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Animal Crossing: City Folk review

Establishing itself as system tie-in software, the Animal Crossing franchise has received yet another update, this time for Nintendo’s popular Wii console. The cult-classic life sim features everything you would expect; tons of items to collect and decorate your house with, a variety of neighborly animals to talk to, a town to keep in shape, and something to do in the game every day. The series’ second title for the Nintendo DS included an array of extra features that kept fans busy, but we couldn’t shake off the feeling of ‘been there, done that’. Although Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii includes a variety of expanded options and new locations to explore, the game really does little to separate itself from its predecessors, and ultimately that is the game’s biggest flaw.

As it is tradition, your introduction to your new town requires you to pick a gender, name, and town name. You are given a house (up to four for multiple players) to live in, and a few introductory chores to familiarize yourself with your animal neighbors and to get a feel of the activities you will be doing to earn a living. Soon after, you will be catching bugs, fishing, doing errands for the townsfolk, making designs for t-shirts and umbrellas, and the like. In Animal Crossing, there’s always something to do in your town every day, as the animals in your town carry on with their lives and mail you presents or drop garbage that you can sell for a profit. What’s more, every now and then you can partake on various events reminiscent of the real-life Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. New neighbors come, old ones go away, and the local store features new items every day; simply put, City Folk can keep you very busy.

Many players, however, have already done all this, twice. Unfortunately for them, the new features in City Folk aren’t anything special. The biggest inclusion to the franchise is a city outside town for players to visit. Once there, you can redo your hair, visit the auction house, or visit a pair of different stores, amongst other places. Sadly, the so-called ‘big city’ doesn’t update quite often, and once you have experienced what it has to offer, there’s very little reason to go back. Multiplayer is back but hardly expanded; you can send and receive letters and gifts via WiiConnect24, but you can’t visit other people’s towns when they are not online, which is quite a shame. Animal Crossing: City Folk is Nintendo’s first title to support the Wii Speak microphone accessory for voice-chat capabilities. Available by itself or in a bundle with the game, the microphone works quite well, but considering the lack of multiplayer features available, there’s little reason to use it just yet.

It’s clear that City Folk does little to expand upon the franchise, but worse is the game’s presentation. Although the title retains the cartoony style of its predecessors, the game—as vivid as it is—looks very dated and fails to impress. Low-poly characters and non-detailed textures were fine back in the day, but the series is in serious need of a graphical upgrade. The soundtrack, although good, borrows a great deal of its tracks for the previous Animal Crossing titles, which can grow repetitive to fans of the franchise. Fortunately, you won’t have any trouble with the game’s controls. You can use the Wii remote by itself, or add the nunchuck attachment for greater control, or a Classic Controller for those who want it.


Animal Crossing: City Folk is a great experience for those new to the franchise. For previous players, however, the added features aren’t anything special. Newcomers can expect an engrossing life-sim with tons of things to do, but those that have played either of the previous titles should take note of the lack of new features available. Animal Crossing remains a great series to experience, but there’s little here to keep fans coming back.