Seeing as though that me and my entire family have been avid Animal Crossing fans since its days on the Gamecube, we were excited to pick up the latest installment to say the least. It's always fun paying off that first mortgage, getting the town looking awesome and designing your house the way you want it. However, Animal Crossing City Folk failed to keep our interest in the game for more than a week and a half, until we went back to our beloved DS version.
Let's start off with gameplay. The gameplay stays tried and true to the old systems, something in which I was grateful for. While innovation is always a great thing, there's never any sense in fixing something that's not broken. However, while the mechanics of the game has stayed the same, many things were still quite irritating. Playing with the Wii-Remote was one of the most annoying things I've ever done with my Wii. It was a pain selecting things (with an already finicky motion sensitive controller), and it surely wouldn't have killed them to make it playable with the Gamecube Controller. It also didn't help that the clear menu continued popping up and down unless the "B" button was held down, which caused you to run, making catching bugs or getting fish nearly impossible. Had it not been for the nunchuck and allowing for me to move, I would have taken the game back within the hour of me playing it.
The world of Animal Crossing City Folk has changed slightly, giving it more of an appeal than the previous titles. The ability to go to "The City" via bus gave gamers experiences that would have only occasionally had in the previous games. The high end clothes shop, the hair specialist and other various aspects are available to the gamer right from the start. It's obvious that most people would consider this a "good" thing, but the dark truth is that most of the aspects in "The City" are out of your reach for a good while. The clothes and furniture in the high-end store in the hundreds of thousands of bells (the unit of currency), which by this game's standards is impossible to make until you spend quite a while in the "City Folk". The hair stylist is a tad more reasonable, giving new gamers one free treatment, but charging a staggering 3,000 Bells every time after that (no matter what treatment you receive). Thus, while "The City" is a nice place to visit, it's pretty much just there for looks until a while down the line, making it virtually the same as the previous titles.
City Folk also suffers greatly from serious lacking in Bugs/Fish that the previous games had. Immediately after receiving my beloved fishing pole and bug net, I went out only to find that almost every bug/fish encounter had been scaled back dramatically. I spent nearly half an hour fishing and catching bugs, only to have barely an entire inventory full. While we're on the subject of inventories, City Folk suffers once again from the previous installment's pitiful inventory system. Once you've filled up your inventory, you have to run all the way back to the local store and sell all your items in order to get some empty spaces. The money glitch is back and more of a problem than ever. When you pick up Bells, instead of going into the proper money pouch, it takes up a space in your inventory, where you have to move it into the proper money pouch, where the Wii-Mote's terrible point and click nature comes back in.
Animal Crossing City Folk also promotes the new "Wii-Speak" feature, which I personally didn't purchase (nor do I ever intend to purchase). "Wii-Speak" seems like a sad attempt to get gameplay similar to that of Xbox Live, where usually I disable chat regardless. This is besides the fact that most gamers (like myself) despise voice chat, as it causes a distraction from gameplay. I can see it now, actually. Attempting to catch a fish, only to have somebody over Wii-Speak to scream loudly, causing me to lose my fish. Perhaps it's more of a "mii" thing, but I don't see any real relevance to the game.
Like I stated before (in previous reviews), I'm a "casual" gamer. Me and my family love the beautiful game play mechanics of Animal Crossing, and the genre is great for family gameplay, where everybody can get involved. However, I think Nintendo went wrong with this installment. Granted, I'm aware that the Wii is starved for good titles, but I think that Animal Crossing is better suited for portable play. Seeing as how similar the Wii title is to DS title from a few years back, I'd rather be playing my DS and watching television, or take it with me on the road (something that Wild World did very well with). Overall, City Folk isn't worth the huge price tag it has, and as a casual gamer with not a huge budget, I hate that I spent so much on a game that I already had. When you can purchase a DS version for a ton cheaper (especially with today's economy), and get relatively the same gameplay, it's easy to select which one to purchase, at least for me.
-CC
Let's start off with gameplay. The gameplay stays tried and true to the old systems, something in which I was grateful for. While innovation is always a great thing, there's never any sense in fixing something that's not broken. However, while the mechanics of the game has stayed the same, many things were still quite irritating. Playing with the Wii-Remote was one of the most annoying things I've ever done with my Wii. It was a pain selecting things (with an already finicky motion sensitive controller), and it surely wouldn't have killed them to make it playable with the Gamecube Controller. It also didn't help that the clear menu continued popping up and down unless the "B" button was held down, which caused you to run, making catching bugs or getting fish nearly impossible. Had it not been for the nunchuck and allowing for me to move, I would have taken the game back within the hour of me playing it.
The world of Animal Crossing City Folk has changed slightly, giving it more of an appeal than the previous titles. The ability to go to "The City" via bus gave gamers experiences that would have only occasionally had in the previous games. The high end clothes shop, the hair specialist and other various aspects are available to the gamer right from the start. It's obvious that most people would consider this a "good" thing, but the dark truth is that most of the aspects in "The City" are out of your reach for a good while. The clothes and furniture in the high-end store in the hundreds of thousands of bells (the unit of currency), which by this game's standards is impossible to make until you spend quite a while in the "City Folk". The hair stylist is a tad more reasonable, giving new gamers one free treatment, but charging a staggering 3,000 Bells every time after that (no matter what treatment you receive). Thus, while "The City" is a nice place to visit, it's pretty much just there for looks until a while down the line, making it virtually the same as the previous titles.
City Folk also suffers greatly from serious lacking in Bugs/Fish that the previous games had. Immediately after receiving my beloved fishing pole and bug net, I went out only to find that almost every bug/fish encounter had been scaled back dramatically. I spent nearly half an hour fishing and catching bugs, only to have barely an entire inventory full. While we're on the subject of inventories, City Folk suffers once again from the previous installment's pitiful inventory system. Once you've filled up your inventory, you have to run all the way back to the local store and sell all your items in order to get some empty spaces. The money glitch is back and more of a problem than ever. When you pick up Bells, instead of going into the proper money pouch, it takes up a space in your inventory, where you have to move it into the proper money pouch, where the Wii-Mote's terrible point and click nature comes back in.
Animal Crossing City Folk also promotes the new "Wii-Speak" feature, which I personally didn't purchase (nor do I ever intend to purchase). "Wii-Speak" seems like a sad attempt to get gameplay similar to that of Xbox Live, where usually I disable chat regardless. This is besides the fact that most gamers (like myself) despise voice chat, as it causes a distraction from gameplay. I can see it now, actually. Attempting to catch a fish, only to have somebody over Wii-Speak to scream loudly, causing me to lose my fish. Perhaps it's more of a "mii" thing, but I don't see any real relevance to the game.
Like I stated before (in previous reviews), I'm a "casual" gamer. Me and my family love the beautiful game play mechanics of Animal Crossing, and the genre is great for family gameplay, where everybody can get involved. However, I think Nintendo went wrong with this installment. Granted, I'm aware that the Wii is starved for good titles, but I think that Animal Crossing is better suited for portable play. Seeing as how similar the Wii title is to DS title from a few years back, I'd rather be playing my DS and watching television, or take it with me on the road (something that Wild World did very well with). Overall, City Folk isn't worth the huge price tag it has, and as a casual gamer with not a huge budget, I hate that I spent so much on a game that I already had. When you can purchase a DS version for a ton cheaper (especially with today's economy), and get relatively the same gameplay, it's easy to select which one to purchase, at least for me.
-CC
