[Review] Animal Crossing: New Leaf

There is definitely a sense of pacing to Animal Crossing: New Leaf. New Leaf is my first Animal Crossing, so some or all of this might apply to the other games. Sweeping declaration: Animal Crossing has a better rhythm than an rhythm game ever could.

Since it's bound to real time, the player is forced to integrate the game into their everyday life. Your flowers have to be watered every day or so, or they'll wither and die. Your friends in game want to talk to you. There are fossils, bugs, and fish to find. Stores will expand and evolve, and their stock changes day to day. Completing these tasks and visiting these things doesn't take long, but you do have to time them correctly. Most stores don't open until 10 and can close anywhere between 7 and 11. If you have to work IRL, you might not have the time to complete everything at once. For example, I work about 2 to 10. Shops are closed by the time I get home, normally, and earlier in the day I have sleep and chores to worry about. So breakfast IRL tends to involve a quick jaunt up to Main Street in Animal Crossing. I water the flowers and pick the fruit that I can, drop it off at the Re-Tail store for bells (money), and pray I'm home at night in time to sell the rest to the store. Then I have to water more flowers, dig up the fossils, and maybe work in a little fishing while watching TV after work or eating my regular much-belated dinner. (The schedule is the same but reversed if you get up before the stores open, btw.)

I suppose the question is, why bother? What reward do you get for playing Animal Crossing. There's no real story to speak of, no monsters to slay, no bosses to loot.

Exploration, customization, accumulation, and socialization.

Exploration: the world is small, just your little village, bu tit changes. The stores can change, the villagers change, the flora and fauna changes. There are various events that take place

Customization: you can customize your house, the layout of your village, handpick the villagers in your villgae, and customize your own character with clothes, accessories, hairstyles, and tools. You can change the villagers' catch phrases and greetings, and send them furniture and cltothing that they might decide to use.

Accumulation: endless furnitures, wallpapers, carpets, house exteriors and expansions. Getting the villagers you want to live in your town, fully expanding the store fronts, building all the optional buildings, gathering all of the fish, bus, fossils, cross-breeding the flowers to get new color strains.

Socialization: the 3DS makes it easy for friends connected wirelessly, not to mention SpotPass. You can glare lustfully at the houses of other players after you've SpotPassed them, And so many people play it thatyou can gloat about your latest find with ease.

Richard Bartle wrote in his seminal essay "Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players who Suit MUDs" that there are four types of players: Achievers, Explorers, Socializers, and Killers. If you count the Killers as the more negative aspects of socializing, such as one-upsmanship, Animal Crossing has enough in it to satisfy these four main types of players.

On top of all this, the 3D graphics are beautifully implemented throughout the entire game. No one has the 3D utilized nearly as well.

Animal Crossing is amazing especially as something to fill moments between other games and activities due to its low time commitment. Lunch breaks, bus trips, and bored moments with family-- these are all ideal times to spend a few seconds watering flowers, checking a store's stock, or rearranging furniture.

4/5