Review – Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City

• Game: Animal Crossing: Let’s Go to the City
• Format: Wii
• Other Formats: None
• Developer: Nintendo
• Publisher: Nintendo
• Genre: Life Sim

Everything goes black and suddenly you wake up to find yourself on a bright yellow bus staring into the face of quite a happy purple cat. He starts talking to you, and asks where your headed, apparently this bus is headed there. He gives you a map of your destination with the town hall flashing, your first destination. He then asks your name and asks a few questions about you moving into a new town, depending on your answers depends on your face. When you get out of the bus, you are greeted by a raccoon in an apron… yeah… he greets you and introduces himself. This is the general introduction to Animal Crossing, and has stayed the same throughout the series, the only different bit is the transportation you arrive in and in Wild World Kapp’n talked to you instead of Rover.

I suppose you could say Animal Crossing is a life sim, but one that’s completely different from any others. It’s extremely charming, and very colourful. The object of the game is to build your house up and improve your town. There are loads of things to do in-game to keep you occupied if you feel a bit bored. For example, you can dig up fossils and donate them to the town’s museum, where every fossil you find is displayed in its restored form. You can also catch fish and bugs, which can also be donated to the museum or be used to redeem trophies on bug catching days and fishing tourneys. There is also a paintings section where real life paintings are displayed. These paintings are purchased from Redd in his newly established shop where you now only need one password.

It may seem all fun, laughter and all round light-heartedness, but Animal Crossing always has a message: your home is under threat if you do not keep up repayments. Try to consolidate your debts into one easy to manage monthly payment.

Animal Crossing is a game that you can’t really complete as there is always something new to do in town. To be able to make a kind of game like that successful you need to make it engaging and fun and Nintendo have done just that with Animal Crossing. They’ve made it very appealing to the eyes and kept the dull colours out as much as possible. Every character is different with their own individual personality, for example one character might be quite grumpy and hating of the world, whereas another might seem like they’re high all the time.

Another good feature about this Animal Crossing is the downloadable content. If you have Wii Connect:24 turned on in the game, from time to time Nintendo send you presents. These range from furniture to clothing, and they’ll have a special theme to them. For example to celebrate the release of the Pikmin remake for Wii they sent everyone a red Pikmin hat.

The Animal Crossing games are great for lovers of the Harvest Moon series or maybe even The Sims. And if you want to have a extra amount of interactivity in your life sims then this would be a great buy.

Score:
8/10

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