Nintendo can be really finicky sometimes. When they come up with a game series utilizing a formula which works extremely well, they tend not to like to mess it up. Pokemon is a great example of this. If you’ve played one Pokemon game, you’ve played them all. Yet at the same time, Nintendo likes to shake things up and give us crazy new content that we haven’t seen before, such as Zelda: Wind Waker and Super Mario Galaxy. They seem to alternate between staying in the familiar, and going off the deep end. The new Animal Crossing game for the Wii is part of their familiar line of work.

The Wii version, is far better than its DS counterpart.

It’s safe to say that if you’ve played the original Animal Crossing on the Gamecube, then you’ve pretty much played the Wii and DS versions. Aside from a few cosmetic changes, the Wii version plays almost exactly like the Gamecube version. You move into a house in a town populated by animals, you pay off your mortgage to Tom Nook, your landlord and all purpose store owner, you collect bugs, fish, art, and dinosaurs and donate them to the museum and you befriend the natives.

Quickies. Playing the game in short bursts, is also indredibly fun.

The original game was unique because it ran in real time and was not a game that could truly be “beaten.” It was meant to be fun and to allow the whole family to gather around the TV and communicate with each other, even if they were not all together at the same time. In a strange way, the original game was the first successful step towards aiming to the casual crowd. Now that casual games are quite common, Animal Crossing for the Wii doesn’t stand out quite as much as it did originally.

There have been a lot of improvements to the game. You now have a rotating world so you can see the sky, ala the DS version. You can point at the screen to move your character around instead of using the Nunchuck. You can fish and dig and catch bugs all with simple Wiimote flicks. Many of the enhancements of the DS version are included. A lot of the graphics, while still simple and geometric, look a lot crisper and cleaner than before. You can edit your clothing on the fly instead of having to go to Mables. And probably the biggest improvement is the advent of a City you can travel to. Hence the title: City Folk.

The City is really just a small central hub. It contains a bunch of stores that utilize familiar characters who, in previous games, would have normally just wandered aimlessly through your town on certain days. Now you can access them at any time and it’s a big convenience. There’s even an auction house for users to upload and bid on furniture, although I haven’t yet gotten it to work.

Once again. The title plays off the internal clock, of the console. So it'll be snowing in real time Christmas.

I’m severely handicapped while writing this review because I haven’t been able to unlock a lot of the stuff that’s new. I can’t seem to sell anything at the auction house. I haven’t been able to link up with friends to see how the online system works. And I don’t own WiiSpeak, so I can’t comment on that either. So instead, I’m gonna focus on a few of the things I noticed right off the bat which might irk a player.

For starters, the game can be played entirely with the Wiimote alone. The Wiimote works just fine, but only under certain conditions. The Nunchuck can be added for players that like the precision that the analogue stick offers over point and click. With the Nunchuck there’s a bit of a battle going on between the two peripherals. For example: If I start getting lazy and don’t pay attention to my hands, the one holding the Wiimote sometimes points at the screen, which brings up the menu icons. It also seems to cancel my ability to open doors. Instead what happens is I’ll be facing a door to go inside, and when I press the A button I end up pointing to another part of the screen. My character then turns to go in that direction, ignoring the fact I really just want to go inside. The real kick is that there’s a button on the Nunchuck which acts the same was as the A button on the Wiimote. So I’m constantly battling these two remotes by alternating between them. It’s a really minor simple technical issue, but it’s one which seems to constantly get on my nerves, especially when I’m trying to get inside after disturbing some angry bee’s.

Stocking then new museum, truly is satisfying.

There’s very little “NEW” content in the way of wallpaper, carpet, and furniture. Although Nintendo has promised that Animal Crossing will contain downloadable content that’s not originally included on the game disk, I have yet to see how it’s going to be implemented.

There are of course a lot of things you can do. You can dig up fossils. You can plant trees and plants and keep them nurtured. You can make friends, or enemies. You can donate stuff to the museum. You can make and wear your own clothing. You can shake trees to get bells and rare items. You can visit the town. You can even get a mask that looks like your Mii (which is kinda freakish actually).There’s TONS to do... the problem is that 90% of it we’ve already done before. Again, I wish I could comment on the online features, as that IS the biggest new improvement to the series.

Overall, Animal Crossing is the same thing we’ve already played, twice. Some people who have played the other games might be a bit disappointed to not have a bit more variety. Not to mention that the real-time sandbox style of gameplay found in Animal Crossing is starting to get dwarfed by Nintendo’s competitors, making this feel not quite as ambitions as it could have been. For newcomers, it’s going to be just as whimsical and fun as when we played it originally. But for long time fans there might not be much around this time to justify the full price tag.