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It was widely acknowledged that there would indeed be an
unveiling of Animal Crossing for Wii at this year’s E3 show.
The question wasn’t so much as “if?”, but “what?”. “What?”
 would
Animal Crossing on Wii look like? “What?” would it play like?
And, most importantly for some, “what?” would the online features be
like?
Well, the answer to the first two questions is pretty
simple; exactly what you expect. Animal Crossing: City Folk
looks and plays very similarly to it’s predecessors, using the
screen-rolling technique from the NintendoDS release. The title
retains the Real-Time Clock feature from the earlier titles, and
begins with the player arriving in a randomly generated town of
similar size, selecting their house from one of four, and meeting
the locals.
The online aspect takes place in a feature known as City
Life. Currently, City Life seems to act much travelling to another
town in the NintendoDS release,
Animal Crossing: Wild World, and indeed will probably
facilitate that option for Wii. Being relatively small, the player
is given several minor activities in the area; changing hair style
and converting a Mii, auction and bid on items, and viewing an area
which looks like a small performance hall. There’s a fountain in the
centre and a dark alley through which you require an invitation to
access – perhaps the route for peer-to-peer town travelling?
Control options were limited to a Wii Remote-only
set-up, but it has been confirmed the Nunchuk Attachment is
supported. The set-up available acted similarly to Animal
Crossing: Wild World’s Touch Screen system; point the Wii Remote
in a direction, and your on-screen avatar will continuously move
towards it. Hold it further from the character, and it’ll move
faster. Holding the B Trigger runs, and the A Button executes most
actions. No Motion-based controls have been included in this
version.
The Wii Speak feature that was unveiled at Nintendo’s E3
Media Briefing wasn’t available, and so with this, and many other
elements remaining to be seen, we’ll have to wait til the year’s end
for more details. For now, however, we’ll just have to accept that
the basic mould hasn’t altered. |
