Eurogamer’s editor de-Edge’d the first few paragraphs but I prefer my original (I am SUPER biased) so here it is sans sub-edit. [/precious]

Animal Crossing is a world without death but that doesn’t mean it’s a world without loss. In this virtual life sim, bereavement comes not in life’s passing but in the passing of lives, the departures of those in-game neighbours who one day up and leave the game world.

Animal Crossing, as its name implies, houses a transient population, something we’re not used to in games that ask us to invest in relationships. So when Tiffany, the cute cat to whom you’ve been writing flirtatious letters and running never-ending errands for leaves the village on the next bus out with only a scribbled note by way of goodbye, there’s a sense of emotional loss that’s rare to games.

The feeling is heightened because, while almost all of the game’s residents are free to go as they please, heading off to new towns and lives on a whim, once you step off the bus and choose a house in which to settle, you’re here for good. This is where you’ll stay until you grow tired of the game and stop visiting the town, leaving the weeds to sprout and your relationships with the other villagers to wane. Until that point you are the local constant, the hick who’s never left its borders and there is some comfort in the knowledge that the places the other animals leave for can never be known by you.

Let’s Go To The City, the third Animal Crossing game and first for Nintendo’s Wii, punches a hole through these previous boundaries. Now you’re free to toddle along to the bus stop at any point and catch a ride to the big smoke. Sure, once there all you can do is a bit of shopping and character customization before your inevitable ride back home, but multiplayer aside, it’s the first time players have ever been allowed outside the confines of the village, a rare new feature in a game that otherwise exactly apes its forebears.

Indeed, for players familiar with the Animal Crossing series, much of Let’s Go To The City is like watching a favourite film for the hundredth time. You smile at the right places, giggle at the worn jokes, whoop when a much-loved character pops onto screen, celebrate the triumphs and feign sadness at the micro-tragedies. It can be a joyful experience but this is joy that’s comes from familiarity, not discovery. Despite the game-box promises of “new events to celebrate!” and “new items to collect!” despite the extended development time, the community features facilitated by the Wii, the option to play as your Mii character and, of course, the titular promise of a whole “city” to visit, there are few innovations beneath the topsoil.

Your adventure begins in the same way it always has, with a journey into a new beginning, a bus ride to a fresh start. There’s no background given, no great trauma that you’re fleeing from and no overarching mission driving you forward. There is no mention of a princess to rescue or a world to save. Instead you ride in the back of a rickety bus answering the questions of a friendly co-passenger, spoken in the cutesy burbling half-tongue language of all the game’s inhabitants. ‘Are you a boy?’, ‘When is your birthday?’, ‘Have you arranged accommodation for when you arrive in town?’. The answers you give here determine your character’s features, which are finally revealed when you step off the bus into your new hometown.

Moments later an officious raccoon, the local shop owner, landlord and general furry Godfather, Tom Nook, offers you one of four properties to call your own. From there in you have neighbours to get to know, letters to write, festivals to attend, fish to collect, bugs to net, fossils to excavate, clothes to buy and, of course, a mortgage to service. The game follows the Wii’s internal clock and calendar meaning that when it’s night in your world, it’s night in Animal Crossing, while the shops open at nine and close at six, and Christmas falls on the 25th December.

Let’s Got To The City has all of this. It is, in format and progression, a cookie cutter copy of Animal Crossings gone before, especially the first GameCube game. There are seasonal festivities; daily fishing competitions to see who can catch the largest Black Bass and challenges to see who can best match their home’s furnishings to the month’s theme. The lines of (brilliant) dialogue may have been rewritten, the visuals are sharper and brighter and, sure, your choice of four homesteads are now scattered around your town rather than in a cluster near the bus station, but it’s best to view Wii Animal Crossing as an expansion pack, both literally and figuratively.

You can read the rest over at Eurogamer here.