I started playing Animal Crossing: New Leaf on 3DS today. I haven't played an Animal Crossing game since whatever the one on the DS was called, and I didn't really get very far into that one. It wasn't that I didn't like it, it's that it came out at a time when there was all manner of other stuff I wanted to play, and I didn't give it enough of a chance to get into it. Consequently, when it came to time to trade some stuff in — this was back when I still traded in games, something which I rarely do these days (though I still buy used games) — it was one of the first things to go.
Consequently, I'm still pretty much a complete newcomer to Animal Crossing and the way it does things. And I'm still somewhat confused. But in a kind of good way.
Most games you play these days take a very proactive approach to directing the player's enjoyment. "Go here," the game will say. "Do this." In the case of terrible, awful, shitty Facebook games, more often than not the game will literally prevent you from clicking on anything but the thing it wants you to click on.
Animal Crossing, meanwhile, takes the complete opposite approach. It drops you into a strange world — a small town populated by animals in which you are inexplicably the only human resident, and which you have somehow become the mayor of — and then pretty much tells you to just get on with it. There are characters wandering around who will give you a nudge in the direction of things to do, but for the most part, the game is all about figuring out what the fuck it is you're supposed to be doing.
And the answer isn't a simple one. There's a sense of structure given to the game by the ever-present loan-shark raccoon Tom Nook and his increasingly-unreasonable bills he keeps lumping you with game after game, but other than that it's entirely up to you to make your own fun. Will you cultivate a crop of profitable fruit trees? Will you spend your time catching bugs? Will you dig up fossils and try to fill the museum? Or will you primarily spend your time bumming around your friends' towns, stealing their fruit when they're not looking?
This latter part is where the 3DS version is infinitely superior to the DS version. Theoretically, the DS version featured Internet connectivity and the ability to do things with your friends, but when I was playing I didn't know anyone else, and as such this feature — which is, to be honest, a big part of the game's appeal — was completely useless. Contrast that with today, when I went over to my friend Jeff's town along with our mutual friend Cody, then we took a trip over to a tropical island, swam in the sea, harvested bananas and mangoes and marvelled at Cody's ability to catch the most enormous fish I've ever seen.
It's an utterly pointless experience at heart, but unlike many of those utterly pointless Facebook games out there which are only after your money, Animal Crossing's self-contained nature means that there's always a sense of gentle, good-natured humour about the experience — and, more importantly, no pressure on the player. It's an escapist experience for you to dip into for half an hour to an hour at a time, not something you play as your "big game". And yet even in those short, bite-sized sessions — ideal for handheld play — there's plenty of stuff to do, and enough variety to keep some people playing for hour after hour after hour after hour.
It remains to be seen how long I stick with it, but I'm interested to see how much more there is to the experience over time. Something must be there to keep people playing for upwards of a hundred hours; let's see if I can find it.
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I've never played an Animal Crossing title before New Leaf – imagine that, I worked for the largest independent Nintendo site in the world, yet I had never played Animal Crossing – but New Leaf has absolutely sucked me into its whimsical charm. It is such a relaxing title that requires nothing of me, only to come in and have some fun catching bugs, designing pixel art and selling sea shells. I love this game!
I played the first one on the Gamecube (I know it was on N64 in Japan) and the Wii's AC. I usually spend around 5 years trying to make something of the town, get some sucess, only to give up and trade it in because the REALLY rare stuff is practically impossible to get unless you know *exactly* how to get it. In addition, these things are difficult to get… the 3DS one may get rid of some of that tedium involved in missing things because they are seasonal or time-based only (or depending on who you know who also has the game… in another country).
Being mayor means prettying up the town much more easily, which gave me a lot of fun on the other ACs (though it was downright weird the criteria for getting these things in the other two I'd played). I don't mind rare items, so long as they don't have a lot of depth to them, because then they become this thing that drives you mad. I *did* play each of the games for around 5 years each, but when I feel like the only thing keeping me from getting what I want is the planets aligning and the comet in the sky at 4am SHARP, on October 7th, ONLY… it isn't fun anymore.
Sorry, I'll try to make this less of a downer… ^_^; All in all, I liked these games, because I felt like I was getting my own story, too. There was a line of connection in what I did, and how I interacted with my neighbours. It was good to make it a lovely place full of trees and nature, discovering good places to fish and filling up the museum with lots of fossils and bugs.
Unfortunately, the laid-back pace is a bit deceiving, because ultimately, you *are* missing something (that you may not get many chances to find/get/win again) when you are not there. … I love and hate this game (series). XP