Nintendo DS Review: Animal Crossing: Wild World

Review by: Drizzt

This is one the most addicting games out, not only for DS, but it can match and beat many other games out there. With a whole load of stuff to do, it's hard to get bored of this game. Welcome to Animal Crossing: Wild World.

Gameplay is all about fishing, bug catching, finding dinosaur fossils, furnishing your house, expanding your house, making loads of money, going online and hanging it with your friends, making friends with the neighbors, designing your own clothes, flags, umbrellas, your house's flooring and wallpaper and even decorating the town with your own designs. There's always something to do here and it’s all easy to control. Stylus control is as easy as tapping on things. You tap the ground to move. You tap yourself to use whatever item your carrying, tap villagers to talk to them, and so on. You can also just use the d-pad to move around and the buttons to do everything else.

There are special events that come from time to time such as the fishing tourney and “yay day”. There are also many different people that come that need your help, sell you something (such as insurance) and people who want something to eat. Wild World keeps you coming back with lots of new activities everyday and new people to meet. It can get repetitive after a while (a long while) but it still somehow wants you to come back and see what's new. Wild World has an undeniable charm.

The graphics are well done. They are quite fitting for the DS. It shows some of the power the DS can do although nothing to spectacular. It's fairly simplistic and has a humurous art style. Some things are 2D and most 3D and it mixes quite well. Character models are nice. Again nothing mind blowing but the art style is where it shines.

The music and sound is also quite fitting. Get music from K.K. Slider or Totokeke (whichever one you call him) and play it at your own house to listen to anytime free of charge. His songs aren't exactly the greatest but it's a lot better than having a large house with no sound except your awkward footsteps. The animals talk in their "Animalese" language which is quite a load of gibberish and can get a bit annoying at times. If you listen close enough, they are saying the letters of each word really fast making it sound like the actual word but it's rather odd. You can change how they talk to you so it's pretty customizable. The music is nice and changes every hour. Simplistic as they are they are still nice to listen to.

All in all, it's a very fun game with lots to do and lots to see. The Wi-Fi component can feel limited at times but it's nothing big and it's one of the stronger points of the game. Online trading is quite fun and you can really get some cool stuff. There are lots of websites that allow you to share friend codes and go to each others town to trade and socialize. There are very few people that enjoy ruining other towns. I have not encountered one yet and even if you don't like what someone did to your town, you can power off while the other person is still there, kicking the person out, not saving any changes and best of all, that darn mole, Resetti, won't show up to lecture you. But people do indeed hack. Many have insane amount of money lying around, several town gates, and so on.
I recommend this game to anyone looking for some non-violent fun that’s packed with things to do.