Nintendo's New E3 Games: Animal Crossing: City Folk

Jul. 15 9:46 PM by Alicia Ashby

The Lowdown: Animal Crossing: City Folk is pretty much more Animal Crossing for the Wii. Now you've got more customization options, new areas to visit, the ability for up to four players to live in and improve the same town, and the ability to invite up to three friends to visit your town via Wi-Fi. Pass the time playing mini-games and keeping your town looking beautiful. Supports the Wii Speak microphone for easy chatting.

The Hype: Animal Crossing with Wii graphics and online features? It can take over your life even faster than the DS version did!

The Snark: Bets on Wii Animal Crossing being functionally identical to the others once you're playing it?

Check behind the cut for shots of the Wii Speak microphone, screens, and some lovely character art.

Animal Crossing: City Folk Gallery

Comments

I would be surprised if this installment of Animal Crossing did not include all kinds of motion controls for specific tasks like chopping, shoveling, fishing, bug catching, etc. That in and of itself adds another layer of immersion that will keep fans of this of game entertained for quite some time.

Is the premise exactly the same as before? Sure, in all likelyhood, with some tweaks here and there and some added bells and whistles. Does that mean that this game won't be worth purchasing? Probably not, although certainly not every person would enjoy the potential monotony of this type of game.

Let me put it this way: Madden, FIFA, NCAA Football, etc. are essentially the same game every single year, with some slight feature shifts between consoles and some small feature creep between years. They still sell, and people still have fun playing them. The same can be said for any given FPS, any given RTS, any given RPG... the tasks that you are set out to do always boil down to the same basic concepts in a given genre. Therefor, the question as to whether a game is considered "good" or not boils down to "Is it fun to play?" and not so much to "Is it a completely new experience?"

If the second question were more important than the first, then every single sequel out there and most games from any particular been-there done-that genre would not sell. That's obviously not the case.

 

I don't usually care that much about graphics, but there's something about this new Animal Crossing that I don't like: It looks almost exactly like the Gamecube game! I know the Wii isn't capable of putting out graphics on par with other consoles, I'm pretty sure it's capable of putting out graphics better than that.

 

Animal Crossing in the city? That's a recipe for roadkill!

 

WiiSpeak is awesome. Animal Crossing is not. Why have they done nothing to improve the graphics?

 

I am pretty sure there are motion controls for the mini-games, kltharion (they really hyped up a fishing one). They didn't go into detail on the mini-games so I don't really know what's available, and weirdly I haven't been able to go hands-on with this one yet.

 

UPDATE: I am really shocked, there appear to be absolutely no motion controls in Animal Crossing Wii. Everything is done with button presses and the interface is honestly kind of weird.

On the upside, they had the voice of Mario on WiiSpeak fielding questions from everyone playing while a Mario-Mii headed guy ran around digging holes, so I really can't be too mad about this game.

 

Kudos to Lynxara for taking the time to give us a thorough look at these announced titles, instead of just regurgitating yet another whine session about how these games aren't "core" enough.

 

Hmm. With no motion controls, it really, really seems to be just a blend of the other games with the addition of a city area. I'm not so sure that I'd want to buy this now (although I am pretty sure that my wife will make me, so I will anyway).

 

No Motio Controls! For SHAME! And really, put some effort into those Graphics!

 

Yes, shameful there is no Motio controls. CURSE YOU MOTIO!

 

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