Animal Crossing: City Folk Review - IGN (2024)

Animal Crossing: City Folk admittedly doesn't claim to be a full-fledged sequel but it certainly hints at that with its new subtitle. At the very least after six years and two previous games in the Animal Crossing series there's a bit of expectations out of Nintendo updating its successful franchises: you would think that the designers would love to get their hands dirty and actually attempt something a little more ambitious than simply converting existing ideas for Nintendo's latest game systems.

To put it another way: Animal Crossing: City Folk wasn't made for Animal Crossing fans. It was made for those that missed out the first two times. And for those people, you've got yourself a fine product. To those that helped make the first two games a success: maybe Nintendo will thank you some other way, because City Folk is only for you if you want to go through the same things all over again.

That doesn't sound like such a bad deal on the surface: if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and if it was such a great game before it'll be great playing through it again…right? That mentality doesn't really apply to Animal Crossing because the bulk of the experience is doing work. You know, chores. Things you should be doing instead of playing videogames.

Right from the start you're put to work by the game's laborer: Tom Nook. He gets you started learning the ropes by sending you all over your town – randomly generated during your question-and-answer session on the bus trip to the village – performing duties like planting flowers, delivering packages, advertising his shop, and writing letters to your neighbor. There's a reason for all of this -- even though this all feels like indentured servitude he's really giving you a tutorial walkthrough explaining all the little things you can – and should – be doing in Animal Crossing. And once you've completed your duties, you're set free to pretty much do whatever you want.

But don't forget to pay off your house's mortgage – Tom Nook was nice enough to get you set up, so you'll need to pay him back in the game's monetary system: Bells. Bells are earned by selling fish you've caught, selling fruit you've harvested, selling items you've collected. There's always a way to score a few bells every day, whether it's simply shaking trees and finding some stray coin falling from the branches.

When you start learning the little nuances of this village, things really start opening up and you'll actually want to visit your village more than a few times a day. Your town operates on a realtime clock and calendar and events happen on an hourly and daily basis. Villagers will send you on a task that must be done before a certain hour. Climates change and as such shift around the environments: catchable bugs and fish shift around when it gets colder or wetter outside, so what you fish for during a bright summer day will change on a rainy fall night. And while you can certainly sell your native fruit to Tom Nook, he pays top dollar for fruit that doesn't normally show up in your village.

And that's where online play becomes so important in Animal Crossing. As you play in your village there are countless others doing the same thing, and they might be working on a different clock and calendar schedule as you are, and even if they are the weather patterns are completely random from village to village. They're also growing different fruit than you are. In Animal Crossing, it has always been in the best interests of players to visit friends, but the introduction of online play makes it a much more accessible element than it was in its original N64/GameCube "travel via Memory Card" system: now you can hook up using the inherent internet link of your game system to pop over for a visit.

The Wii version features essentially the same online experience as what Nintendo introduced on the Nintendo DS in Animal Crossing: Wild World. Before you can venture out you'll need your friend's specific 12-digit code, and they need yours. And even after these codes have been traded you still need to coordinate with each other who will be the one visiting. After the link's established, then it's a seamless experience. The Wii team even improved a few things in the online play: villagers will now stay out of their houses and wander around the village as if you weren't online. And, of course, the inclusion of Wii Speak support which enables players to voice chat while connected using the speakerphone-like device.

It all works and works well, and the Animal Crossing experience is definitely enhanced with the online functionality so it's definitely encouraged to get your system online and find some buddies who are also upkeeping an Animal Crossing village.

Visiting villages also enables the very cool viral portion of Animal Crossing to take effect: any letters you give to your villagers, any textures you've created that they're wearing, and any catchphrases you've taught them will carry over if those neighbors decide to move away. The idea that they could be carrying with them your own works of art or poetry to Animal Crossing gamers across the world is an exciting thought indeed.

Animal Crossing: City Folk can best be described as a blending of the GameCube and Nintendo DS games: the Wii game takes everything about the DS title and applies the larger village scale and smoother framerate of the GameCube title. That's pretty much it. Lazy would be an understatement: apart from a few new fish, bugs, and a revised script spoken by the in-game characters, if you've already spent a good portion of your gaming life in either Animal Crossing games, you're not going to get much new out of the Wii experience.

Perhaps Nintendo needed to give existing Animal Crossing gamers the illusion that there's something truly new to experience in City Folk. That "illusion" is the city itself. At any time you can leave your village, hop on a bus and head to a City Center for more things to do. This city has things like a rare item boutique, a fortune teller, a hair stylist, and a black market character named Redd willing to cut you in on a deal on a fabulous painting. You can even run into a character named Shrunk who will give your character special emotion animations you can use while talking with people.

If all of this sounds familiar, that's because these elements have been in past Animal Crossing games as normal, scheduled village occurrences. Redd, for example, would pop up in your village on specific days of the week, but now you can just wander over at your leisure at any time. This "city" might make portions of Animal Crossing more accessible to people who don't want to put in the time or effort to dedicate regular Animal Crossing playtime sessions, but wasn't that the point of Animal Crossing to begin with? The city also constantly populates the center with a random assortment of animal villagers every time you enter and leave a building, which ruins the surprise of seeing these characters appear in your village for the first time. If anything, the city portion of Animal Crossing: City Folk wrecks a good part of the Animal Crossing experience.

Oh, there are slight enhancements worth noting, like full widescreen support, Wii remote motion control for casting your fishing line or digging holes, and an upgraded art program that enables users to create shirt textures with a front, a back, and two sleeves. Oh, and get this: your village's ground will now show wear and tear as you beat down a continuous path every day. It's silly, but it's noticeable. And you can bring your Nintendo DS character over, but beyond the benefit of keeping your character's name and unlocking a catalog of items to buy, there's no real reward in doing this.