The Evil Continues

Okay, this game is officially the Work Of The Devil. After a few days of messing around with Animal Crossing : Wild World for the Nintendo DS, I can now safely say that this is the closest I have come to a virtual world, and the eerie thing about it is that it fits in your damn pocket and you can take it with you where ever you go.

It’s not just enough that the game is synched with your DS clock so that it goes through full, real time day/night cycles. It’s not enough that it’s synched with your calendar so that leaves color in autumn and snow comes in winter. It’s not even enough that you can either use a wireless LAN or internet connection to open your town up to other people or visit the towns of other AC owners and talk to them.

No, what bring this game to a whole other freakish level is the fact that the non-player character inhabitants of the town have a rudimentary Artificial Intelligence that actually seems to work. They all have their own distinctive personalities (For example, I have a duck girl that is extremely needy, while the Wife has a cat girl in her town that is a fashion freak who obsesses about clothes) , and as a result of those agendas, they puruse them and remember how you impact on that agenda.

For example, if I visit the Wife’s town and talk to some of the inhabitants there, I can return back to my town and a day or so later actually start receiving mail from the inhabitants of said town. I can interact with NPCs in my own town and actually get letters from them informing me that they are inviting themselves over to my home at a designated time, and if I should turn the game on and wait for the appointed time, lo and behold, they will actually show up. If you make enough of an impact (either positive or negative) on townspeople in your own town of those of other players, those townspeople can move out or in. Piss off the locals in your town and maybe that squirrel girl you always pick on will get fed up and leave. Keep giving gifts to the pig boy in your girlfriend’s town and that pig boy may just end up moving into your own town ’cause he likes you so much.

I’ve never quite seen a game that was so frighteningly organic in nature. Hell, even the kind of fish you can catch in the water is determined by whether you fish in the ocean, river or pond, what time of day it is and even whether the fish is in season at that time of year. For example you can catch a koi in rivers pretty much any time of the year, but if you want to catch an ocean sunfish, the months of June through September are your best bet.

What a freaky game…