Animal Crossing Video Games

Average Rating:

Animal Crossing is very different, both from The Sims and in my personal opinion of it. On its face, it is analogous to The Sims; in both games you control a particular virtual life, and the primary goal of said life is the Acquisition of Stuff (tm). (Stuff, of course, being furniture, wallpaper, carpet, household gadgets, works of art, etc. -- anything that increases your net worth.) But the similarities seem to end there. In Animal Crossing, you are in direct control of your virtual persona, and there is substantially more interaction with other characters.

The interaction is perhaps one of the best parts of the game. A wise game programmer once said that good game AI is not about being intelligent, but being smart enough to fool you into thinking it's intelligent. And for what it's worth, Animal Crossing has good AI in this department. You can write letters and send gifts to the animal inhabitants of your town, and you will generally get a reply (usually with a gift attached). The messages you receive are quite varied and are tailored to the character's personailty. And while you know the responses are canned, they just don't feel canned. It's not hard to get attached to particular characters, ones you interact with frequently and have good repoire with. AC is officially billed as a "communication game", and it excels at that.

As for things to do, the bulk of your activities involve running errands for the other residents of the town, as well as becoming the defacto town landscaper and gardener. Other activities include fishing, bug-hunting, digging for fossils/money/Stuff, and of course the aforementioned sending letters to your townfolk. Most of these activities net you Stuff in return.

Another innovative feature is how the game operates in real time, keeping its time using the GameCube's internal clock. Unfortunately, this innovation is also one of its main drawbacks. The town store maintains hours, and your fellow citizens sleep at night, so you sometimes find yourself trying to work around real life in order to get certain game life activities done. Also, mail takes a while to travel, and the waiting game can get very tedious.

The last thing of note is the graphics. On an artistic note, the saccharin stylings are very cutesy (nothing less than you'd expect from a game like this). On a technical note, this game was intended for the N64 and retargeted for GameCube late in development. This isn't really a problem, except for the textures on the characters, where it's far TOO apparent. It really should have been sent back to the art department.

There is a certain amount of fun in Animal Crossing. But as for myself, after a couple weeks I reached a point where I asked myself, "Does it do ANYTHING better than this?" And the unfortunate response I found to that is "No." The game tries to mix it up some with the assorted traveling characters and the various holiday events, but in the end, the finite set of activities rears its ugly head and roars.

My final score is 3 stars. I don't give Animal Crossing a lower rating because in truth, I DID enjoy it -- for a while. There is some fun in it and it maintains a good sense of humor.

But it's an open-ended game, and as such needs to be infinitely playable. And this just isn't a game I could play ad infinitum like, say, SimCity 4. But it certainly deserves a good number of points for originality and creativity (and some serious extra credit for being probably the only game in existence to implement the art of feng shui). And if you like games like The Sims, this is probably right up your alley.

But in the end, Animal Crossing is definitely a niche game, not the overall 4- or 5-star panacea that most reviews suggest. But I didn't *hate* it, not to the point where I would disrecommend it. If it appeals at all to you, I'd encourage you to at least try it via rental -- you may find it more enjoyable long-term than I did.