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Review by Shodan2020
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Animal Crossing: Wild World for the DS is pretty much more of the same. If you've played Animal Crossing for the Gamecube you already know all you need to about the game. It starts out the same way, and aside from the additions of some new furniture, new characters and a few new additions to the various buildings, and WiFi multiplay not a whole lot has changed in the Animal Crossing world.
This can be either a great thing or a meh thing, depending on how you liked the original Animal Crossing.
If you've never played the original, you play as the only human moving into a sparsely populated town of cutesy animals. Each animal has their own personalty, some are sweet and others are annoyed by your presence. You are greeted by Tom Nook, the local raccoon slum lord who sells you your house, and it's part of your duty to earn bells (the currency of Animal Crossing) through menial work, fishing, bug catching, fossil selling, etc.. to work off your debt to him.
The time in Animal Crossing goes by in real-time, meaning that if you're playing it at on Saturday, August the 16th at 6am it's Saturday, August the 16 at 6am in your town. Seasons change according to the calendar, so you'll go through winter, spring, summer, and fall as you normally would in real life. Each season brings new events to your town, and you'll gain and lose residents over time. Some stay longer than others depending on how you treat them. There is a lot of depth here and it's easy to play for what seems like a half hour only to realize that it's actually been two hours. You can send messages to your animal residents and they will send you mail back. If you're like me, you'll send suggestive mail to your female residents and laugh at their off-topic responses.. but that's just me.
Everyone from the first Animal Crossing is back, with a few new additions. There's a coffee shop and a planetarium added on to the museum, which still has the ever talkative and entomophobic, Blathers the Owl. Any bugs, fossils, fish, or paintings you catch, dig up, or find you can donate and look at them whenever you like. Also, once you buy enough things from Nook's shop and he upgrades his shop to Nookington's (yes his annoying sons still run the top level), there's a barber shop added to his store which allows you to change your hair style.
It's always difficult to explain just exactly what Animal Crossing is like and make it sound fun. It's a game you play for around an hour or so a day, to see what's new, converse with your animal residents, maybe make a suggestive star constellation or two, earn some bells to buy your way out from under Tom Nook's thumb and dig up a fossil or two. Some people find it charming and enthralling.. others find it horribly dull. Finding another person that has Wild World is great, because you can visit each other's town and hang out. The only bad thing about that is that you have to exchange friend codes and mess around with the DS's WiFi setups if you haven't done that already.
All in all, Wild World is a nice update from the original offering on the Gamecube. There's some cool new additions and it's as cute as ever. It's definitely worth a shot if you've played the original and liked it, and if you like "Sims-esque" games then you'll probably like this as well.
Shodan2020 on 10/04/2008
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...Ok, um, sorry for the digression there. Shodan does a good job of setting the stage for those who have never played Animal Crossing, and for that I have to give this review a five out of five rating.