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    Animal Crossing : Wild World for Nintendo DS

    posted @ 12/04/2006 08:08:00 PM by geekwoman
    Animal Crossing : Wild World for Nintendo DS by Geek Woman

    Animal Crossing for the Nintendo DS is like a tiny milling MMO of ity bity people. There is a large "E" friendly community surrounding it. In addition to being able to connect and play with other DS owners while in the same physical location, the easy to use wifi capability can connect you with other players world wide.

    It is an ingenious game in several aspects. The security for keeping identities secret seems to work and it is fairly easy to screen and block out unwanted parties. The exchange of a Friend Code has to be given someplace out side of the DS. It has to be someone that you physically know or meet through numerous Friend Code listing message boards. Once there though how would someone know if they were communicating with a an adult or a kid? They do require a verifiable email address to register at most forums. But that isn't much protection, so wifi chat should be supervised. Also many McDonald's restaurants and other hotspots permit people to play together wirelessly on the DS.

    The game has an understandably "E" rating. However it should be specified someplace that a person does need to be able to read fairly well in order to be able to play the game. Maybe at some point in the future suggestions about the age a kid who would enjoy a game could be made on the packaging. Like "for children 5 and up".

    Game-play
    You would think that game that consists of farming a fruit orchard, fishing and collecting fossils would be relaxing. Not for me. I became obsessed with paying the huge, escalating and continuous morgage(s). Oh no! This is like a nightmare. I suppose it is to teach kids responsibilities but it made me frantic. I picked oranges and gathered shells. I learned how to perfect my fishing skills pretty quickly. In the first day I got it paid off. I thought I would be relieved then. But it was not to be. Tom Nook the owner of the only store in town, extorted me for another mortgage to build me a bigger house, even after I told him I didn't want it. This reminds me of an episode of the Xfiles... At least I could pick a lilac roof. Now I have an even more huge debt! If you do chores for townspeople, dig up some treasure, and discover some of the other secrets hidden in the game you earn lots of gold. There are many little side ‘missions’ in AC:WW.

    I consoled myself with fishing. I caught several kinds. Notably I got a Koi and an Octopus. When I returned to the store the next morning they were closed. I am worried that my fish might spoil. I read online that I can time travel and set the time back on the clock to sell the fish. Then I have to reset the clock back to the correct present time so that I don't screw up the game. Heaven forbid that if after you turn the DS on - that you change your mind. A creature pops up and bitches you out with over 30 screens of a harangue about how important it is to save the game before you shut it off. Typing in "Shut up" or other epithets don't help any. I would love to know how to get that dubious feature to quit.

    I was penalized for my trips back to the past by loosing trees. Several of my flower plants also looked as if they had been plant - napped by a neighbor and put in her garden. When I switched my clock to February 14th there was snow on the ground and my plants in that time weren't too happy about this.

    Fishing is a tricky but fun pass time. The ocean wave sound effect is almost convincing with ear buds. This is a typical RPG. You build stuff, customize things, plant gardens and weed around the town. But the map is tiny. It suffers for only having one little town area to be in - unless you visit other peoples towns to trade items online. Compared to Pokémon which has many of these tiny towns all on one GBA cartridge this game has only one small one. The moon phases and weather are correct for my area. But this game goes in too many directions and is lacking fundamental basics. If space mattered then some of the odd customization features could have been skipped. Making constellations, or designing umbrellas could have been done without for example - to make the individual single person game experience larger.

    Customization gives you the option to decide what you want the interior of your house to look like, along with your clothes, hairstyle, outdoors, museum, constellations, and music playing in your house. Compared to the GameCube version of AC, there are more items and more to do in the new DS version. Online, you can buy items from people. That makes it easier to complete sets you’ve been trying to collect.

    To make me even more paranoid the game is still playing even though I am not. For example, if you don’t play the game for a month, your town will have weeds throughout. The weird townspeople will forget who you are, and sometimes move out. There isn’t a big reason beyond obsession to continue playing the game after a few days or so. You would have to pick all the weeds, and talk to everyone in your town again which isn't very interesting. I got crestfallen seeing that my trees and plants died. You can only plant one tree per day so many of my fruit trees died. I am glad I don't have as bad luck with gardening in real life. That would be sad. There’s not much motivating you to play this game in the first place, and the punishing mortgages aren't enough incentive to make you continue playing it. There is a thin line between realistic and engaging and reality check and stressing. AA : WW is more like a sim than a game.

    Sound and Music
    The background music changes every hour all of the tunes sound boopey and empty. The animals don't talk, they make odd little noises which you can thankfully shut off. It has a rudimentary sound program in it so you can make your own Town song and online you can use that to play songs that people have worked out and posted the tablature for. Also in the coffee shop in the Museum you can watch a coffee bar act and listen to several unlockable songs there if you are into music on the Nintendo there is plenty of it to be found in this game.

    Multiplayer
    When it comes to networking and people skills the DS is way ahead of the Sony PSP on this so far. Though Microsoft also intends to push Nintendo's hardware out of people's hands, they will be hard pressed to compete with the feel good, goody - good Nintendo. Again another one, a community that springs up like magical mushroom fairy rings around games like this one. There is something about Nintendo characters that make people rabid, and this is one of them.

    The game is addictive without being entirely fun. It is an amusing way to kill time. And it will kill lots of time on you in between battery charges. Collecting items can make you crazy. There are several aspects of this game that are vast and endless. Though somehow filling all that empty space sometimes feels daunting rather than exciting. It is all about the grind without really getting anyplace. Skills like fishing have an endcap on them. There is a finite number of kinds of fish that you can catch.

    Conclusion
    It is a step forward in technology and it plays very stable. It is a solid game and from what I understand kids really like it. There are a number of women playing it. It could be considered a chick game because of the heavy elements of clothing and interior design and the lack of violence. The characters are those cute little badly rendered icons that seem to charm people so much. Not much to complain about here I give it a 4 out of 5


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