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It's really simple. Take a picture of anything Nintendo related that goes on for you between now and the new year, send it to us, and you may win a copy of Etrian Odyssey II! Pictures could be of a variety of things. Did you get a great Nintendo related gift? Did your family rock out to Guitar Hero: World Tour? Did your grandma try Wii Sports for the first time? If Nintendo is involved, it's probably a great picture!
Keep in mind, the best photo isn't going to be the winner of the game. That's because happy holiday celebrations are all equally great! Therefore every photo submitted can be considered for the prize. A winner will be chosen randomly from all eligible entries.
A couple of rules do apply. Besides the primary rule of the photos being somehow Nintendo related, they must also be rated E for Everyone. Please keep everything family friendly. If the judges of the contest don't think a photo is suitable, the photographer will not be considered for the free game.
If all of this sounds good to you, send your photos to mikegamin[at]nintendoworldreport.com with "Holiday Contest" in the subject line. We'll stop taking submissions on January 2, 2009, and the winner will be announced in the special on Monday, January 5, 2009. Anyone living at a location that the United States Postal Service can ship to is eligible to win the prize. That means most of the world!
By submitting your photo to this contest you are giving Nintendo World Report permission to post it in a special feature pertaining to this contest. The photo may then remain on the site for the duration of the site's existence. It will not be used in any other fashion besides the single special feature. Nintendo World Report employees will also submit photos to this contest but they will not be eligible to win the prize. The submitters name and/or contact information will not be included in the special feature on the site, but it must be included in the submission in order to be eligible for the prize. All qualifying photos are not guaranteed to be in the special feature, but all submitters will still be equally likely to win the prize.
Yesterday's Official NWR WiFi Night was a success. Several people showed up and a lot of good games were going on. I was pretty excited about trying some Smash again, as I hadn't played for several months after being totally let down by the lag-filled online matches.
Overall, I was able to have some extremely entertaining matches after I adjusted to the button lag. Vudu hosted one game that I joined with General Traag and his roommate. We played for quite a while and I lost the vast majority of the time. Traag and friend are definitely experienced Brawl players. After Vudu decided to call it a night, I moved on to trying several other games out. This is where most of the problems I experienced happened. I believe I tried to play with Maxi about a dozen times, each attempt resulting in a terrible frame rate and then a complete drop of the game. After some discussion in the chat room, I discovered that Flames_of_Chaos lived only about six hours from me and his Fios connection resulted in the first ever green connection dot I had ever seen. So I finished off the night playing with him and Djunknown for a while. Sadly, we had to say no whenever Maxi tried to join in order to preserve our connection. Sorry Maxi! After about two and a half hours of under blinking, my eyes were on fire and I had to call it a night.
It looks like the Brawl playing went will into the wii hours (hah, sorry) of the night. Participants should put their own stories up in the talkback! If you missed this one, make sure you keep an eye out for next month's! The Matchmaking & Smacktalk forum is where the voting threads show up. You can also follow NWR's Twitter feed for notification!
For those that don't know, the Animal Crossing series fits right into the life simulation genre with a focus on collecting things. It doesn't feature an elaborate career mechanic, but it does have hundreds of different things to seek out. These collectible items are closely tethered to a time system that ties in directly with the system clock. When it's winter in real life, there's snow on the ground in the game. In April, more bugs come out for catching. During Halloween, a special event involving pumpkins occurs in your town. When you haven't played in a while, weeds grow all over and the locals bug you, wondering where you have been. This creates the great illusion that the game plays itself when you aren't around.
Animal Crossing also takes this concept a step further in the way it offers multiplayer. While two people in the same room can't each pick up a controller and play together, both players can create characters that live in the same town. Therefore, if your brother plays the game early in the morning, he will get the first shot at any fresh fruit on the trees. If he picks it all, there won't be any for you until it grows back again, which can take a few days. This same-house, same-town mechanic is why most people's opinions of the series are directly related to whether or not they are the only one playing it in their house. The game can get quite boring without at least some level of competition and community.
Another great mechanic that really adds value to the experience is the ability to visit other players' towns. This means you can meet new characters, find fruit that is most likely rare in your town, see what a different shop is currently selling, and enjoy a general change of scenery. On top of all of that, animals you meet in your friend's town may move to yours and vice-versa. Knowledge of all past interactions with other characters comes with them when they move. It’s not unheard of to have them show you a silly note your friend wrote to them some months prior. This is another example of what makes this simulation game so successful; it does a great job of making a virtual world seem a bit more real.
Here's the wrinkle though. Anyone who has read this review up to this point may have glanced at the top of the screen, double checking that they were in fact reading a review of the brand new Animal Crossing: City Folk, and not the original GameCube game. Don't worry though. City Folk includes most of the great new features added to the DS version, including online connections to your friends' towns. However, this is also the main problem. City Folk is little more than an enhanced port of the DS hit. Ignoring the addition of the City area, which we'll get to later, it's nearly impossible to quantify the changes or additions the Wii game introduces to the series. The only immediately obvious tweak is actually a reversion to an original GameCube feature, that being that multiple players in the same town each have their own house again (instead of living in the same house like in the DS game).
This is why - if you are a long time fan of the series - it's hard to play City Folk without it leaving a bad taste in your mouth. You’ve probably done everything before. A brand new city area has been added to the game, which is accessed by quickly hopping on a bus at a stop near your gate. Here you can do several things, none of which are that exciting. Firstly, Redd's Emporium and Katrina's Fortune Telling booth have each received a permanent location here, as opposed to the temporary visits they used to make in previous games. While the easy access is nice, it's another case of the developers filling out the game using old material. They also gave the Happy Room Academy (previously only heard of through in-game mail) a headquarters. While interesting on the first visit, it's mostly pointless as the only reason to return is to see the current model room, which does little more than show off a specific item set. Besides that, there is also a new high-end boutique, a nice touch since it's another way of collecting all of the items. Unfortunately, it does not change its inventory frequently enough.
Arguably the two most exciting features of the City are the inclusion of an Auction House and Hair Salon. The hair salon brings Mii support to the title by allowing you to give your on-screen character a makeover based on your Mii. This would be outstanding if it didn't come with so many side effects. Basically, any accessory that goes on your character's head can not be worn at the same time as a Mii mask. This means that glasses, masks, and hats are all pointless if you want your character to look like your Mii. If you choose not to wear a Mii mask, the salon can also be used to change your hair style, which is a nice touch, as previous Animal Crossing games picked a random look for your character and you were stuck with it.
On the surface, the auction house appears to be a great means of completing your collection, as it tone would assume that it would be at least feature items from gamers nationwide. Sadly, this is not the case at all. Items can be placed on auction during the appropriate span of time and a reserve price can be decided on, but you can only auction off one item per auction, which looks to amount to around one item per real-life week. When the bidding phase of the auction begins, you will have the ability to bid on items offered only by people on your Animal Crossing friend list and your Wii system friend list. In a bizarre twist, Animal Crossing actually utilizes the system list. Regardless, the end result is both a very limited audience for your item, and a very limited library of items to bid on. This flies in the face of what an auction house in a game of this nature should be. It is impossible for a mini-economy to form in which in-game items can attain a true monetary value.
The bizarre use of the Wii system friend list doesn't stop there either. The post office in town features two cool new ways of sending letters from the game to your friends. You can either send them to your friend in-game (if you've exchanged Animal Crossing friend codes), or to your friend’s Wii message board (if you've exchanged Wii friend codes). When looking at your Wii friend list to choose a recipient, it even tells you which of them own Animal Crossing: City Folk. Even with this information, it is impossible to directly add them to your Animal Crossing list. You still have to write down your code, send it to them, wait for them to send their code back, and then add them manually before you can visit their town. So let's get this straight: this is a first-party Wii game that makes direct contact with your Wii system’s friends list, and also knows for a fact which members of that list have the same game as you. Yet, to actually play with each other online you need to add them to a separate list entirely? How exactly are per-game friend codes necessary at this point? It makes absolutely no sense at all.
That's not the only aspect of the online system that is frustrating. When the WiiConnect 24 service was first announced, many people immediately equated the functionality with the Animal Crossing universe. What better way to give the impression that your town is active even when you aren't playing than to allow your friends to visit your town even when your system is off? Sadly, this is not the case with City Folk. Connecting to friends works just like it does in Wild World. You have to go to the gate guard and tell him to open your gate up before anyone can come see you. Like most Wii games, this means that you will most likely need some form of external communication in order to play together.
When you do get to play with someone else online, the addition of the Wii Speak microphone really adds to the fun. Assuming both people have voice chat enabled, a full conversation can be carried out regardless of where the characters are in the town. The placement of the microphone and lack of headphone requirement led many to wonder about the potential for echoes and feedback; while the noise cancellation in the title isn't perfect, it seems to work flawlessly about half the time. The other half of the time, conversations are still very easy to have but you will most likely hear an echo of your own voice. On a few rare occasions I was a victim of some intense feedback loops that had all parties involved lunging for the mute button on their TV. Overall, the voice chat worked great and should be a great addition to Nintendo's future online offerings. Here's to hoping for either a rerelease or patch for Mario Kart Wii that adds support for the device.
There are several extremely frustrating issues with this incarnation of Animal Crossing. That said, what was written in the beginning of this review still holds true: the core game is still extremely charming. If you have never played an Animal Crossing game before and the calendar and collecting features of this simulation intrigue you, don't hesitate to pick it up. It can be extremely engrossing and amount to months, if not years, of enjoyment for a player. If you have played or are still playing Animal Crossing: Wild World for DS, ask yourself, are you really interested in doing the same things all over again?
Pros:
Lastability: 10.0
One thing you can't argue with in an Animal Crossing game is lastability. There are hundreds of items to find, bugs to hunt, and fish to catch. The great calendar system keeps you coming back all year.
Final: 7.0
It's an outstanding game for newcomers to the series, but veterans will find themselves wanting a lot more.
Visually, the Frontman guitar takes on the styling of a Fender Telecaster. The only other immediately noticeable difference between it and the first-party guitar is the placement of the plus and minus buttons. In order to keep the Telecaster look in place, they moved these buttons to the opposite side of the whammy bar so that they could take on the appearance of the knobs found on the real guitar.
Just like the first-party guitar, the Frontman takes full advantage of the Wii Remote, mounting it into the body from a compartment in the back and utilizing both the speaker and the accelerometer for error sounds and star power tilts, respectively. Thankfully, both of these features translate perfectly to the game. It's impossible to differentiate between the two different guitars when looking at only those features. The same can be said for strumming; the Frontmanis responsive and has the same crisp click that the first-party guitar (and franchise in general) is known for. This is good and bad, as I was secretly hoping that the problem I refer to as re-strumming would be solved; that is, when you strum particularly hard and release the bar, a second strum is registered on the rebound. Guitar Hero players have already been forced to get used to this phenomenon, so it's not really a negative with the Nyko guitar.
The main flaw in this guitar doesn't become apparent until we leave the body and head up the neck. The size of the buttons is odd. They are so small relative to the neck that it's easier than it should be to completely miss on an attempted push. The neck itself is 1 1/2 inches wide at the green button, which is 7/8 of an inch wide. Compare this to the same measurements on the first party guitar, on which the neck is 1 3/8 inches wide, and the green button is a full inch. The result is a significantly larger space between the edge of the neck and the beginning of the button on the Frontman guitar.
So how does this affect actual gameplay? Many players, especially those with small hands, use just their fingertips wrapped around the neck to press the buttons. When the buttons are further away, fingers have to be wrapped around even farther which can force the adjustment of an entire play style. Also, smaller buttons in general will often result in missed presses. I found myself pushing on blank plastic and missing notes a bit too often.
Even with the button size issue, it was still possible for me to adjust to the guitar and play just as well as I can with the first-party guitar after a dozen songs or so. Combine that with the great budget price point of the hardware and the Nyko Frontman guitar is a good buy. Guitar Hero III players looking for a second guitar should definitely consider it. It would also make a wonderful bass guitar to add to the Guitar Hero World Tour set when it ships next month.
Pros:
Construction: 8.0
Overall, the Frontman guitar feels very nice in your hands. It can definitely stand up to some of your more vigorous rocking sessions. The only part that feels slightly fragile is the whammy bar.
Final: 8.0
The great budget price overcomes the shortcomings of the neck buttons, making the Nyko Frontman guitar a great choice for people looking to pick up a second Guitar Hero guitar.
