Animal Crossing: Wild World

Philip crosses with the creatures in this handheld gem...

Every once in a while a game comes along that doesn't really catch with the traditional market. It's more often than not a game from Nintendo themselves, but games like Ico and the recent Collosus have appeared from other developers. These games, like anything brilliant but too.. "original" to meet the average consumers standards, find their niche amongst the real gamers out there - those who enjoy great games no matter the genre. Animal Crossing is one of these games, the whole concept appears somewhat barmy (because it is), the graphics are cartoony (most call them "kiddy"), and the gameplay is drawn out.. literally.. across days, and even years.

Animal Crossing, in its purist form, is essentially a life sim. Its events are co-ordinated with real time, or the time your DS clock is set to at least, and every real day equals a day in the life of your Animal Crossing alter ego. The seasons are represented, the weather changes, and real-world holidays find their place in the game letting you buy, for example, a festive tree during the christmas period and place it in your house. The goal of Animal Crossing is simple, to live life and accumulate as many items, as much money, and as many achievements as possible over the course of several real-world months or years. It's a pick-up-and-play title you might play once a day, once a week, or just on holiday occasions to see what's changed. Because of it's laid back attitude to gameplay, Animal Crossing has a hard time finding many players amongst the 'hardcore', but has instead spread addiction through those willing enough to give it half a chance and delve into the animal inhabited world.

Animal Crossing: Wild World brings the Animal Crossing world to the Nintendo DS, something that any follower of Nintendo was eagerly anticipating. The title translates beautifully to the dual screened portable console with the graphical style being perfectly suited to a low specification system and a small screen. As you would expect from any DS title, all the menu traversal and inventory management can be done using the lower touch screen making the interface incredibly streamlined. If you don't want to risk dropping your stylus on the bus, however, all the game controls can just as easily be handled with the DS face buttons. Moving your character and interacting with the world can also be done using the touch screen, as Animal Crossing employs a clever flipping technique which displays the view of your character and the surrounding area on the lower screen and the sky on the upper screen during normal play, and the menu on the lower screen with your character on the upper screen during menu interaction.

This clever use of the touch screen leads to one of my first small gripes with the game; the inability to do anything but watch your stationary character on the upper screen when in menus. I would, personally, have liked to be able to move around the world with a menu open on the lower screen as the view of the sky on the upper screen serves as nothing more than a 'filler' with your menu closed. That said, the sky view introduces some unique aspects like the ability to join-the-stars to create your own personal constellations, and shoot down various flying objects with a sling-shot - neither of which are huge features, but do add to the diverse range of things you can do in Animal Crossing.

The second feature that the transition to Nintendo DS introduces is the new Nintendo WFC technology. In short, Nintendo finally turned around and started producing games capable of connecting to the internet via WiFi, something the console has been capable of from the outset. Nintendo's WiFi connection is dubbed WFC or "Wi Fi Connnection" and introduces wireless configuration allowing you to connect to either a home wireless router or Nintendo's USB-based WiFi bridge peripheral. This gives the DS internet access and, in turn, wireless multiplayer gameplay with people from across the globe. It's a good thing on paper, but the multiplayer in Animal Crossing is so poorly realised that it needs to be heavily supplemented with chat rooms, matching websites, or just an instant messenger on your PC. In short, this means that it's very difficult to visit another player's town unless you have another means of communicating with them. First and foremost you need to communicate your Friend ID, a unique ID generated for each specific WFC game which you must exchange with any player you wish to connect with. Once your Friend IDs are exchanged and added to your respective friends lists you are good to go.

Outside of the WFC configuration and Friend ID trading you must then visit a specific location in Animal Crossing: Wild World, namely; your Town Gate. Then you need to talk to the gate guard, express your desire to either open your town or visit another town and wait for your friend to do the same. Overall the "multiplayer matching", or lack thereof is abysmal and actually visiting someone elses town without communicating directly with them to get it all set up is currently impossible. Sure, many of us may have a PC to hand when we want to go online with our Nintendo DS, but my point is that the average joe sitting on a sofa in their living room playing a little Wild World is not going to want to jump through hoops just to find a friend and visit their town. Of course, Nintendo are relatively new to the whole concept of multiplayer online, so I expect them to get better over time and almost forgive them for the mess they've made of the current spate of multiplayer DS titles.

If you're willing to jump through the necessary hoops to visit your friends' Animal Crossing towns then you will be able to chat with them, help them out with general tasks, trade items, raid their recycling bins, shop at their local Nook's and much, much more. Ultimately going online will benefit your own town, with the opportunity to gain new fruits, plants or items for your museum or home.

I'm not going to go into any further depth about Animal Crossing itself, anyone thinking about buying it probably already knows the concept, or has played it on another console, and those of you who don't can easily find information from a source far more versed in the world of Animal Crossing than myself. To conclude I will stress that Animal Crossing isn't for everyone, but the Nintendo DS realisation of the game is absolutely brilliant, but not - I might add - without its flaws, most of which are thankfully forgivable. If you're thinking about buying Wild World, it's well worth your money and you will surely be picking it up for a quick play for years to come just to see what happens on certain dates.

90%

By Philip Howard