Animal Crossing: City Folk

Animal Crossing: City Folk brought the series' tried-and-tested formula to Wii, in which the player lives in a village full of animal neighbors, pays off debts to the crafty raccoon Tom Nook, catches fish and bugs, collects fossils, and day by day furnishes their own house and its surroundings. The game runs in real time according to the console's clock and calendar, so it changes with the seasons, holidays, and time of day, and rewards players who return regularly for short visits instead of one-off marathon sessions.

Compared to the previous GameCube installment, this version added a new City, reachable by a bus driven by Captain Kapp'n, where an auction house operates for bidding on furniture, along with clothing stores and a hair salon, while the village itself and its residents remain essentially the same as in previous entries. City Folk was also the first Wii game to support the Wii Speak peripheral - a microphone that let players talk out loud with each other when visiting another village, instead of typing text messages or clicking emoticons. The game also made use of the WiiConnect24 service: thanks to it, friends could send letters or offer items at auction even when not connected at the same time, and browse other people's houses remotely without having to coordinate a shared time at the console. Controls via the Wii Remote replaced the classic gamepad from the GameCube version, which brought the game closer to the broader, less hardcore audience that Wii as a platform as a whole was targeting. City Folk was thus not simply a port of the previous installment, but a version noticeably adapted for the online community around the Wii console.

Why play it: City Folk is a good choice for players who enjoy the series' slow, laid-back pace and want to experience the era when Animal Crossing first offered full-fledged online neighbor visits along with its own voice chat right in the living room via the Wii Speak peripheral.