Animal Crossing: Wild World Critic Reviews

The online multiplayer provides for limitless possibilities for handheld gaming, allowing its participants to access a miniature world where individual style and interactivity reign supreme.

Animal Crossing tends to take over your imagination and you start wondering what is happening in your town at all hours of the day and night, because life never stops in Animal Crossing. Be warned, it can become an obsession.

An absolutely essential purchase for every DS owner, and I defy anyone to play it for a week and not to become completely and utterly addicted to it.

Truly exceptional.

What really makes the difference, though, is that Animal Crossing: Wild World is one of the first games to take advantage of Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, allowing players worldwide to travel to other players' towns.

An amazing gaming experience. It has something for everyone: fishing, bug hunting, philanthropy (i.e. donating fossils to the museum), epistolatory madness, costume design, music composition, empire building and much more.

Speaking of navigation, another reason this game is so wonderful is that every last thing you do can be done using your stylus. Typing, walking, drawing, organizing – it’s just a tap or stroke away.

It's like a digital version of Royston Vasey: the same things happening week by week, a set of unnerving neighbours - but you really will never leave.

With no big battles, mesmerizing graphics, or frustrating challenges, Animal Crossing plummets the player into a new, relaxed world, where your only concerns are to meet the animals, find all species of fish and bugs, excavate ancient fossils, and of course, pay your seemingly endless mortgage to Tom Nook.

The ultimate Animal Crossing: despite its familiarity, this retains the ability to charm your socks off.

Sure, anyone can design their own “Pen Fifteen” flag and t-shirt in real life. But only in Animal Crossing: Wild World can a designer rest assured that the fat blue pig next door is actually wearing that shirt.

It is also a game that is meant to be played for smaller amounts of time, but over a greater period, since there is so much dependent on calendar dates and times of day.

It's strangely engrossing, almost therapeutic in its mundanity.

Animal Crossing on DS is as addictive as ever. What it lacks -- multiple homeowners, NES games, boating to the island -- it makes up for with wireless multiplayer, touch screen control, and the little additions.

It's endlessly addictive, and thanks to its design, it'll be a long time before you run out of things to do in it. Thanks to the brilliant translation, it's also one of the funniest games that I've playing in some time.

The best part about it is that there's something new going on every day, whether it's a new neighbor moving in, a nasty snowstorm on the horizon, or a holiday party at City Hall.

Inexplicably fun, pure and simple.

Animal Crossing isn't for everyone, but the Nintendo DS realisation of the game is absolutely brilliant, but not - I might add - without its flaws, most of which are thankfully forgivable.

Nintendo ports over the hugely addictive GameCube sim, and adds more features and online play to the DS. A definite addition to your DS gaming library.

About living the life of a cute animal in real-time. The imaginative gameplay is as delightfully Nintendo-like as ever. Sit back and relax either on your own or with friends.