Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii) Preview

Posted by Ramon Aranda on 07.18.2008

E3: Hands-on: I get right into the thick of things with the latest iteration of Animal Crossing.



Though Nintendo may have not provided any blockbuster announcements in the eyes of many gamers, Nintendo did make once announcement that personally made be gush – Animal Crossing is coming this year for the Nintendo Wii. A little backstory is that I was a huge fan of the Nintendo DS version and it was one of the games that I played every day. One day, I forgot it on the metro and as I lost it forever, I refused to buy a new copy. A new copy wouldn't give me the same friends I grew to enjoy so I decided I'd wait it out for a possible Wii version...someday. Well Nintendo has answered the prayers and I finally got to go hands-on with the previously unannounced title.

From what I had the chance to see and play, the town itself is a little bit bigger than what we saw on the Nintendo DS version. You can still invite others, up to four, to visit your town and join you in various activities such as fishing, fly catching or simply to cause havoc. While your friends are over, you'll be able to use the WiiSpeak accessory which is a microphone that attaches to the USB slot on the back of the Nintendo Wii. My first concern, given the placement of the accessory was if it would pick up any additional audio during gameplay and what I found is that even with three others on the WiiSpeak, I was still able to hear them clearly without any interference. The microphone wasn't actually hooked up on the setup I tried so I couldn't speak into it but I was shown that a keyboard is compatible with it so you can chat as if you were playing a PC game. Another addition this time around is that other members of your household can actually share the same town too. Of course you won't be hanging out at the same time (that's online only) but you can build, collect and send each other messages.

When you get bored of life at home, you can hop onto a bus and go downtown, hence the "City Folk" moniker. While in the city, you can go to various shops to buy furniture, clothing and other accessories. You can mingle with townsfolk as well as get yourself a brand new do (haircut). You'll still get visitors from the city from time to time into your own town, but now you can venture out and visit them for a change. You can also train your character to learn an emotion. So while you're in town you can learn to be angry for instance and when you're around other people, whether townsfolk or friends who have visited you, you'll be able to duplicate a facial expression that represents how you feel.



Animal Crossing: City Folk E3 Trailer from 411mania.com on Vimeo.

Controlling the game works very easily. You can use the nunchuck and remote as the joystick will move your character around while the A-button will work as the action button. The D-pad allows you to quickly pull out your various tools and items and for the time being, there isn't any waggle functionality. Not sure if that will turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing in the long run. I'd like to see some mini-games or context-related motion sensing but for now it's strangely missing. You can also get rid of the nunchuck and control everything with the Wii Remote by itself as you would on the DS. You point and hold the A-button to make your character walk around so it's fairly simple. You point at the bottom of the screen to bring up the menu.

Graphically the game looks fairly similar to what we've come to expect though in widescreen and a higher resolution. Honestly I'd prefer it stay about the same so the graphics work for me at this point. Seasons are still in the game so you'll have "Bunny Day" and New Year's for instance. From what I was told, there still won't be any NES games within the game as Nintendo wants to keep the focus squarely on the game. Again, this is still an early build and a lot can change from now until the holidays but you can bet that this game will find itself under plenty of Christmas trees.