Out with the Old, In with the New - A Transition That Brought Mixed Feelings

Animal Crossing was an idea engaged by Nintendo, which began with its first entry “Animal Forest” – N64’s last project behind Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. Although the N64 attempt didn’t muster too much profit from their first attempt in the "Animal" franchise, Nintendo tried to go into the bigger market by transferring “Animal Forest” to the GameCube at a rushed haste with the expectations that their game would succeed in the N64. Did their game succeed? Despite many flaws the game had (64-bit graphics, midi music, and a title that was 2 years of age), “Animal Crossing” remarkably succeeded in not only selling millions of copies in the U.S., but is also an instant classic that is still selling today. Believe me, these are not words from a fan of “Animal Crossing”. In fact, a few days ago, in Target, I overhead two separate kids asking their parents if they could have Animal Crossing. Of course their answers were yes, seeing how the game held no negative messages (i.e. violence or mature things), I mean I can honestly say that Animal Crossing looks like it was derived from a preschool Fischer Price toy set. But, what really made the game one of a kind was that the older group of gamers curiously became attached to he simple nature of the mysterious game.

What was the meaning behind Animal Crossing? One might ask. Well, if you don’t know what “Animal Crossing” was, I don’t blame you, I mean many people don’t own a Gamecube or don’t want to try kiddy games (which this one is the quintessential of all kid games). Animal Crossing is the somewhat superior/somewhat inferior contender of the Sims. What I mean by that is that, like the Sims, you get to control a character as you’d like to control them. That is about all that this game has in relations with the Sims, but it’s in the same genre and is as just as revolutionary. The rest of “Animal Crossing” involved paying mortgages by doing odd jobs to collect Bells (Animal Crossing commerce), collecting furniture, fish, cut grass, change wardrobes, and so forth. What made the game unique was that not only was the game run with an internal clock, but holidays were celebrated and it allowed you to visit another player’s town through the use of memory card swapping.

Yet, every owner of the game longed for “Animal Crossing” to go online and experience the game with a vaster audience. And so, their wish was granted with “Animal Crossing: Wild World” for the Nintendo DS. Yet, through the effect of a wish coming true, there is always sacrifices that have to be made, and there were just as well sacrifices made in this version. But, is the DS entry everything fans wished for it to be? The answers are in my review for “Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Gameplay 4.25 (out of 5)

Nintendo has once again sent out their classic “Animal Forest” to another smaller, yet portable, format. In the newer game, many additional traits were included in this version, while some greater traits were deducted. Let me get on with the newer traits.

Here is a list of the newer inclusions the creators have added to Wild World:
+ Newer items, articles of clothing, furniture, and the ability to choose to wear a hat or not.
+ A larger museum
+ An observatory, where you can design your own constellations
+ A café, where you can buy and drink an espresso
+ A gatehouse for use as an egress to go out into the online world with
+ The ability to make up to 8 original T-shirt designs
+ The ability to wear, or not wear, a hat
+ A more extensive inventory that includes over 600 items
+ A friend roster where you can save your friend’s online codes in
+ Online Wi-Fi play.
+ Now able to save up to 4 characters on your card
+ A recycle bin to discard of your unwanted possessions (nice way of saying garbage)
+ A bedroom, which you can’t ardor with furniture, above your room, with a phone and bed (per character playing) included.
+ A stopwatch, to record fishing or tag records.
+ A slingshot to shoot down balloons.
+ Crazy Redd comes once a week instead of once a month.

The whole premise of Animal Crossing is that you go around, try to collect as much furniture as you can possibly fit into your house, design your room how you want it, write letters to your friends, or do endless chores (which seem more lenient than found in Harvest Moon). Besides doing the same old things, Nintendo has rearranged the town to make your experience seem a bit fresher.

In this edition, I suppose the creators wanted to expand with what they were already successful doing. The museum, which previously had one exhibition room per type of exhibition, now has two rooms. Above the lobby of the museum is an observatory; where you are not only allowed to use the telescope to gaze the night sky, but invent your own type of constellation. It isn’t very spectacular, but sort of neat. On the left side of the museum’s lobby is a set of stairs that descend to a café. There, a bartender gives you coffee.

Besides renovating the museum, the rest of the town is as well changed. Like for instance, if you want to go rummaging about the unwanted possessions in the town dumpsite, you can’t, because there isn’t one. Instead, you will have to go to the post office, which is now Town Hall where you can as well recommend something for the community or make donations, and use their recycle bin (I guess Nintendo is trying to stress upon kids the importance of recycling). Also, you can also change your town’s tune with the help of Pelly, the clerk, instead of using the placard beside where the train station used to be. And Pelly still manages your bank account, so all has not failed and you need not stress if your AC Bells are unprotected.

The police headquarters, as well as the train station, had been demolished and the faculties working got relieved of their duties. But don’t worry, after a few months of hard living, they were fortunate enough to find newer jobs. The guy who rode the train with you in the beginning of “Animal Crossing” is now a cab driver who escorts you to your town. The police men, Copper and Booker, who were assigned to the police headquarters, have enrolled as guards for the gatehouse, where the train station once was. Copper is now a transportation coordinator who plans your passage to another town via the Internet or through Multi-Card mode. Booker is given his old job of lost items holder and is even given the duty of changing the town’s flag to any design of your desire. All in all, everyone is living comfortable. I just wonder what happened to that poor old monkey who was the train conductor in “Animal Crossing”. I do kind of miss him… oh well, maybe he’s been displaced.

In fact the only other three animals which hadn’t either lost their jobs or got their establishments remodeled was Tom Nook of Tom Nook’s Shop and the Mable and Sable
Twins of Able Twin’s Tailor Shop. The only thing new with Tom Nook’s shop is that you are offered to be part of the customer rewards program; a membership much like the one’s in grocery stores where when you buy so many things, points are added to give you a better discount. Mable also allows you to design up to eight patterns of suits and you are now given the ability to wear whatever hat you want; but take note that if you design the patterns of your own hat, chances are you will get a (default) hat (you know, the hat with horns).

In the newer version, the town placard of newer “posted” events is still found in the town. Crazy Redd now visits once a week, Sundays on my card, and you have to not only be a member of his club (which predictably there is a price in the form of Bells to pay) but he requires you to end a sentence from which he begins (like “the dog barks at the moon” and you would be required to type in the right answer).

Balloon presents still float in the air once in a while, but they don’t hit the trees to fall anymore. Instead, with the help of a trusty slingshot, you have to shoot down the balloon from the skies. I find this to be more fun than the original concept.

There are now four slots, in the form of beds (instead of houses) with your character sleeping, to choose to continue the game from instead of one character per memory card. The room is a bare bedroom with a phone, from which during the game you can use to set the sounds of the game (language the citizens of your town babbles), or download certain things via Internet.

There is now an online mode, but good luck playing it… Not only do you need to know someone in order to play, but you need to know their friend code and hope that either he or she is online at the same moment. The only way you are allowed to play online is by giving Copper the friend code, or he won’t allow you to online play. Though, I don’t think online mode is too great. I mean, yes, you can mail your friends letters if you visit their town, chat with them, trade items with them, fish with them, and see their rooms, but beyond that I didn’t find anything really competitive about online play. But if there is something I may have overlooked during online play, please inform me… I am all eyes.

If you have trouble remember your friend’s code, there is a friend roster in the options menu that lists your friends and tells you if they are online.

Here is what they have deducted:
- Hidden NES Games
- The lot to dispose of unwanted items at
- The police headquarters
- The 500 bells hole.
- The ability to make the golden shovel.
- Neat package in the mail from the Nintendo Design Team to greet you to your town.
- The ability to choose your house.

Now with the newer aspects, the creators have eliminated many of the great traits that made me come back for more and kept the terrible traits that made me cringe playing the game.

First off, I will demonstrate the aspects I did favor from least to most. They took away the glittering hole which came once a day and held a bag of 500 bells. With it, they took away the ability to create golden shovel (which allowed you to find Bells a lot easier while digging).
the first expectancy I found that was odd about the game.

You are not given the choice to pick one of four houses, because there is only one house randomly set in your town.

With it, you don’t get the official letter from the creators, greeting you with an NES game as a house welcoming gift. How rude of them.

There isn’t the police headquarters, as I have mentioned, where you get to choose amongst the counters for lost items to devilishly claim as your own by the approval of the gullible Booker. And the dumpsite was also taken away and replaced with the recycling bin (though I like the recycling bin better).

NES games are out. Though most people would put this as the number one thing they miss about “Animal Crossing”, I would have to make it my second. Although it was awesome to play NES games again, I had the cartridges, in real life, of the hidden games. But I did love the fact that “Animal Crossing” had an authentic NES system as a decoration. I know the Revolution is coming soon and that people around the world will be able to play NES games on the newer system, but it will not be as memorable as playing an NES game inside a GameCube game.

For a mysterious reason, they kept the length at which the characters babbled and expanded it. I swear, Mr. Resetti clocked in at 3 minutes and 25 seconds of talking when I turned off my game, without resetting, for the fifth time.

At least they kept the heart and soul of the game, running errands. It’s mostly you delivering packages with the payment of a shirt, wallpaper, or (better yet) furniture. Holidays are still celebrated, as you can buy your Christmas tree. And, I, having been given this game as a present for my birthday on Dec. 24th, also got wallpaper as a present from Samson the mouse. Though, I liked haven received "Animal Crossing" better, I still liked the fact that Nintendo team has spared the Holidays. Today, New Year's Eve is celebrated at Town Square and Tortmiter, the town mayor, even built a gigantic digital clock to count down the time until midnight arrives.

All in all, the gameplay is still as addictive as it once was. They really gutted the heck out of the interior of this game to renovate an already outstanding game. A more superior game than the previous entry; in some cases it is, while others it isn't. They improved a game that needed no improvements, nor freshen ups, or expansions. Although it’s a classic game in the sense of online play and reenacting its cult adoration, the gameplay shambles in comparison to its predecessor, but still better than most inferiors of not only the DS, but its genre alike.

Graphics: 5 (out of 5)

The graphics of the game are great in the DS perspective. The entire layout of “Animal Crossing” of old is reformatted to fit the smaller chip found inside the DS card. The natural settings (grass, trees, animals, water) hold true to its predecessor; even with lack of filtration. The inhabitants of your town are the same of the 100 random cast figures in the original. The exteriors of the houses, with the exception of yours, look different. There is no weird cactus-toid thingies in front of your house anymore, but I didn’t even like that thing.

The game uses both screens; you will look down upon the bottom screen for a majority of the duration spent when playing Wild World. The top screen shows clouds roll by, either with a blue day sky or a starry night where the moon changes its monthly cycles from half-moon to full-moon. Though the upper-screen only avails when looking out for flying presents.

The graphical effects are neat if you actually look out for them; steam rises from a hot cup of swaying coffee, raindrops beat upon and flow down the windows of the cab at the beginning of the game, the animals give lively expressions on their faces.

There are even “extra” graphical tweaks and modifications. For instance, the furniture exchanged is not in a form of a present, but a neat treasure chest. The rooms of most buildings (especially City Hall) are enhanced extravagantly; for instance, city hall now has bookshelves full of books and piles of files cluttered about the office. The playground-sized area of your town is not a look-down (Zelda-like) region that was once divided by territorial zones marked A-F, 1-5. This time the town map is not territorialized.

The world is round, as say a cob of corn, in which the world spins away spins as if he were running on a gigantic skewered-cob or a mouse running on a rolling iron. The 3-d objects move away or toward you, depending on which direction you tend to proceed. And my character now has ears! But the advantage still won’t help him understand a thing his fellow, animal, neighbors are conversing about without the help of a translation window.

Yet, I don’t know why, but Nintendo also got rid of the random animal that spoke to you, during loading, while you waited to play the game. But that’s, not a biggie, so I am not worrying. Everything else is done great to make one of the best looking, if not the best looking, DS game yet.

Sound: 4 (out of 5)

Everything is recycled from preservation in this entry of “Animal Crossing”. The midi-music sounds as clear and peaceful as it once had on the GameCube. The animals, themselves, speak either animalese or bebebese; animalese sounds like incoherent “Chipmunk” chattering, while bebebese sounds like non-understandable pecks. The sounds of waterfall gushing, a teacup clattering upon its holder when coffee’s been served, and the sound of water splashing when a fish is lured all sound great. Some people, who played Animal Crossing for the hundredth-hour-stretch will probably say the music and sound effects are too familiar to be appreciated, but those familiarities are what make this title unique. If they had newer music and/or sound effects, it wouldn’t feel like I was playing “Animal Crossing”. Although the music is in the roots of old-school gaming, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Controls: 4.5 (out of 5)

Yes, this game utilizes the touch-screen, so no one has to worry. Before I begin on specifying what you could do through using the touch screen, let me first go through the basic controls. The cross-pad is responsive for running around. However, sometimes moving your character may feel tough until you get used to it. ‘X’ is used for the town map, ‘Y’ is used for your inventory screen (which is categorized under seven folders; how many fish caught, what items you are carrying, friend roster, etc…). When inside a place of residence, you can use the X button to active a camera in which you can move around to view the surroundings by the use of the cross-pad; though, the camera does not have a 360-degree radial perception, more like a 180-degree spread like that of a surveillance camera. “B” helps you run, pick up items, or exit from menus (“Y” as well exits menus). “A” uses your item and selects it from inventory. R and L are not used for any purposes known by me. “Select” pops up a screen where you can type in comments. But it isn’t effective in single-player mode where all the strangers are prerecorded models with average-to-minimal A.I.; who don’t really care what you tell them, you can even insult them, and they’ll be your friends; just don’t neglect them or they WILL eventually leave. From that, the controls are all basic.

With the touch-screen you can do some functions a lot easier than with the cross-pad. For instance, when shoveling comes into effect, sometimes I choose a location, but dig up in the wrong spot due to where my character is standing. Now, all I do is touch and a hole sinks in automatically. The touch-screen can also be used for an easier way of designing clothes, use the stylus as a pencil to draw a pattern on a shirt, save it, and then there you go. It can also be used for typing comments and to choose selections from menus. Like the regular controls, the stylus is pretty basic, but does the job it’s intended to do; allow you to play comfortable and doesn’t dazzle you in a revolutionary sense.

Replay 5 (out of 5)

What can I say? For some reason this is the one of the most addictive games there is. It’s hard to believe the game is even playable, seeing that the entire diameter of the perimeters of the game is about an eighth the size of a mediocre-sized level in platform games. But it was what you do inside the confinements of your prison-cell-like town that matters.

Besides collecting nearly a thousand pieces of furniture, there are dozens of obligations (or recreations) to keep you busy with. You can pay off the debt you have from Tom Nook to Pelly, upgrade your house, or model your house as you want. You can fish to fill up the museums, keep the fish as pets, or sell them. You can gather and plant fruit trees, chase rare insects, run errands for others, collect fossils, mail letters, or go online to enjoy the game with others. Or if you’re bored, some incidents might spring up to brighten your day; hence, two neighbors arguing then ten minutes later they are both whistling as they preciously walk side-by-side. Okay, enough with the cheesy-mushy moment. What I have to say is this… When it comes to “Animal Crossing”, a game that was once hard to get away from, is now a very difficult game to put down, especially now since it’s online.

Even if you don’t have the internet, or friends who don’t own a DS (man, I feel for you), this is a great game to play solo. It offers well over a thousand hours to find everything, I mean since it’s running on an internal clock and all. But even if it didn’t I’d say the games completion runs around 40-60 hours, depending on how lucky you are in finding rarities.

Overall 4.5 (out of 5; I’d might as well give it a 5)

“Animal Crossing: Wild World” may not have enough action (or even a challenge at that) to satisfy the action-adventure enthusiast who is looking for the next blockbuster game, but the game isn’t really made to see who’s the strongest of contenders. It’s just a relaxing game that one can kick back after a day’s work and just go around and do stuff. I mean, yes this game scream’s “kiddy” and is the first step to take for new gamers (averaging around the age of five) to get familiar with how 3-D games work.

But, I have played hundreds of shooters in my life and slaughtered thousands more of Nazis, demons, alien-mutant dinosaurs, spies, soldiers, androids, machines, cowboys, ogres, dragons, gigantic insects, ghosts, ghouls, possessed dolls, scamps, television characters, hit-men, mafia men, teddy bear soldiers, harpies, zombies, dogs, cats, fish, deer, bears, and any other creature known to man and I LOVED IT! And you know what!? It’s kind of liberating to take a vacation away from all that violence and bloodshed and play a game of good moralities (yeah, I know the heroes in those violent games of bloodshed and chaos killed with good intentions, whatever that may be) and NPCs who actually like you, except for Mr. Resetti.

This is a perfect game for kids, non-violent and none of the game is scary in any terms. Adults, well those who get stressed at games easily or (in my case) played too many violent games to the point that I needed a break, this is the game for you. Guys with girlfriends get this game, they’ll love it; sometimes though, you may have to argue with them in order to play it (yes, it still attracts like a mosquito to a bug zapper; minus the electric shock of course, unless your standing in a puddle of water that got hit by lightning while playing this game). Actually, everyone who owns a DS and does not feel uncomfortable or judgemental about games, get Animal Crossing. Despite all the negativities I have may illustrated about the game, there is nothing entirely wrong about it. All in all, “Animal Crossing: Wild World” may be the temporary vacation everyone needs…

Gameplay 4.25 out of 5
Give the game some time and patience and you will find a deep game. There’s so much to do, so little time to do it in… Online mode is okay, not the best, but it’s free!

Graphics 5 out of 5
The graphics stand out on its own. “Animal Crossing” made a better transition to the DS than it did to the GameCube. Everything is mostly the same, but they do have much that has been tweaked.

Sound 4 (out of 5)
Everything sounds great, yet familiar if you’ve played the GameCube version.

Control 4.5 (out of 5)
The basic controls are functional, if not rough on a few minor occasions. Touch screen’s functionality will not make you gasp with shock, it’s pretty much basic, but it does it’s job quite well.

Replay 5 (out of 5)
There are many, many more things to do than meets the eye. As a game, I think its running time is similar to that of an RPG of superb length, maybe longer. Yet, with the game functioning on an eternal clock, the time of events stretches to that of anywhere between a few months to a few years (depending on luck).

Overall 5 (out of 5)
Although the outcome of the game didn’t come as I expected or anticipated, “Animal Crossing: Wild World” comes to as perfect as any game in its genre (whatever genre it falls into…) as any other game could. A must buy for parents, a must play for everyone else.