Animal Crossing: Wild World

The folks at Nintendo kindly offered us some handheld action for this popular life-simulation franchise, but is Animal Crossing: Wild World worth your time?


First Impressions:
At first, Wild World seemed to have enough new content to create an interest in this sequel. The town has nice new features such as; Donations, Coffee shop, Nook Improvements ( Hair cuts, anyone?), and not having to send fossils away was a definite improvement from the Gamecube version. Saving has become much easier, you can just press start and save + end.

Gameplay:
The game play’s just as well as Animal Crossing: Population: Growing did for GCN, without the minor hassle off borders between acres. The town has been scaled down, and is no longer multilevel, beaches and rivers remain though. The game starts out the same way as its Gamecube predecessor, a young kid moving into a new town with no cash to his name, but friendly Tom Nook gets you started up with your own pad.

The game is heavily based on the first animal crossing, and this game seems to be a bit more of an expansion pack then a full new release. New features include
1. Online Capability
2. Town Hall (replaces Post Office)
3. Ability to place patterns on ground
4. More Nook expansions
5. Coffee Shop and Observatory in Museum
6. Donations to Boondox (Minor addition, but noteworthy.)
7. Slingshot
8. Ability to befriend Sable (Again Minor, but something I found quaint.)
9. Flee Market
10. Hats and Haircuts


Events also seemed to be less frequent in this version (I probably just missed them all), although the flee market was a welcome addition. There were less Villagers allowed in the town was scaled back to 8, and the NPC`s have Six personality’s to share from, a big disappointment to me. The house expansions in this run was nice, I liked having more then one 1st floor room to store my stuff in. I also liked the outside view of the houses. In this version, players shared a house instead of each having they’re own place. Receptions were mixed, but I found that it was annoying to have to share a space until you could give rooms to everyone.


Online:
Online components were ok. This is one game where friend codes seemed to fit. I wasn’t victimised by people running through my town and cutting down my fruit tree`s. I didn’t fully take advantage of the online aspect, I found it just as satisfying to work on my own town.

Graphics:
The graphics in the game haven’t gotten much of an overhaul from the GCN version, but the DS still looked nice. The graphics did however have a bit of a choppy edge to them, Characters weren’t as smooth as the GCN predecessor.


Verdict:
This game refreshed my love for the animal crossing franchise, at least for a period of time. It had me hooked for a couple of weeks, but then I couldn’t be botherd to pick it up again. The desire for me, came in spurts.


4 Nookways out of 5