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Video Game Review: Animal Crossing: City Folk

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By DOUG BUEL

TBO Extra correspondent

Published: December 22, 2008

System: Nintendo Wii

Publisher: Nintendo

Reviewer's rating: ***

ESRB rating: Everyone

Game type: Role-playing/life simulation

Kind of like: "The Sims"

Best feature: Now you can visit your friends' towns, if you're online.

Worst feature: The tweaks don't change the fact that it's fundamentally the same game.

The bottom line: If you didn't get enough "Animal Crossing" on the Nintendo GameCube, the franchise is back for another go-'round on the Wii.

If you've never played it before, it's a great "crossover" game that has proven popular even with people who don't like video games all that much.

In this game, you live in a town. Do whatever you want. You can help the other people in town, buy things for your house, collect fossils or bugs for your local museum, make new friends and more.

Strictly speaking, there are no objectives in "Animal Crossing." It's really a game about living a pleasant life, whatever that means to you.

For the new version, you can visit the villages of your friends -- that is, if you take your Wii online. If you have Wii Speak, you'll be able to talk to your friend even though you're not together.

"City Folk" has added, as you might imagine, a city. Now there's another place to visit besides the usual "Animal Crossing" landmarks.

Fundamentally, though, this is basically the same game. "Animal Crossing" has never been about graphics, and with the current generation of consoles, that's more true than ever before. It really looks more like a GameCube game, or even more like a Nintendo 64 game.

That's never mattered in the past for fans of this series. You can dress your character in different outfits, and the little animal friends you meet talk in funny nonsense syllables. It's all designed to be cute.

Games are rated on a scale of 0-4 stars.

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