Animal crossing is a great game for all ages. It's more of a cutesy thing so if you're into games like Halo then you should probably move away from it, still I enjoy Halo but I'm also a massive Nintendo Fan so if you are, this is one of the most popular games for the DS.
Based upon the game cube version, Wild World has brilliant graphics. It's not really story based, you come to a small, new town and help them grow, only few in the town have occupations but it doesn't mean it's a hobo town. Each character lives in a unique and good sized house.
So how do they make their money? Well there's a guy in town called Tom Nook who owns the general store. He sells furniture, food, medicine, seeds, tools, etc. He's even the real estate agent. Without him the town is nothing. Anywho, Tom Nook has such a name for a reason, because he's practically insane. Everyone in town agrees.
Tom Nook will buy anything that anyone sells him, flowers, shells, furniture, even fruit picked from right outside his shop. The game starts off in a taxi, once the cab drops you off you learn a bit about the town then you go to your house and meet Tom Nook, he tells you how much you owe him and then offers you a job.
You have no choice but to accept the job so you do it anyway. The reason behind this is because Nintendo put it in as a clever way of a tutorial, the job teaches you about the game and then you can go off and play it. Like a lot of games, the aim is to make money, you can then spend this on customizing your house or character.
The richer you are, the better your house gets. Now that may sound like a fairly boring game but it's very entertaining. The game is based on real time, so as long as you don't change the time settings of your DS or the game, if it's 1:00 PM in real life, it will be 1:00 PM in the game and the sky will be bright (Unless raining which happens randomly.)
Because it is based on real time, the game will celebrate things like your birthday or new years eve and day, they also have town events such as the fishing tourney, flower fest, etc. There is no way to add your own events into the game but it's still fun.
You can also collect things like bugs, fish and fossils for the museum and often travelling salesmen will visit your town and sell things like Insurance or turnips. Sound strange? Wait until you see the characters. Did I mention that every other person in this town is an animal except you? Tom Nook is a racoon!
The name "Wild World" is starting to make sense now! Anywho, there's lot of things to collect for the museum and there is so many house updates and items that the game will keep you playing. It takes years to earn everything, it's not like any other game. Now back to wi-fi, Animal Crossing has always been a console based MMORPG in a way, the wi-fi plays a huge part in the game.
If you turn your power off without saving, an angry mole named Mr. Resetti will yell at you and threaten to reset your game. This is because not saving means you can cheat your way into getting certain items so when playing online you can have certain items that are hard to get. Like in most online games, cheating is against the rules, so that's why Mr. Resetti is there.
The downside of the multiplayer is that you have to manually invite every player in to your town, so you have to be in contact with them over the internet before you connect. It also limits you to 3 in any one town at any time. So once two people join your town no one else can come in until another leaves, so it's not really the equivalent of an online game and stops it from being as good as it could be.
Overall, this is a safe, child friendly game and is probably a better childs game gift than Catz, Barbie or any of the things that you'd expect a little child to enjoy.
For serious gamers, animal crossing is not a game that can be played all day like other games, since it's based on real time, there is only so much you can do in one day, so once you've completed a few tasks on it you should save and play another game, but if you're just a child playing the game you can play it from hours on end exploring this town in a game without getting bored.
Normally adults don't have time for games depending on their occupation, or some adults don't enjoy them, but I find that a lot of adults that don't often play games may get some good entertainment out of animal crossing. It's also very easy and the closest thing to any violence or damage in the game is if you shake a tree and a bee stings you.
So if some crazy animal world stuffed into a DS card sound entertaining to you, you should buy this, but only if you have a few other games already because this isn't the kind of game you can just sit down and play. Once you do a few tasks there is really nothing more you can do until the next day.
