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Animal Crossing review

Game: Animal Crossing
Platform: GameCube
Genre: Simulation
Developer: Nintendo
AKA: Doubutsu no Mori Plus (JP)

Reader review by unchained

July 17, 2005

Videogames can take up your time. They can take a minute, an hour, a day…possibly a month. Usually this is an addictive game, possibly a game that will keep your attention day in and day out. Your eyes glued to the screen waiting for something to happen. Just a game that will keep you entertained, and few games of this kind come out rarely. That’s why you’ve got to keep your eyes open – Animal Crossing is waiting at the shelves.

Interactive key elements and a wide variety of stuff to do, puts Animal Crossing to a standard that keeps your interest by the growing time. Animal Crossing uses real-life time to keep track of day and night, seasons by seasons, month by month. The possibilities go on. This also just follows day to day, which can have special celebrations, events, and then just regular days.

While Animal Crossing doesn’t really focus on a story or doesn’t really have one at all, just favors for other civilians in your town can replace that. The favors are the same almost every time, just go to another person’s house to get the other’s belongings and then sometimes the person will have lent it to another person and you to have to go clear across the town to get that person. It’ll get repetitive and frustrating by the minute.

Animal Crossing just has a massively long-winded variety. It specializes in the characters. There are so many characters to speak to or meet. Each having a little personality, and their appearance immediately gives you an idea of what you think the character acts like. Though, there’s a catch. Every other civilian is an animal. Now this bothered me.

You can only play as a human, no animal, no nothing. It drove me nuts that you didn’t have the choice. Here you are, a human in a town full of animals, though the real easy benefit is that you can adapt and fit in real easy. This allows that detriment to be a thing of the past.

Animal Crossing starts you off to create your own town. Name it and it’ll provide a map for it with all of the locations to go to. Whatever you do, each town will have its own unique landscape. While you can create another town, you can’t create three, or four, or five. In order to actually create another town is for you to erase one, which is sort of a limited option.

Upon starting the game, instead of doing all of the obligatory selections that you would do in every other game, Animal Crossing does it differently. You start off immediately in a train where another character asks you a series of questions. Asking you like, what would be your name, and then a different way to choose your gender.

To be frank, the males and females have different appearances.

The indistinguishable appearances of the males and the females seems to be a problem when you have characters that look alike, a customizable option could’ve been nice to have a diverse town and the character’s wouldn’t be so…common. Though, when you do start off, you start off with a unique hair color and an outfit, which is the best of customizing your character can get.

You start off without a house, so you’ve moved to this town without a predetermined and prearranged house or plans. Though, a shop owner, Tom Nook greets you almost immediately and finds out that you haven’t found a house and you don’t have any money. He gives you one of his houses and enlists you to work at his shop doing simple favors for him: planting flowers and trees; do favors for town residents; and writing a slogan for the shop. You know, the simplistic stuff.

While doing the favors, you’re paying off the debt that you owe to Nook for the house. Eventually you’ll be free (you will be kissing the ground, believe me) and you’ve got to pay off the rest of the debt and live a life in your town.

Now you’ve got your small house.

Your house is placed with three other nearby houses and those houses can only be inhabited by your characters that you can create. Of course, you’re not obligated to create some characters immediately, it’s best to have friends or family give it a shot because of the easy and a bit exciting interactive element in Animal Crossing.

What can you do interactive, you say? Something to be cleared, you can’t play up to 4 players simultaneously, you have to do it alternately. One player can play at a time, no having split screens. Now that, that has been cleared up, mailing is one thing. You can send gifts and write letters to other players and also just to CPUs.

Mailing is just one of the few things that can be in relation to being even considered interactive, but you need money to buy paper. You need money to pay off your mortgage. You need money to buy furniture. You need money, period.

That’s why instead of going through a job, you must do the common money-making task: sell. Sell fish, sell insects, and sell furniture, just so much to get back. The real thing that makes Animal Crossing a successful time investment is the way it captures living a life. Even though it’s just like living a life, you can find discoveries right in front of your nose.

Exploring your town is a definite.

Your town can be ridden with discoveries. Trees can grow fruit, and trees can carry money. Presents can float by on a balloon, and money can be found buried under the ground. Fossils can be buried underneath the ground, and maybe a little garbage can be discovered.

Having multiple characters increases the discoveries of people talking of another character that you have or someone else might be using. Usually they’ll talk about the character’s personality or mood, or how close or far apart their friendship was/is.

Discoveries as in people moving to your town. Or people moving away to the other town. The real bummer is many people just move away without a notice, and soon your town’s population will deplete and your other town (if you’ve created one) will increase on its population. It’s all about balance.

Finally, just the discoveries on the wide-selection of possibilities to actually do, and to actually see. The discoveries on how you can pester or enlighten people. Just seeing how they react when they are mad. They’ll have dark clouds above they head or they’ll blow out air making a tedious sound.

The enlightened side shows a background of flowers and they smile wide and act so pleased. This part of Animal Crossing is truly what makes it quite the pleaser and what makes the fun emerge.

Just the 3d characters and the kiddy graphics, from a first glance you’ll immediately know it’s a different change or a transition from today’s regular games that feature mature elements. The game is for kids, but it’s fun. That’s the thing with Animal Crossing; it’s for every age and it’s not that complicated.

The sound in it may not be the top-notch stuff you’ll usually see, but it’s something to at least enjoy for quite sometime. It’ll have a little tune going on for you to at least move along with. The little sounds that make you move along in a motion. It’s nothing spectacular or anything to be in awe about, but you will at least notice the tunes.

The whole game, just the thought and the creativity put into this creation, the thought of going out discovery-hunting, or just to explore the land. Meeting the neighbors, meeting the residents. Having a schedule planned out: Go check mail, go fish, sell fish, visit other town, meet up with neighbor, and then reply to your mail at the post office. Folks, you may need to play this one during the summer…you’re going to need extra time to be able to play this. You can’t pick this game up and play for a little bit, it’s odd how playing for a few minutes turns into playing for a whole day.

Animal Crossing…can’t always be for you, if you’re a gamer that plays action games with a compelling storyline or an RPG fan with the common story: young-boy-out-to-save-the-world-from-the-evil-villain-before-it’s-too-late…forget about this, but if you’re looking for something to occupy yourself when games are getting a bit unappealing, or if you like games such as The Sims or Harvest Moon try Animal Crossing out.

Animal Crossing is just a fun and simple little adventure that takes you through another’s experience of living in the small community developing relationships and paying your house’s mortgages to remodel your house to a different size. To furnish your house and live the lifestyle you want. It’s a definite change, but it’s for the better. Live a double life.

Rating: 8.4/10

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