From what we saw at eGames, the base gameplay in City Folk remains reasonably unchanged since the DS’s Wild World. There’s still your town, ruled over by that money hungry jerk Tom Nook. You still have to place yourself into indentured servitude to pay off your ever expanding abode and to be able to afford happiness via mindless consumerism. And from what we experienced, it seems that it’s going to be as easy to develop a strange attachment to your anthropomorphic neighbours.
The biggest change for this version is more than hinted at in the subtitle. City Folk’s town offers up a bundle of shops for your perusal. Searching for the bus stop that takes you there was the first thing we did when we picked up the controller. Although it's a far-from-bustling metropolis, City Folk's urban centre has a decent amount of shops to hop between, most of these inspired by elements of the old games. The Happy Room Academy now has an office which gives you more info than before on how to improve your dwelling. Gracie, who previously used to visit your town on rare occasions, has also set up shop, selling her designer line of clothing. There’s other individuals, ripped from the previous titles that have created permanent places of business, such as Redd, Katrina and Shampoodle, along with a few additions, such as a shoe peddling skunk. Unfortunately, it’s not clear what will replace the appearances of these sales people in your town.
Coming to the city from a small country town can be an eye-popping experience.
Anyone that migrated from the original on the Gamecube to Wild World on the DS knows the frustration of having to discover all your hard earned items again. Thankfully, City Folk will have an option to import your catalogue of items - not the items themselves - saving you the multiple hours it would take to re-unlock them all again. Along with the shops inventory, your character can also be imported. So if it’d taken you a while to perfect your look in Wild World – not that there were a vast array of options – you can get a happy little clone of yourself transported to the Wii. The other neat feature of City Folk is the ability to use the new Wii Speak microphone which will allow you to talk to your friends as they visit your town, unfortunately this addition was not on display at eGames.
City Folk’s controls were pretty simple to get the hang of. Thankfully, either the nunchuck joystick or a point and click style of movement can be employed to navigate the world, meaning that there’s choices around movement. Tasks like fishing and grabbing with your butterfly net can quite easily be completed with a flick of the nunchuck. The interface, including maps, inventory and other menus, seemed reasonably well put together, but until we spend a lot more time with the game we won’t be able to judge this with any real authority.
With a reasonably meagre amount of changes being made in this Wii update of the tried and true Animal Crossing formula, we were originally a little concerned that Animal Crossing: City Folk would feel a bit light on. However, after being on eGame’s showroom floor, watching those who hadn’t experienced the Gamecube or DS versions, our concerns have been partly allayed. The smiles on mum’s, dad’s and their kid’s faces, as they flicked their Wii Remotes, sending their character’s fishing line out into the ocean, were proof to us that at least with the Wii’s expanded audience, Animal Crossing: City Folk has the possibility of reaching a group of people who have, until now, never had a great time hanging out with talking animals and doing all those things we complain about having to do in real life.
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