Since I first saw the game played, at a friend's house I believe, I knew I had to try Animal Crossing on the Gamecube. The problem, at the time, was that I didn't own a Gamecube, and I didn't want to pay the price for the system, nor did I want to pay the price for the game. I'm primarily a vintage gamer, so I bide my time with the good, old classic and wait for today's craze to fade away and turn up for pennies in thrift stores, flea markets, etc. before I give it a go.
When I finally got my hands on Animal Crossing I was blown away by the amount of things you could do; all the animals to talk to, tasks you could do, fishing, collect, etc. But over time the game eventually ground itself into a giant repetitive hole and just became something I never wanted to play again. Years later, as I previous posted here, I did come back to my old Animal Crossing city of Hell and the residents were all to happy to let me know exactly how long it had been since they saw me last, and to be honest I missed them!
But as had happened before, with the help from Mr. Resetti due to a series of unforeseen power failures, I decided this game was too demanding and it was time to pack it away yet again. This only lasted until I found a copy of Animal Crossing Wild World at the outlet store. At first Wild World seemed much the same with a few added bonuses here and there, but it too quickly got on my nerves as it just felt like deja vu!
Throughout the past 6 months I've visited my Wild World town a handful of times, saw that its overrun with weeds and promptly turned off my DS, as the top screen no longer works anyway. But recently I was given a copy of Animal Crossing City Folk for the Nintendo Wii, and my views on the series haven't changed at all. I love the initial feeling of starting anew and exploring something new, but in reality its all the same.
Every game starts out with you moving to a new town, buying a home from Tom Nook and being his lacky for a few measly coins to help pay off his initial fee for housing. Although there is a mayor, Tortimer, Tom Nook seemingly owns everything else in the town! But there is a small feeling of justice knowing Tom Nook buys everything from you, thus paying himself back for the home you eventually own.
The main draw to Animal Crossing has been the interactions such as Halloween, and other holidays that not many other games have the ability or care to include. Apparently many holidays were left out in Wild World, so that coupled with the broke DS screen have really made me not even want to play it anymore. I did however use it to move my character to City Folk.
One fear that I had for Wild World has come up in City Folk, gimmicking! Nintendo and their stupid need to toss in the gimmick of the console and mess up the whole game. In Wild World I'm not forced to use the touch screen, it just aids heavily in the speed of doing a few tasks. In City Folk there are bits of game you can't do without having to use the motion controls.
Most people won't even notice because they have a normal Wii sensor bar, but since I have the makeshift sensor from another game, which chews through batteries, I have to constantly turn it off and on when I need to use the motion controls. Where in Wild World you can use the D-pad and buttons to move things throughout your inventory and select them to be sold, City Folk forces you to use the motion controls to click and/or drag. Even though there is absolutely no need for this, it seems everything else in the game can easily be done without the need for motion controls, except anything that requires selecting something (items, typing out letters, etc.)
So far City Folk seems to be much the same as the two previous games, but even with the frustration of the motion controls it still keeps me busy, for now. Hopefully after a little while this game will start to shine bright and I'll take more interest in it than I already do, which is blunted by Wild World. But as of right now I have to say the first is still my favorite for its simplicity, yet complexity all at the same time.
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