Animal Crossing

"Animation meets the real world."

Animal Crossing is an experience you have to experience for yourself. It took me nearly a year after it's release to pick this game up. I still can't say why, but it's one of those games I wish I would have jumped on when it first came out. It's a fun and lighthearted game that's a nice break from your hard work at those long role playing games. To best describe Animal Crossing, I would have to say that it's your life. Only animated.

Upon first starting Animal Crossing, you meet someone on a train who asks you who you are, what time it is and where you're going. That's your prompt to enter the name of the character you want to be, what you want to name your brand new town and the time it is now. Animal Crossing is a real time based game. Once you set your time, the GameCube's clock keeps time, no matter if you're playing the game or not. If you're playing at 5 AM, your character is running around town at 5 AM. (That's a good fishing time if you ask me.)

You're breaking free! Moving out unto your own! This is your time to shine! What's the first thing on your to-do list? You need cash and a place to stay. And fast. The local store owner, Tom Nook, hooks you up with a place to stay, but it doesn't come free. Since you're just starting out and broke, he gives you a place and you have to work off your debt . You do a few jobs for him and he eventually lets you start earning your money on your own. So now what do you do? What do you want to do? With Animal Crossing, there is no story. You do what you want, when you want, how you want. You don't “beat” this game, there isn't any limitations. So live it up!

The house you get from Nook is a bit teeny. Deal with it. Or you can pay off your debt to Nook and get an expansion. And you should. The more room you have, the more furniture you can cram in there. There are so many furniture sets you can collect. From the modern series to the classic series, each have their own unique style. There are also the seasonal furniture sets that you can only get at certain times of the year. And don't forget the odds and ends furniture that go with just about everything. Those really add to the individuality of your home.

There are SO many things you can collect in this game, but I believe the best things are the NES games. This idea was genius. You take a game where life is shrunk down into Animated size and you add old school video games. Sitting in your house, they actually look like the old NES with a game and two controllers and when you go up and touch it, you can actually play a game. No, they are not just for looks, you can play them. Each little console you get is another game. The NES meets the GameCube. Nice. Very nice.

Once you get a fishing hook from Tom Nook's store, a great way to make some money, or bells as they are referred to in Animal Crossing, is to go fishing. Just equip your pole and trot over to your pond, river or the ocean and cast away. The fishing is fairly easy. Some of the more common fish sell for around 100 bells, while the rarer fish can go for up to 10,000 bells. Not to shabby. Of course, don't sell the first rare fish you get. There is a local museum run by a real night owl and they are looking for donations. Right now the museum is empty, so the more different kinds of fish you catch, the more you can fill up that old museum up!

Fish aren't the only thing that the museum is looking for though. They're also looking for insects, paintings and fossils. Insects can be found all throughout your town and are caught with a net. Some of the insects take a little stealth to get, but it can be done. One thing to remember about both the insects and the fish is that different seasons can mean a bigger variety. The paintings are found here and there while you can dig the fossils up.

A great thing about Animal Crossing being a real time based game is every day is a new day. Literally. It gets dark at night, the leaves turn in autumn and it sometimes snows in the winter! One day, you could go out and the sun is shining and the next day, you need an umbrella. As the days roll by, so do the months and each month has something new waiting for you. While the game doesn't recognize all of the actual holidays, their version of the holidays are close. New Year's Eve for instance is dead on, but with Christmas, it's called Toy Day and celebrated on the 23, while Jingle comes to town on the 24th. Besides the great Holidays you have to look forward to, there are awesome events spread all throughout the year. You have the fishing tourneys, festivals, mushroom season and even aerobic classes.

There are also the day to day duties that can be attended to. Talk a walk around town pulling the weeds up as you go. Cut a few trees down and plant some new ones elsewhere. Plant a nice garden around your house or one of your neighbor's house. Visit your neighbors and even run some errands for them. You can get items or even bells for being a helpful neighbor. Sometimes if you talk to your neighbors enough, they start dressing like you or using a catchphrase you pick out for them. You can change your clothes from day to day or go down to the tailor and make your own clothing designs. Those designs can be used on a few other places as well. You can even send letters to your villagers and receive mail from lots of different people.

Everyone's town is unique. There are lots of different villagers that could be in your town, but the ones you start out with are totally random. Sometimes villagers move and others move in. It's just like real life. Besides your villagers, different visitors come to you town on pretty a regular basis. The village cop will often tell you who is coming and when they should be there. Your friends can even visit your town. Plug a friend's memory card into your GameCube and you can visit their town. You can even hook up your Game Boy Advance and go to your own private Island! There you'll meet an Islander that you can interact with.

With every good game, there usually lurks some things that turn you off about the game. Even after the biggest expansion to my house, I still ran out of room for everything that I wanted to put in there. That could be due to my own pack rat behaviors though. Another thing is, it gets a little repetitive at times. A lot of people don't agree with me on this one, but I have to state it anyway.. When I first purchased the game, I played it on end for hours, days at a time. After a while, I would stop for a while, then pick it back, stop then pick it back up. It just depends on what type of person you are. To me, it just seemed that after awhile, I was doing the same things over and over, just waiting for the next Holiday or scheduled event. And if you don't play the game for a while, the weeds are everywhere. It's enough to drive you insane.

The look of the game is a bit choppy, but I think that adds to appeal of it. The more realistic the game looked, the bigger of a turn off it would be. When you have a game that has imported so many things from real life, you have to animate it or it's just life on TV. I don't know about the rest of you, but I often play games to escape reality. (Which may be another reason I think the game can be a bit repetitive. ) It's just more fun to watch a blocky little character running around getting the mail and talking to it's animal neighbors. The background and everything in it have the same cartoon feel to them. Everything is clear and crisp though. Animal Crossing is a very vibrant and colorful game. The controls are very basic as well.

The sound in this game is great because you can change it. If you don't like the song that is playing, you can go to the board outside the post office and make up a new tune. You also have the option of collecting different songs to play in your house from a weekly visitor in your town. Most of the tunes are catchy and the town song changes every hour, so you're not listening to the same thing over and over. Something that caught my attention in Animal Crossing was the way the characters speak. They speak Animalanese. No you can't understand it, but yes there are captions at the bottom. I don't know about other people, but I thought their speech added to the charm of the game, rather than being annoying.

Rent or buy? Taking into consideration the pros and cons of this games, I'm going to have to say buy. Yeah, there are a few quirks I have with Animal Crossing, but it's not enough to turn me away from the game. It's enough to knock a point off with me, but definitely not enough to make me not want to own it. And if you want to do everything you can in Animal Crossing, it takes time. Like life, it can't be rushed. It can take you a whole year to catch all the fish and the bugs because of the seasonal ones. You should also take part in all of the Holiday events at least one. If you haven't already, pick this game up. It's an experience like no other.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/03/05