It will be quite difficult to review Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For one, this is the first and only Animal Crossing game that I’ve played, and secondly, I don’t feel as if I’ve reached a point in the game to cover all its bases for this review. I’m an Animal Crossing amateur without the comparable insight of someone who has played the other games in the franchise. I have played approximately 120 or so hours of Animal Crossing and enjoyed most of my time with it, but my enjoyment of the game is not the reason I’m writing about it now. I could chop down every tree and make a paved paradise to signify my readiness to review this game, but I’m not quite there yet. I’m reviewing this game now because of its timeliness of it. It’s been exactly a year since I started playing this game, and it’s been one of the most enterprising forces in my life for the past 365 days. I’ve played plenty of other games since then, but none of them have been quite like Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The game is probably exactly like the others, with only a few deviations, but I don’t think any other Animal Crossing game has had as much of an impact as this one. Animal Crossing: New Horizons has inadvertently become the most culturally significant thing of this decade so far.
I remember the massive hype surrounding this game a little before it came out. People were preemptively scrambling their schedules around to find ample time to waste away playing this game. Little did they know, they would get their wish and more when the entire world went on lockdown in March of 2020, the month that Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out. It almost seemed too great of a coincidence that this time vacuum was released when time was disposable for everyone. The start of the epidemic took away my last few months of college, and I was pretty disappointed. All the friendships and moments I had cultivated and the few more I hoped to make were relinquished, and I was stuck at home finishing my degree online. I was worried about my future, and my present-day was in a state of purgatory. I was on the fence about getting Animal Crossing: New Horizons because I was deterred by the premise of a “yard work simulator.” The only thing that caught my attention was that you could add any picture you wanted to the game and put it on display. It doesn’t seem like much, but all the possibilities excited me. A friend from college asked me if I had the game yet because she was playing it. I figured it would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to spend time with one of my friends during this pandemic, so I took the plunge into Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
I had always assumed that your role as the villager in Animal Crossing was the new guy who just set up shop in a town/city that was already established and industrialized. Maybe that is the case for the previous games, but it is not for this. New Horizons has you set up shop on a remote island with nothing but tents and cots to keep you sheltered. You move to this island with Tom Nook, Timmy, and Tommy Nook, and two random animal neighbors (I got Phoebe the ostrich and Scoot the duck. To this day, they are still on my island). Tom Nook is determined to make this island civilization fruitful and accessible to all, and he’s going to need your help to build architecture, set up shops, and dig up weeds. Given the game's premise and what I know about Tom Nook, this is all too reminiscent of Jim Jones. I wouldn’t drink the vacation juice.
Of course, you must comply with Tom Nook’s demands, or else there would be no game at all, so I first got to work on the museum. I gave the patriarchal trash panda enough bugs to convince Blathers to build the museum. Once Blathers set up shop, he became the most familiar animal resident on my island because the bug/fish collecting aspect became an outstanding objective for me. Given that I grew up with collectathon platformers, I guess I’m fixated on collecting shit in video games. There are about 50 bugs to collect and 70 fish to collect. They also added a few more sea creatures in the update that you have to dive for. Those things can be really hard to catch. The type of bugs and fish you can catch depends on the time of day and are usually seasonal. It’s like a more mechanically newfangled way of catching Pokemon in Gold/Silver. If there is any aspect of this game that I excel in, it’s catching these critters, as I have caught most of them. Judging by how my island is still relatively remote looking, catching bugs and fish was my main priority. Is there any real point in collecting all of these bugs and fish? Not really. It’s more of an extra incentive to play the game. You can sell them for top dollar at Nook’s Cranny, but donating them to Blathers feels much more rewarding. It also helps that the museum here is gorgeous. The layout is as intricate as any real-life museum, and the music gives it a comfortable but awe-inspiring atmosphere. Sometimes I’d just walk around the museum for a while just to marvel at it. You can also donate fossils to Blathers, but these fossils are everywhere, and the type of fossils you dig up is always random.
Building houses and other infrastructures were a bit less engaging in practice. To build houses, Tom Nook gives you a package of materials and lets you pick where you want to set it up, provided you have enough room. You wait for about a day or two in real-time and then the house is completely built. Soon after, another animal resident will move in and set up their own interior decorations. The bridges and stairs require a bit more effort as you’ll have to put a lot of money and time into building them. Each bridge felt like the end of an era in this game once it was done. I could’ve put all that money into building new rooms for my house. This aspect is when I felt the “yard-work simulator” joke was apt. It’s very grind intensive, which is one of my video game pet peeves.
To put all this work in, the game gives you an arsenal of handy-dandy tools for a plethora of uses; the fishing pole, the net, the (river leaping pole?), the slingshot, etc. I’m assuming that all of these are the standard Animal Crossing tools, and they all serve their unique purposes like in every other game. I have come to an understanding that New Horizons is the first game in the series to implement an item degradation mechanic, which has caused a lot of ire from Animal Crossing fans, both old and new. After using them for a while, the items will start to deteriorate until they poof away like magic. The impetus for this from the developers is to constantly use the crafting table as much as possible. Still, there are already several other things to craft, so it quickly becomes an annoying inconvenience.
The progression of Animal Crossing is loosely how many buildings you have erected on your island and the increasing number of animal residents that move to it. You progress from living like a hippie commune with tents and sleeping bags to full-fledged homes built in a matter of days (by animals at that). A pivotal moment in the game is when Isabelle takes a permanent stay at your island and runs the HR department. The rest of the game progresses by increasing your island’s score, similar to a Yelp average. To increase the score, you must be proactive in plucking the weeds, building architecture, and making the island hospitable. Eventually, KK Rider will perform a concert on your island. I haven’t gotten to this point yet, so I’m not sure if the KK concert signifies that you’ve “beaten” Animal Crossing, but it’s the last objective I know of.
With all of the hard work I put into Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I felt as if my island was up to par in terms of hours put in the game. When I visited a friend’s island, however, my sense of pride turned into a sense of insecurity. Her island was meticulously crafted, and every inch was dedicated to different things. She had a teacup ride, a soccer field, an outdoor lounge area with tables and chairs, etc. Every inch of it looked like it took hours to create. The inside of her house had the same amount of effort put into it as every room was completely different and filled with items. She made Animal Crossing into a fucking art form and put me to shame.
A year later, I still have plenty to do in Animal Crossing. As I said before, I can’t compare this game’s shortcomings to anything else in the franchise from a lack of experience. The experience I had with my first Animal Crossing outing was unique, and I ended up enjoying it once I got used to its direction. All of the aspects that make up this game, like the weed plucking, item selling, and item customizing, would feel like tedious grinding in another game, but that’s only because the grind-heavy features are usually a deterrent or obstacle from the main objective. In a game where all you do is grind-heavy tedium with no concrete objective, everything you do gives you a sense of time flexibility. The freedom of choice in Animal Crossing kept me playing consistently for a whole year. Isn’t that what life is at the end of the day? Doing a bunch of random shit and working with no tangibly clear objective? 2020 ended up being the perfect year for a new Animal Crossing because everyone’s life was being lived vicariously through Animal Crossing. The seasons went by in the game as they did in real life, and once 2020 ended, and it was winter in the game, it gave me a bittersweet, sentimental feeling about the passage of time. Animal Crossing was essentially my life in 2020 because my life and a lot of other people’s lives were on standstill. It was my progress in life and the crux of my social life. Instead of going to cafes to talk, we sat at a table on her island. Instead of going out on Halloween and drinking myself stupid like in previous years, my friend and I ran around collecting candy with spooky costumes. Instead of spending Thanksgiving with family, I served up a buffet with my residents. I can’t think of a better way to spend a long chunk of time being sedentary than to mirror one’s life through the cute, charming, and wholesome Animal Crossing. Well, as wholesome as the game sets itself up as. I had a blast going to great lengths to creatively pervert this game. I have some death metal album covers plastered on my wall, and I fashioned one of the rooms in my house as a backroom porn casting couch room. It was my friend's idea, I swear. My friend also drew crude drawings involving male genitalia on my bulletin board which I’m sure is keeping down my island’s overall rating. My island is also named after a notorious murder forest near where I grew up. The creative liberties you can take in this game are astounding.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
I remember the massive hype surrounding this game a little before it came out. People were preemptively scrambling their schedules around to find ample time to waste away playing this game. Little did they know, they would get their wish and more when the entire world went on lockdown in March of 2020, the month that Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out. It almost seemed too great of a coincidence that this time vacuum was released when time was disposable for everyone. The start of the epidemic took away my last few months of college, and I was pretty disappointed. All the friendships and moments I had cultivated and the few more I hoped to make were relinquished, and I was stuck at home finishing my degree online. I was worried about my future, and my present-day was in a state of purgatory. I was on the fence about getting Animal Crossing: New Horizons because I was deterred by the premise of a “yard work simulator.” The only thing that caught my attention was that you could add any picture you wanted to the game and put it on display. It doesn’t seem like much, but all the possibilities excited me. A friend from college asked me if I had the game yet because she was playing it. I figured it would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to spend time with one of my friends during this pandemic, so I took the plunge into Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
I had always assumed that your role as the villager in Animal Crossing was the new guy who just set up shop in a town/city that was already established and industrialized. Maybe that is the case for the previous games, but it is not for this. New Horizons has you set up shop on a remote island with nothing but tents and cots to keep you sheltered. You move to this island with Tom Nook, Timmy, and Tommy Nook, and two random animal neighbors (I got Phoebe the ostrich and Scoot the duck. To this day, they are still on my island). Tom Nook is determined to make this island civilization fruitful and accessible to all, and he’s going to need your help to build architecture, set up shops, and dig up weeds. Given the game's premise and what I know about Tom Nook, this is all too reminiscent of Jim Jones. I wouldn’t drink the vacation juice.
Of course, you must comply with Tom Nook’s demands, or else there would be no game at all, so I first got to work on the museum. I gave the patriarchal trash panda enough bugs to convince Blathers to build the museum. Once Blathers set up shop, he became the most familiar animal resident on my island because the bug/fish collecting aspect became an outstanding objective for me. Given that I grew up with collectathon platformers, I guess I’m fixated on collecting shit in video games. There are about 50 bugs to collect and 70 fish to collect. They also added a few more sea creatures in the update that you have to dive for. Those things can be really hard to catch. The type of bugs and fish you can catch depends on the time of day and are usually seasonal. It’s like a more mechanically newfangled way of catching Pokemon in Gold/Silver. If there is any aspect of this game that I excel in, it’s catching these critters, as I have caught most of them. Judging by how my island is still relatively remote looking, catching bugs and fish was my main priority. Is there any real point in collecting all of these bugs and fish? Not really. It’s more of an extra incentive to play the game. You can sell them for top dollar at Nook’s Cranny, but donating them to Blathers feels much more rewarding. It also helps that the museum here is gorgeous. The layout is as intricate as any real-life museum, and the music gives it a comfortable but awe-inspiring atmosphere. Sometimes I’d just walk around the museum for a while just to marvel at it. You can also donate fossils to Blathers, but these fossils are everywhere, and the type of fossils you dig up is always random.
Building houses and other infrastructures were a bit less engaging in practice. To build houses, Tom Nook gives you a package of materials and lets you pick where you want to set it up, provided you have enough room. You wait for about a day or two in real-time and then the house is completely built. Soon after, another animal resident will move in and set up their own interior decorations. The bridges and stairs require a bit more effort as you’ll have to put a lot of money and time into building them. Each bridge felt like the end of an era in this game once it was done. I could’ve put all that money into building new rooms for my house. This aspect is when I felt the “yard-work simulator” joke was apt. It’s very grind intensive, which is one of my video game pet peeves.
To put all this work in, the game gives you an arsenal of handy-dandy tools for a plethora of uses; the fishing pole, the net, the (river leaping pole?), the slingshot, etc. I’m assuming that all of these are the standard Animal Crossing tools, and they all serve their unique purposes like in every other game. I have come to an understanding that New Horizons is the first game in the series to implement an item degradation mechanic, which has caused a lot of ire from Animal Crossing fans, both old and new. After using them for a while, the items will start to deteriorate until they poof away like magic. The impetus for this from the developers is to constantly use the crafting table as much as possible. Still, there are already several other things to craft, so it quickly becomes an annoying inconvenience.
The progression of Animal Crossing is loosely how many buildings you have erected on your island and the increasing number of animal residents that move to it. You progress from living like a hippie commune with tents and sleeping bags to full-fledged homes built in a matter of days (by animals at that). A pivotal moment in the game is when Isabelle takes a permanent stay at your island and runs the HR department. The rest of the game progresses by increasing your island’s score, similar to a Yelp average. To increase the score, you must be proactive in plucking the weeds, building architecture, and making the island hospitable. Eventually, KK Rider will perform a concert on your island. I haven’t gotten to this point yet, so I’m not sure if the KK concert signifies that you’ve “beaten” Animal Crossing, but it’s the last objective I know of.
With all of the hard work I put into Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I felt as if my island was up to par in terms of hours put in the game. When I visited a friend’s island, however, my sense of pride turned into a sense of insecurity. Her island was meticulously crafted, and every inch was dedicated to different things. She had a teacup ride, a soccer field, an outdoor lounge area with tables and chairs, etc. Every inch of it looked like it took hours to create. The inside of her house had the same amount of effort put into it as every room was completely different and filled with items. She made Animal Crossing into a fucking art form and put me to shame.
A year later, I still have plenty to do in Animal Crossing. As I said before, I can’t compare this game’s shortcomings to anything else in the franchise from a lack of experience. The experience I had with my first Animal Crossing outing was unique, and I ended up enjoying it once I got used to its direction. All of the aspects that make up this game, like the weed plucking, item selling, and item customizing, would feel like tedious grinding in another game, but that’s only because the grind-heavy features are usually a deterrent or obstacle from the main objective. In a game where all you do is grind-heavy tedium with no concrete objective, everything you do gives you a sense of time flexibility. The freedom of choice in Animal Crossing kept me playing consistently for a whole year. Isn’t that what life is at the end of the day? Doing a bunch of random shit and working with no tangibly clear objective? 2020 ended up being the perfect year for a new Animal Crossing because everyone’s life was being lived vicariously through Animal Crossing. The seasons went by in the game as they did in real life, and once 2020 ended, and it was winter in the game, it gave me a bittersweet, sentimental feeling about the passage of time. Animal Crossing was essentially my life in 2020 because my life and a lot of other people’s lives were on standstill. It was my progress in life and the crux of my social life. Instead of going to cafes to talk, we sat at a table on her island. Instead of going out on Halloween and drinking myself stupid like in previous years, my friend and I ran around collecting candy with spooky costumes. Instead of spending Thanksgiving with family, I served up a buffet with my residents. I can’t think of a better way to spend a long chunk of time being sedentary than to mirror one’s life through the cute, charming, and wholesome Animal Crossing. Well, as wholesome as the game sets itself up as. I had a blast going to great lengths to creatively pervert this game. I have some death metal album covers plastered on my wall, and I fashioned one of the rooms in my house as a backroom porn casting couch room. It was my friend's idea, I swear. My friend also drew crude drawings involving male genitalia on my bulletin board which I’m sure is keeping down my island’s overall rating. My island is also named after a notorious murder forest near where I grew up. The creative liberties you can take in this game are astounding.
———
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com