This post is by guest blogger Amanda.
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Categories: Review
Tags: ds, sim
I quickly got addicted to the original Animal Crossing on the GameCube. I used to sequester myself in the t.v. room to collect seashells, go fishing and pay off my huge loans from Tom Nook. I even set my clock to wake up early Sunday mornings so I could buy turnips from Sow Joan. After awhile the disconnect between time spent in AC and time spent with real friends just got to be too weird. If Animal Crossing were alcohol, I’d be one of those people who took furtive swigs from a bottle and wondered if I should start attending some sort of meeting.
Sure, a few times my friends brought over their memory cards and we had fun running around in each others’ towns. But mostly AC was a solitary game.
Animal Crossing: Wild World on the DS is not that different from the original game. It’s the same tiny, cute world sim full of bizarre animal neighbors. You still spend a lot of time composing the perfect letter to your imaginary friends and plying them with gifts. There are a few extra goodies and NPCs, however. For example, you can now create constellations in the sky and order a cup of coffee in the museum’s new lounge. Other than these few new perks, it hasn’t changed much. So why should you buy it? Because it’s portable and it’s not as anti-social as the original. Instead of sitting by myself in the t.v. room I can hang out with Terry and the guys and aggravate my dog. I can take it to work and play it for fifteen minutes on my breaks. (Which means I get to run around town in daylight hours a lot more frequently than I did on the GameCube.) Best of all, I can invite people to come to my town and play with them while they explore, rather than passively watching them steal my favorite friends and cut down my fruit trees. There are two options for multiplayer mode–I can play with someone else sitting in the room or I can connect to a wireless network and play in tag mode with random people.
If you play Animal Crossing all by your lonesome and the idea of multiplayer mode leaves you cold, I’d say AC: WW is not a must-have for you. The extras, while fun, are not what make this new game worth buying. It’s all about portability and hanging out with your friends–your human friends, that is.