot on the beach (woo-hoo! Sign me up now!).
Given the aforementioned online functionality, players may find themselves in need of some more distinguishing individual character design characteristics. To this end, gamers will not only be able to design their own clothes this round, but can individually tailor their appearance somewhat, inclusive of such accessorization highlights as a new hairstyle, use of glasses or perhaps even the sporting of a mustache. Players will be able to accessorize the very skies above their towns, creating individually tailored constellations (likely through use of the DS touch screen). If such were the case, it would be only the first of several DS-related innovations to the world of Animal Crossing, such as the new stylus-driven keyboard. Animal Crossing: Wild World makes use of a permanent dual screen visual, which, while presumably driving non-bifocal wearers nuts, will enable the gamer to keep an eye on the action via the lower portion, while the upper portion will remain focused on the sky. This odd design flourish allows the interested gamer to keep an eye out for present-laden balloons floating by and provides some sort of justification, however slight, for those constellations you putatively labored away at creating earlier.
While Animal Crossing: Wild World will retain some familiar characters from the original GC version (including such luminaries as K.K. Slider, the much hated Tom Nook, Blathers, and the amusingly foul tempered union man Mr. Resetti), there will now be over 170 characters to interact with in the game. One might hope that this time around, the NPCs will have more distinct personalities, as opposed to the original Animal Crossing, where various characters tended to repeat each other's sayings, letters, and accents after a while (though never so egregiously as in the atrocious Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, where "all the villagers have such interesting things to say!").
The DS touch screen should allow for an easier time in writing letters to the villagers and designing new clothes to wear, though you will have the option of using either the stylus or the directional pad should you so prefer.
Animal Crossing: Wild World will be released for the Nintendo DS this December.
Posted: 2005-11-19 09:44:07 PST