Nintendo DS NintendoSpin.com / Reviews / Animal Crossing: Wild World

Posted on December 15th, 2005 - 10527 Reads

Rated Everyone Animal Crossing: Wild World Nintendo DS Review Bronze Award

-- Written by Nick Williamson



 Animal Crossing: Wild World is Nintendo's follow up to one of the quirkiest and original games released on the Nintendo GameCube. If you've played the original Animal Crossing, you know it's not a game for everyone. While many enjoyed the game's simple, open-ended, unguided gameplay, others saw it as slow, boring and unfocused. While Wild World offers many new features and improvements, the games core and premise is identical to the original Animal Crossing. So, if you didn't enjoy the original Animal Crossing, you've probably read enough.

In the original Animal Crossing your character, whatever you named him or her, moved to a small, secluded town inhabited by chatty, well dressed, often materialistic animals. The game did have some objectives like paying off your mortgage and performing your job but once those were complete, you were left on your own. Playing the game meant maintaining your town by pulling weeds and collecting trash, running errands for your needy neighbors, collecting bugs and fishing. Collecting was the games most primary gameplay mechanic. All this revolved around the game's in-game clock, where special items could be found or earned only during particular holidays and bugs and fish could only be caught during various seasons and times of the day. It may not sound like fun but the game had a charm and addictive nature that kept many, including myself, coming back for more each day.

Animal Crossing: Wild World takes the premise of the first game and expands on it. Think of Wild World as more of a modified hand-held version of Animal Crossing than a full-blown sequel. The basic ideas of the game are still here, but they have been touched up. Once again you'll find yourself spending most of your time collecting unique items and chatting with your neighbors. All the collectibles from the first game are here including fish, bugs, fossils and furniture plus many more of each. A new collectible, constellations are found on the upper screen where the sky is constantly shown and can be created and identified in the museum.

Not everything is the same though. The gameplay has been tweaked and changed in various ways. Most of the changes are improvements, while others were made to take advantage of the DS's capabilities. One of the first things you'll notice when you start the game is that items can now be dragged and dropped to your character and through the menu system with your stylus. Writing and designing can now also be done with your stylus. Other changes are not so fundamental. Instead of replacing dying flowers, you can water the existing flowers to prevent them from dying. A slingshot can be used to get a hold of those annoying flying gifts and fish are caught by listening for a particular sound, not by vibration.

One of the biggest improvements can be seen through the character interaction. The writing is still pretty clever and you'll no doubt be caught off guard every once in a while by your neighbors banter. Each character has a different temperament and personality. Some will be grumpy, some a little too nice. One may be aloof, another too clingy. Some neighbors will stay in the town forever while others will leave immediately after moving in. A new feature is the ability for townspeople to form relationships which can become pretty funny, especially when eavesdropping. Overall a big upgrade to an important part of the game.

On to the controls. One of the biggest improvements in the game, thanks to the DS's touch-screen, is the ability to easily navigate the menus. Animal Crossing: Wild World often requires flipping through menus to complete actions, so this is a nice improvement. The entire game can be played with the stylus, but in the end I chose to control my character with the d-pad and buttons. I guess I'm just used to the old control scheme and didn't find the touch-screen makes thing that much easier or time saving.

Graphically the game is on par with the GameCube version. It may not be as crisp or colorful, but it's pretty close. Expect the same simplistic, primary colored, blocky graphics which are part of the games charm and uniqueness. The game runs a little slower but it's hard to notice. The sound is pretty basic, so expect the normal neighborly gibberish and environmental sounds heard in the original. Overall the game has a very crude but appealing presentation.

The biggest addition to the game, and the most anticipated, is the the multi-player mode. One of the more fun parts of Animal Crossing was visiting a friends village where you could converse with their townspeople, collect new items and check out your friends house. Now you have the ability, thanks to Nintendo's WiFi service, to hop online anytime and visit a friends town. There is a catch. You can't visit just anyone, you need a friend code which means an invitation. An annoying but understandable hindrance. Another annoyance is the inability to send your friends and in-game email. Other than that, multi-player works just as you would expect it to.

One of the biggest features omitted by Nintendo was the ability to collect old NES games. In Animal Crossing, games like Excitebike and Donkey Kong could be bought and collected by completing various tasks. Once obtained, you could play them at any time. For some reason and it may be a technical reason, Nintendo has gotten rid of the feature. Not a big deal, as it doesn't affect the game, but it was a nice bonus.

In closing, if you've played Animal Crossing for the GameCube and are looking for a new experience, it's not here. Animal Crossing: Wild World takes everything the original did and makes it a little bit better but offers nothing new. Fans of the first game will still love it. It has just enough additional content to keep them busy for months. And that addictive quality that made you turn on the game everyday, even for five minutes, is still here.

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