Review: Animal Crossing: Wild World (NDS)

It won't hit you at first, but after settling down, chatting to some of the villagers, designing some clothes (or flags) and decorating your house, you'll grow so attached to your little town that you won't want to leave it. It exists in realtime, running off the internal clock, so in-game events hinge upon the time of day (or year); when you're waking up before noon on a Sunday to catch Joan, the turnip-seller, on one of her errands, you just KNOW that you're addicted. And when one of your townsfolk leaves to go to another town, a little piece of your heart goes with them.

But cracks in the illusion do appear, and it's important to fill those cracks lest it shatter. It's obvious there's no grandiose artificial intelligence at work here: send a letter to somebody in town and the reply will most likely be gobbledygook or completely unrelated to your letter. If you force yourself to believe in this fantasy world - like a kid playing with dolls - it makes it all the better, like engaging in a miniature soap opera. Villagers talk to each other, send presents and letters to each other (with your help), have arguments and make rude comments. In fact, some of the marvellous dialogue could be interpreted as being very suggestive - as if there's more going on with these characters than appearances let on.

This communal mentality extends into the real world, too. Each copy of the game can accommodate up to four profiles, essentially enabling you to share your town with others (they sleep while you're awake); faraway friends can even visit each other's towns via the internet (or local link-up if they're close) and see for themselves what sort of creative experiments people have attempted, and even trade or swap items, convince townsfolk to move, host competitions and set up treasure hunts - Animal Crossing: Wild World offers a world of possibilities. And there are items that you can buy, like the stopwatch, that have clearly been designed for this multiplayer aspect.

Unfortunately, the 'Wireless World' is marred by problems (not least of which are slow and unstable connections): unwilling to open their doors to strangers, Nintendo has implemented a codeshare system similar to Mario Kart DS - whereby ONLY friends can be visited. The system itself is needlessly fiddly and really shows a lack of experience; not knowing if somebody on your friends list has kept you on theirs (or removed you) can lead to filling up the list with 'dead' contacts. It's clearly designed around accommodating a small number of friends with whom you can keep in contact; for those wanting a surfeit of virtual towns to wander through, some fiddling and log-keeping is required.

If you can't access a wi-fi hub, there's not a lot to appease you: unlike the Gamecube iteration of Animal Crossing, there's no code system for trading items - your world is now self-contained. Also gone are the collectible NES games and 'real' holiday events (and changes extend to a new 3D viewpoint that 'scrolls' into the horizon, as if you're walking over a roll of wallpaper). Since most activities in your town rely on a 24-hour rotation, you can be left without anything to do; Animal Crossing is not a chore-based game in the same league as Harvest Moon, but there are things to be done. Nevertheless, play the game for too long (in one sitting) and you'll get bored and frustrated.

Also hampering the fun is the control set: the stylus should be an intuitive way to move your character around, but it's imprecise and most will favour the D-pad and face buttons. Having to switch items so you can chop down a tree, dig up the stump, plant a new seed and then water the sapling, for example, is more tedious than it needs to be (and getting a day's work done is so time-consuming that you can forget all about what you were planning to do next).

If there's an ultimate goal, it's completion for the sake of it. The town museum is like an elaborate sticker-book, with nothing but blank spaces when you first arrive - although finding fish, paintings, insects and fossils will gradually fill its halls (and museum curator, Blathers, gives some very educational descriptions of the exhibits you donate). In the meantime, your own halls need adorning - for a fee, Tom Nook will expand your house, thus enabling you to make themed rooms of your choosing. Whilst buying and trading items in town to complete your house, the other townsfolk will dismay you with their own personalised pads.

Animal Crossing's 3D world is a tad sluggish; yet for all the game's simplistic looks, the animation is very detailed - just watch Brewster pour a mug of coffee for proof of that. The music is subtle and differs on a per-hour basis; this gives the game certain moods to match the time of day. Further subtleties abound: your personal town tune plays in different styles during conversations; characters pick up words from each other (and you) and can even spread them online to other people; messages in bottles can float to other towns; snowmen complain about their malformed bodies; constellations in the sky appear on specific days; and letters from Nintendo staff may just appear in your mailbox!

It's tough to assign a score to a game that, for all intents and purposes, is uniquely different for everyone who plays it. Whilst luck and careful timing can fill your town with health, wealth and good company, you could just as easily be left with a miserable, cluttered and dreary canvas to work with. Ultimately though, Animal Crossing: Wild World is what you make of it; it reflects your own creativity and imagination. Which is why Gamestyle is resorting to assigning the least imaginative score it could think of, and letting YOU creatively decide for yourself.

Rating: 7 / 10

Words by Daniel James