Animal Crossing Review

"Animal Crossing" was a game I adored when I was younger and even still do to an extent. It's a simple, life simulation game where you just, well, live life. You have friends, go shopping, catch fish and bugs, collect things, decorate your house...it's just life.

That's what I loved about the game. So many games have you level up and then the game would just end there. Animal Crossing always has something for you do. There are always people to talk to, things to buy at Tom Nook (the raccoon who owns the only store in town)'s shop, you have to pay off your mortgage, collect everything to put in the museum..there's just so much stuff to do.

I liked a lot of the characters in the game. I hated how Tom Nook made you work a job to pay off your loan, but it was actually nice and he was a lovable character. The Abel sisters (Mabel and Sabel, who own the tailor) were cool, and even Resetti had his moments (I hated how he came whenever you reset the game and scolded you for it, but he was so over-exagerrated it was actually funny). I always like Blathers, the owl who worked at the museum, and Pelly, the post officer pelican who worked during the daytime (her evil sister, Phillis, is another story). Even some of the unplayable neighbors were really good friends of mine. And K.K. Slider, the guitar-singing dog who came out on Saturday nights, was a cool cat (or dog, I guess...) And who could forget Rover, the lovable cat who would greet you whenever you went on the train to visit new towns?

I really enjoyed selling items to Tom Nook. That dude would literally buy anything from you. From fish to bugs to fruit, he'd be there. That was my way of making money (or "bells", the money in the game); you could get no job (you got a job at the beginning to pay off your loan since you started off with no money, but of course you wouldn't get paid for that), so that was the only way of making money. The only thing Tom wouldn't buy would be trash and maybe a few select others, but he'd buy at least 99% of anything you could find.

I loved putting items on display in the museum. It was so much fun. I mainly would go fishing to put my catches on display (if they already had them, I'd sell them to Tom Nook). Catching bugs was a little tricker, because you had to sneak up on them, but I still would try. You could also dig up fossils and have Blathers indentify it, and then you could put it in the museum (but if it was already donated, Tom Nook would buy it for a lot of money). There were also paintings, which were the rarest things to find. Tom Nook would seldom sell it, but you could sometimes find them. The easiest way to get them would be to buy them from a fox named Red, who would occasionally put up his tent in town and sell his stuff. Of course Red sold things at the black market, but still...

Traveling to different towns was another of my pastimes. Since all you needed were different memory cards to make an AC world, my siblings and I had several memory cards and made lots of different towns and characters. I would visit there and see what they had differently (that's another thing I loved about the game; every town was unique). They would have different neighbors, different native fruit fruit (each town has one), different locations of everything...it was just cool.

I don't want to say this purely on nostalgic feeling, but I felt as if the very first "Animal Crossing", simply titled "Animal Crossing", was better than the follow-ups. I loved all the things you could do in the first one: you could use these codes at Tom Nook's shop to get exclusive outfits and stuff, you could play NES games through the game (it was a game in a game), your gyroid could sell stuff, you could go on the train and visit friends if you had a memory card, you could ask neighbors if they needed your help, there was a police station that had lost and found things you could get...it just had so much fun stuff in it.

I hate how I didn't like the other games as much. "Wild World", the DS version, didn't have the police station anymore and overall wasn't as good as the first. The Wii version,"City Folk" took away choosing what you wanted to say to the neighbors and other things I loved; it lost my interest quickly. I haven't played "Wild Leaf" yet, but I'm not sure I would like it as much.

Of course, there were things better in the newer ones. Like in "Wild World", you didn't have to wear the hat that, for some reason, you couldn't take off in AC. And I loved how you could save whenever you wanted instead of going ALL the way over to your gyroid in the game. I also liked how you could customize more with your outfits in "City Folk" at the tailor (you could make your sleeves different than the other parts). And it looks cool how you can swim in "Wild Leaf".

One flaw in all the AC games, unfortunately is that the game gets boring after awhile. I'd say after a month or so (like most people say), it gets boring. Maybe awhile after a month, but at least a month. It's just that, after awhile, you've done everything you want to there, and then you're just sitting there like, "Eh, I don't feel like playing".

But it seems to be a period of time after using it constantly. When I haven't played it in awhile, I want to play it again. And then I get bored and stop. Most video games get boring after awhile, anyway, so I'm not sure how you would overcome that. And overall I enjoyed "Animal Crossing".