Let’s Go To The City? Let’s Not Bother, more like. I’m starting to tire of the same dialogue from the animals gathered around the fountain in the town square - even if Chow Down Meltown does sound like a good name for a bistro. And it’s a bit odd that they all change every time I exit a building - like they were all waiting for me to venture inside and then legged it so they didn’t have to speak to me on the way back. And the auction house is possibly the most pointless thing in a Nintendo game since the controls in DK Barrel Blast. Or the tracks in DK Barrel Blast. Or DK Barrel Blast in general. So far, in my four weeks of playing the game, I’ve seen one - one - item in there, which I bid on, and the stupid gyroid that runs the place still can’t tell me if I’ve won or not. And Redd’s run out of stuff until Christmas Eve, and I wanted to go in and give him a piece of my mind after he flogged me a dodgy painting. Again. Not happy.

Thankfully, things are going pretty well in Meltown - Nook has upgraded his store to the two-storey Nookington’s, and I’ve now earned enough points to get my hands on a Yoshi egg (which wriggles and yelps ‘Yoshiii!’ when you prod it). The HRA is officially in love with my house, and my new asymmetrical stripe top seems to be going down well with the locals. I’ve made two perfect snowmen so far and received two special pieces of furniture for my troubles. Oh, and I got a hat that makes me look a bit like Kapp’n. Gar!

Best of all, I’m now bezzie mates with Brewster in the museum’s coffee shop - ’pon the advice of WiiWii.tv reader Richard Schroeder (thanks, fella) I ventured in there for his finest pigeon blend for seven days in a row, and he expressed an interest in storing my gyroids for me. Rather than taking up valuable cupboard space, I can now pass them to Brewster, and can look at my collection any time. He’ll also tell me if I have any duplicates so I can sell them on to Nook. Well worth the 200 bells a day for a cup of java, methinks.

It’s little touches like this - and seeing Prince having a cuppa in the Roost the other day was another pleasant surprise - that makes your village feel more alive than ever before. But it’s disappointing to see Nintendo has left out as much as it’s put in. The GBA holiday island from the GameCube game? Nowhere to be seen. Surely it couldn’t be too much effort to allow DS owners this additional bonus. Of course, the more glaring omission is the lack of portable t-shirt creation tools - which the DS would be perfect for. Designing a top on your bus ride home and then importing it to your Wii? Makes perfect sense to me - especially given that the DS is more suitable for such a task than the GBA was. Nintendo might have had its hands bitten with the whole connectivity malarkey, but given that it allows the DS to be used as a suitcase to travel between villages, surely this isn’t too much of a stretch for the hardware?

(Incidentally, it doesn’t allow travel between villages from different regions - I transferred my items from my US copy of City Folk to travel to my father-in-law’s PAL village, and couldn’t transfer the info over. Bah.)

With DLC still yet to be announced by Nintendo - will it happen at all, or was that always just going to be a possibility rather than a reality? - it’s still arguably too early to effectively review Animal Crossing. It’s certainly got the most potential for expansion of any Wii game. Let’s just hope that Nintendo makes good on its early promises - even if it’s just a few pieces of Ikea-branded furniture or a Coke machine in the museum. The caffeine might help Blathers stay awake, after all…

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 12:21 pm by Chris Schilling
Animal Crossing, Columns & Opinion, Features, Wii.