tommy_lop's Full Review: Animal Crossing for GameCube
About 2 months ago I bought a game called Animal Crossing. The game just made it into Nintendo’s player choice award and I was wondering how good a game it was. I heard that there where unlock able NES games in this game, but I have heard mix reviews. I popped this in and it’s a pretty addictive game. Now it’s not exactly the most exciting game, but the fact that it’s to want you want to do, whenever you want to do it makes it a great game to enjoy.
Story.
Well if you have ever read the book Kiki’s Delivery Service (click her for book and movie review your pretty much know what this game is about. It’s basically the same thing minus the sarcastic cat, the flying broom, and the overly large hair accessory. You have just moved out into the world and are just moving into a new community. The catch is the new community is inhabited entirely my talking animals. A kind cat on the train gets you hooked up with a house from the towns store owner named Tom Nook. Since you don’t have enough money to pay for the small shack you have to pay Nook off. Has the game progresses you can make your house bigger and put more furniture and knick knacks in it.
Graphics.
The graphics are great they really push the power of the system, oh wait this is the game cube not the N64. In that case the graphics have sharp edges, the characters look silly, and the color are a bit lacking to say the least. But the most annoying thing is the fact that the camera is always in an overhead angle. It makes it annoying because items your out to collect can easily be lost behind rocks and trees.
Sound.
The sound is all right there all peaceful town themes. But they change every hour and there quite a few so by the time you get sick of one song the town will change it. The music is ok but not great. The animals all so like Banjo Kazooie rejects with there Banjo Kazooie type muffled speech.
Gameplay.
Ok the gameplay isn’t the most exciting in the world. There are no aliens to shoot, no vampires to whip, and no moblins to dispatch. The goal of the game is to pay off your house and make friends with your neighbors. Not the most exciting thing but the game has some addictive features.
The thing about it is in your town you can basically do anything the game will let you at the time. Feel like fishing then go fishing, feel like helping and talking neighbors then you can do that. And the game changes day to day that’s the great part about it. See there is a clock and calendar in it so certain things happen at certain times and days. Music changes each hour, and trees take 4 days to grow. And holidays are put in there to.
For instance yesterday was thanksgiving so everybody was down in an area of town called the wishing well celebrating and waiting for the turkey. And a special game that can only be played during this time of year my job was to steal stuff and give it to the turkey who was hiding somewhere in the village in order to get special furniture. Today is Sale day, to represent the busiest shopping day of the year, and Tom Nook is selling special grab bags.
Since not every day is a holiday there are special visitors that come in town. There is Katrina a psychic who can change your luck for 50 bells. There is Sahahra who sells carpet, and Wendel who will give you wall paper. And of course the most interesting character of them all is Red the fox. He sells special furniture in his black, or um furniture market. There really expensive and a lot of time it’s stuff you can get at Nooks but everyone and a while you find a great find like an NES game.
Communication.
The games main point is communicating with the animals in the village. When you talk to them there are two options you can use. The first is the ability to ask if they need help with something, they usually turn you down. But if they say yes it’s you have to go make a delivery for them, or pick up something for them. Then you have to scoot across town to find the animal to either pick up or delivery for them, and sometimes when it’s a pickup you find the excuse I lent it to somebody else. It’s time like that you wish that you did have Kiki’s broom stick to fly on because some of these chains can last up to a good 5 or 6 different people. Of course the real problem is when you finally make the delivery and the person gives you a reward, usually furniture. Every once and a while though after running around and talking to half the people in the town to get there special item back you get lame ones like stationary. This is the time where you wish they had a knock the person down, beat the hell out of them, and take there wallets options.
The 2nd option just lets you chat with them if you become popular in the town you can get rare items from people just for using that option. But be careful they might take an item from you to if you use that item. The main draw back of this 2nd option is there only so much that the animals say that you often read the same conversation over and over again. They change per monthly to talk about the next holiday or event in your town but it does get old to listen to the same thing over and over again.
Then the lamest part of the whole communication angle is letters. This would have been a good idea but the animals don’t understand anything I write. If I write something like: Hi have a shirt, they get mad at me because they don’t understand the letter. All though if I do enclose clothes in the letter they usually complement me on it the next time they see me.
Mr. Resseti.
Since this is supposed to be a life simulation game if you mess something up and then hit Reset you get chewed out my a mole called Mr. Resseti, who basically hollers at you for resetting and makes you apologize for doing it. It’s annoying but it’s also kind of funny to.
NES games.
Ok finally the real reason why people got interested in animal crossing, and why I bought it. Unlockable NES games. While most of these are just NES ports of arcade ports, which can be gotten on the e-reader like excitebike. There are some actual full legenth NES games in there. Like the great puzzle game Wario Woods which I unlocked using a code right away when I found this game was in there, nothing holds me back from replaying a great puzzle game. All the games on this disc are just like you remember them but only on a clearer screen do to the disc instead of cartridge support
Of course there is the infamous Zelda game that nobody has found how to unlock and Nintendo won’t be releasing the code or the secret for getting this anytime soon. Especially with the Zelda collectors disc that features the original Zelda game already on it.
My only real problem with the NES games is that the NES themselves aren’t all that realistic. For one thing they start when your character hit’s the power button. If there trying to get kids to play NES games they should have the full range and experience of owning the NES. The includes kickboxing them, hitting them with mallets, and blowing them up just to get the things to start. Nintendo screwed the younger generation out of a great learning experience by depriving them of this great NES feature.
Memory Card.
If Nintendo didn’t make any money off selling this game alone, then they made money off the memory card sales alone. For instance one game of this takes about 59 blocks of memory. While the game does come with a memory card, and up to 4 people can live in the same village, if you want to experience trade, or just have more then one village your going to need another memory card. More profit for Nintendo what a great gimmick.
Final Recommendation.
While I like this game a lot it’s not for everyone. Especially people who are really busy, if you don’t have time to sit down and play this every couple of days things start to fall apart in your village. Add on to it there are only certain times of the day where you can do stuff (like shopping at nooks) and animals also go to sleep at certain times of the day. So if you don’t have a lot of free time you should not buy this game. If you do have some free time then I suggest renting it before buying it.
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