The Riskening Begins!

Now that I have a good year of City Folk under my belt I can safely say that there’s plenty of new additions in the latest Animal Crossing game that kept me playing this long…but there’s also a few changes that quite annoy me. Let’s start with the best (in my opinion) of the newest additions to the series…

1. DLC from Nintendo - Now here’s something I thought was a fantastic idea. Getting periodic gift items from Nintendo helps keep the game alive, no? Connect your town to the wifi and watch out for those letters from Nintendo with your holiday gifts (check out the sick snowman helmet in the picture ). Speaking of wifi, that leads into my next point of interest…
2. Wifi connection to other towns - There was a little bit of this in the DS version but now it’s easier than ever to stop by any other town. Connect your wifi, exchange friend codes and then you’re done! This also helps keep things alive and more interesting than the original game could achieve. Also (somewhat) connected to this is…
3. The City - In addition to the town gate that’ll lead you to other towns there’s the bus stop, which will take you over to the city. This is a nice addition but it’s little more than a marketplace, containing a few shops, the happy room academy, auction house and fortune teller. It’s a nice step but I think they could have done more with it.

Those are all pretty great additions to the series, but there’s a few things as well that just make me ask…why?

1. Deteriorating grass - This is probably my biggest peeve about the game. Running over areas of grass will cause the ground to change into dirt, it doesn’t take alot of running either. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem if the grass grew back faster…but it doesn’t. The constant grass of the original is actually something I miss now. Since the leaves, snow, etc. of the different seasons only shows up on the areas of grass then your town will look like a pretty patchy mess (see the picture for example) until your grass finally manages to grow back. Ugh…
2. Watering flowers – This is also a bit connected to the last point. Like the grass in the first game, the flowers were also something that stood the test of time without any further work (don’t run through them and they’ll stay just fine). Not anymore though, the flowers in the newest game require watering or they’ll dry up and disappear. This might not seem like that big of a deal at first, but keep a good amount of flowers around your town and you’ll be investing a decent amount of time watering them to keep them alive (unless your town happens to have alot of precipitation, then lucky you). If I wanted to be watering things I would go back to the Harvest Moon series, thanks.
3. One town per Wii console – Another annoyance, only being able to create one town per Wii console. To make matters worse the save data cannot be transfered to a SD card either. Something that was atleast (somewhat) convenient (I guess) about the first game was being able to have a town per memory card. I had my town on one and my mom had a town on another card, easy stuff. Now if Nintendo let you create more than 1 town on the system it would be even easier these days, with no swapping memory cards, but alas…

 All quirks aside, it’s the best Animal Crossing experience since the the original graced us with it’s presence 10 years ago. If you’re still considering buying it I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

Until next rant my friends,

- DGM-payne

• Last movie watched in theaters:: Sherlock Holmes
• Last DVD watched:: Robot Chicken Season 4