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The Crossing of Animals
Grizzly_Addams
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Who here doesn't know what Animal Crossing is? Who has been living in a cave for 6 years? You? Fine then.
Animal Crossing released on the Gamecube in 2002 in North America was a highly addicting "life sim" game, similar to Harvest Moon, although a bit more rudimentary in it's daily activities, and used a real world clock to progress the game.
Tom Nook would be the savior to lend you the cash for your first home, and as you pick fruit, fish, catch bugs, and gather seashells to pay off your hefty loan, you could interact with the "people" who inhabited your new town. By people, I mean animals.
These animals may have chores for your, such as deliveries. And you could befriend them by writing letters and sending gifts. You could also beautify your town with flowers and plants. Plants that needed watering of course, lest ye be overrun with dead flowers and weeds in need of plucking. While you're plucking, why not dig for some treasure?
Between all this planting, picking, digging, gathering, and delivering you may find yourself decorating your home with nifty objects and decor found or bought on your daily rounds. Have you run out of room to store all your lovely home interior items? Don't worry. Once you pay off Tom Nook, he'll be glad to front you the cash for another story to your home. You can even fill your home with some classic NES games!
Sounds boring, huh? Well don't worry. There are sporadic events peppered throughout the time you'll spend in town. Fishing and bug catching tournaments to name a few, as well as a holiday themed event for most major holidays.
But once you've paid off Mr. Nook in full, collected all your favorite decor, feng shui'd yourself to death, and filled your journals with fish and bug entries, what is there left to do besides pick weeds every day?
Sigh...
What's this? A sequel? For one of the fastest growing handhelds in history? Sign me up!
Oh, wait...
Animal Crossing: Wild World for the Nintendo DS was little more than a port of the original. While technically a remake, the game featured only a few updated items and buildings for existing Animals, a mere handful of new characters, and almost nothing more to do in the way of daily activities.
Sure, treasure hunts and fossils populated the list, but there must be some exceptional feature to this "sequel."
Ah, online play! Alas, the feature set was limited to being able to invite others to your town to fish and play with, possibly trade items, (and even townspeople!)
While all of this was more than enough of a reason for me to go into debt with Mr. Tom Nook once again, I found myself in the same rut as the original once I had payed off my loan in full, and collected a few sets of furniture. Once I nearly completed my fossil collection my DS would remain closed, and the sun would set on Animal Crossing once again.
Oh how the weeds would grow...
Despite Nintendo's shun of "core" gamers at E3, we catch wind of the inevitable yet still anticipated Animal Crossing: City Folk, due out this Holiday for the Nintendo Wii.
This "sequel" will yet again feature the familiar scenario with two major "improvements."
Players who visit others players town can now communicate using voice chat! That's right. Not only will there be voice chat, but it will be room chat. Nintendo's new Wii Speak "room" microphone will allow one room of players to speak with another while fishing, digging, planting, plucking, exploring, and trading.
City Folk will also feature a central city for your town where you may go to browse boutiques and take in attractions such as the theater.
With these improvements (despite them, in fact) I'm sure to have a copy of Animal Crossing for my Wii this holiday just like most of you. But I am concerned, however, that the pattern will repeat, and as the list of daily activities to accomplish grows shorter with time, the weeds will grow taller too.
So in all wonderment, I can't imagine why Nintendo doesn't implement a more... robust activity set into the game. With the disc space of a DVD, and "power" of a next-gen (or, last-gen.5) machine they could easily give the player far more to do. A few of the ideas I've had seem very simple and not at all off the wall:
Bigger houses, with multiple rooms per floor.
Constantly running out of space to put your awesome collection of things was what I think a considerable problem in the originals. So why not have more space, especially considering that 4 people may inhabit your town in the same house!
Tournaments and Events that take place daily instead of monthly
With Animal Crossing being based on a real world clock, it seems like longevity would be the name of the game. However, I think there should be more reasons to boot up the game every day.
A fishing tournament on mondays to catch a certain fish, treasure hunting on tuesday, bug catching on wednesday, etc. And not just activitied already known to the game. Why not a sand castle building competition? And some incentive for these events would be nice as well. Having a larger town, and larger houses could be the perfect partner for a massive library of items in the game.
Imagine if obtaining a super rare item was only possibly by chance of the prize for a daily event? A small chance, mind you, but that's more than enough reason for me to come back everyday. All I'm saying is rather than pick weeds, I'd like to have a handful of things to do when I get on the game once my loan is paid and my museums are full.
Enhanced Online
Online gaming has come a long way in every department except the Nintendo one. Sure it's great that we can play some of our favorite Nintendo Franchises with each other online, and of course Nintendo wants to maintain a safe, family-friendly online environment. But even the most basic of features have been all but stripped from their games thus far.
In Animal Crossing, I'd love to be able to send mail and items to my friends without actually having to connect to them. Even if it means adding a friend code to an in game list, and opting into all additional online features before you can use them.
I am also of the opinion that the City should be a communal online area. What better way to show of your hot new get up to fellow AC players? I did think of one problem this may present. That there would be no randomness to the items that players get on any day from shops. But while the town square, theater, salon, and other areas are public, walking into a shop becomes private again with content generated by your machine.
Possibly even the ability to view and vote on other peoples Patterns in the game. Maybe an "Animal Crossing Channel" that incorporates this and a few other similar features.
More Locations
A secret garden, a secluded beach, a mysterious cavern. All of this could add to the value of the game while introducing new characters and items as well as activities to get into. Rare plants that only grow in the garden, but require some level of cleverness to discover and obtain? Just an example.
These are all just my opinions and ideas of course, but I sincerely believe that a few of these simple things could greatly improve the game. It's extremely high replay value drops off steeply (at least for me) once I've paid off my loan to Nook and the mere shift of focus towards community and daily activities could solve this completely.
Then again, all of these ideas could already be in the game (and why not?!) and my belief in Santa will be rekindled this holiday.
What about you? Any thoughts on the upcoming Animal Crossing title? Any shortcomings from the original games you feel could be surpassed?
Also, for those of you still whacking away at your weeds, I'm sure you already know but http://www.animalcrossingcommunity.com is a great place for tips and tricks and guides, and know-how. Especially great patterns to make.
Grizzly_Addams on
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and all the cool animals all moved out
You know, I'll be honest, I'm totally willing to buy the same game twice (didn't have the GC version). As long as they pretend it's a new game enough to add some things I'll eat it up and be Nintendo's little bitch for Animal Crossing.
Anyway, I will be buying this game for the third time when it comes out on the Wii. I just love collecting stuff over and over again for a year and then getting burned out. I'm always ready for more though when the next game comes out.
It was at PAX? Video or playable?
Oh god, please don't kill me.
Playable, although I didn't play it myself.
Tom Nook is totally a robber baron, not a revolutionary.
Unless it's the invisible kind of YTMND.
Hint: Those are the best kind.
I'm looking forward the hopefully improved community aspects, I'm looking forward to being forced to try the whole village sharing experience with the resultant competition for resources for the first time (myself and the missus have always had our own towns in previous iterations but I'm gussing that won't be possible on the Wii), I'm looking forward to throwing myself whole heartedly into the whole AC experience once more now that I've had a nice 2 year break.
I'm not looking forward to that agonising wait between Euroland and rest of the world releases however... My paranoid fear of Nintendo catching me doing what I shouldn't and hitting me with sanctions effectively rules out homebrew region lock avoidance. Please let it be less than the 4 months that foolish non-importers had to wait on the DS!
If only the game were that smart.
All you get in reality is weeds and new neighbors.
Unless you're like me and go back to right after you stopped playing, then gradually work your way back. Still, weeds will come. And the DS version doesn't have a ghost to clean them all up.
*sigh*
But it does have secret rocks with bells in them. Which is another reason to waste time going back and working your way up to the present day by day or week by week.
I'm looking forward to the Wii version. Even though it'l probably be abandoned a few weeks after like the others.
I really need to load my town back up.
Click here to see the ANIMATED version of this signature too big for the forums! :winky:
That way I wouldn¡t have to switch DS cards.
You mean the best let's play ever?
Then I read this thread. Thanks guys.
That's the one. All you animal crossing fans should read it, if you have enough time.
Meh. The first half is great. Then it gets pretty stupid pretty fast. The last bit is just terrible. And not in a good way at all.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Plus, no more NES games on the DS and Wii versions.
The last thing I did with my AC:WW town before retiring it was to completely tile it over with piles of skulls (conserving enough fruit in my house should I ever feel like re-seeding it). I don't expect it would be too different if I were to ever relaunch it.
I do know this, however: I would much rather re-open an abandoned AC town than to ever check on my Nintendogs after all this time.
Screw you man, I had to watch it again after you said this.
Oh Lord, I now have this image of opening up the DS clamshell and a biblical scale cloud of flies pouring forth from within.
Curse you.