"You can fish, farm, collect--WE KNOW."

In this world, you have don't have to do much to make your movie worthy of 'pop culture references'. Mission: Impossible was 99% mindless action, (which is why I love it :D) and yet you still hear the theme in countless movies. The Godfather was...well, I don't even know what that was, but you still hear the famous phrase "what happens in the family, stays in the family," parodied a hundred times over.

But video games are entirely different. You never hear people referencing plot-lines from video games without mentioning it's the characters favorite game ever. It takes a special kind of video game, like Halo or Call of Duty, where even those of us who wish we lived in the 30's know what that is.

But is Animal Crossing destined to be one of those games? Let's take a look...

Animal Crossing: Wild World does not have a set goal. You cannot 'win' unless you say so, and even then you ask yourself, "could it really be called that?" Even if you've got all the Mario items, the biggest house you can get, the entire museum full, and all the rooms exactly the way you want them to be, you can still play. Maybe it's like real life, where even if you're living in a mansion, surrounded by women and taking baths in your private lake on your private island, you still want to rake in the cash. Why? /I/ honestly don't know, but I'm sure it's somewhere along the lines of "if you can get more money, then get more money."

So yes, it's fun to harvest your orchard, raking in the apples and peaches and oranges and whatever else. But maybe that's not your thing; farming. Maybe you want to try fishing. You could reel in 15 fish without breaking a sweat. It's not too hard to fish. But maybe that's not turning a profit for you. So you could try selling furniture, i.e., the usually useless garbage your neighbors give you (very rarely will you recieve a gift and exclaim, "it's just what I needed!") the stuff in the lost and found, by giving your neighbors tons of shells and cheap furniture so they'll put their expensive furniture in the recycle bin...or maybe a combination of all those things.

In other games, usually money or points or whatever your playing for are only obtained by killing enemies, basically there's only one set way to get money.

You can interact with a lot of your furniture, for instance, you can climb into your beds, start the toaster, turn out the lights, open the fridge, read messages on the backs of photos, and more.

Other games are usually just "oh, look, furniture." and very rarely can you interact with them.

Yes, the neighbors are one of six basic characters with only a different picture. You can really tell this when you use an Action Replay to bring back a villager, if you put the villager in the wrong slot (say, replacing Static with Eloise) Static will start acting like a typical girl character. (It's creepy, honestly.) The six 'types' are: lazy, (Walker) girly, (Eloise) cranky, (Apollo) manly, (Antonio) normal, (Pate) and I think the last one is something to do with being annoying, or overeating, or being spazmatic. I don't remember.

Other games usually have characters with very defined personalities, but hey, they didn't have over a hundred personalities to program into them. So far, Animal Crossing, 2.5, other, .5.

There are games with repetitive, annoying music (think Revolution X--an ENTIRE GAME about music) and some with memorable, catchy tunes that you'll find yourself humming during the day (think Spyro the Dragon). Animal Crossing has it's own soundtrack filled with adorable and interesting tunes. I usually find myself humming 'K.K. Faire' when I'm in a good mood, one of my all time favorite songs/tunes (next to 'Standing Outside the Fire'). Just listening to one of the songs by K.K. Slider can instantly put you in a good mood, which it has done for me countless times.

I've yet to find another game (save for Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution) that comes with an entire soundtrack that you could consider putting on your iPod or whatever it is. I don't have a need for one, so I just call my nintendo my iPod because--oh wait, I'm straying into why music is pointless, this is video games. *headdesk*

Okay, so maybe I'm pointing out just the good qualities of Animal Crossing and beefing up the bad ones. Now I'll point out the bad ones:

I never much liked the idea of a triangle supposed to be representing my nose. Though being able to choose how you look, (without hugely overdoing the customization thing) is nice. WAIT, NO!

So perhaps the holidays are lukewarm. But this isn't supposed to be a hard game, it's supposed to be a 'life simulation' game. Life isn't that hard. Yes, I do have all you in mind who have to go to a campground for two days with only 4 channels on TV. If only your legs had fallen off, you know? The only thing I can see being a lot more fun is maybe adding a parade and for that holiday you were given an extra room in your house to be your float area, and then you could see it and other floats rolling around town. But since we don't have that, THE GAME IS DUMB!

It's far too easy to let a hacker into your town who'll screw up your game, by placing rocks on bridges. But the number of nice people outweighs the losers who have nothing better to do but see how many people they can tick off in a day, so things like that are fixable. THIS ISN'T WORKING!

The neighbors tend to get annoying sometimes, and their conversations aren't very satisfying. They like to ask you for items that you would only have if you liked to collect ugly clothes or stupid looking furniture. I was once asked if I had a royal crown, and they actually expected me to go find one. Pound on the raccoon until he gives you one.

I had started playing the game hoping that the two little people on the front were the shop keepers, or one of the special visitors. But no, you have to play the only human on earth, (or maybe this is a "My Gym Partner's a Monkey" situation) while the animals walk around and talk like you, the only thing is they run shops that stock about six items a day, the others never shop, they expect you to (as if there weren't animals allowed in a store run by a raccoon) and while they can afford thrones and other fancy stuff (even Sahara's carpets and flooring!) they just laugh at you while you're paying off Nook's debt.

Some people complain about the stuff Nook charges you. At first, when he told me I owed him 20,000 bells, I thought he was joking. I prayed he was joking. But I got over it and payed off the debt. Then it got bigger. I was already earning nearly 20,000 a day from my massive apple orchard (my town fruit was oranges) so it wasn't that hard. But paying off 750,000 bells takes some time. But hey, where else would you put your money, other than to donate to Boondox to get the elusive rainbow feather?

I knew a girl once who pretended she liked video games. She also pretended she was the manliest woman alive (my own mother would earn that award, the same mother who wore a dress to school on Veteran's day...) So I saw her not too long ago and asked if she still liked video games. Then she said she LOVED Animal Crossing. I asked her what she thought of it, and she told me she hadn't filled up her zoo yet.

So I guess Animal Crossing is pretty popular, even to ditzy blondes who can't even figure out how to turn on their nintendo. It's not a 'must-own' title for everyone, because people have different likes and dislikes. There is no one movie or video game or anything that everyone loves, because everyone has different tastes. I've met people who will say that your life is meaningless until you've seen the Godfather, and yet several others who can't find a point to the movie.

Okay, so now I'm being a little corny. But it's true--those of you who insist that Animal Crossing is great and everyone who hates it is stupid and biased, there are some people who need a set goal in mind, or else life is pointless. *coughTraviscough* And to those of you who tell the world we're wasting our time playing...go rot your brain on Halo or something.

That was HUMOR, people...

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/22/07