Animal Crossing: A New Leaf
When the original Animal Crossing came out for the GameCube in 2001, I wanted to get my hands on it. However, I didn’t own a GameCube, so I had to settle for playing it at my friend’s house when I went to visit. It was such a charming fantastic game, I wanted to play more, but it’s not really the kind of game you can beat in a session. Ever since that first exposure, I’ve played every installment of Animal Crossing that’s been released. Unfortunately, since I’ve never owned the necessary system nor the games, they’ve always been in small, unsatisfying sessions. So when Animal Crossing: A New Leaf came out for the 3DS, I finally saw my chance to own, and properly play, Animal Crossing for the first time in my life.
A New Leaf continues the tried and true formula of Animal Crossing – you’re a weird furless-creature-thing moving into a town full of eccentric yet delightful animal people. The new hook in this iteration is that the citizens of the town are already waiting for you. It seems they’ve been expecting the new mayor to arrive in town, on the exact train you came in on, and the townsfolk are convinced that you are the man (or woman) they’re looking for. Once you’ve established a little plot of land to call your own, you can start running around the town discovering things for yourself.
What always made Animal Crossing endearing to me is the fact that the world continues to play even when you’re not around. It runs off the clock of your 3DS, keeping track of the time of day, and everything operates in real time. When the shops say they close at 10:00PM, they really do close at 10:00PM. If you take fruit off of a tree, it takes three days for it to grow back before you can get more. This sets up an environment where you can play for a few minutes to check how your garden is doing, or have marathon sessions spent running around chasing bugs. The ability to play any length of time and still have fun is what makes a handheld game work and A New Leaf has this in spades.
There is a ton to do in A New Leaf, and it’s pretty open ended about what direction you want to take. Main Street starts off with just the bare minimum of stores, but depending on how much money (and sometimes in-game objectives) you pour into the stores more buildings will pop up all over the place. The museum has spaces for more fossils, bugs, and fish than ever – some of which are nearly impossible to find, much less capture. Your house can be upgraded from a tiny quaint cottage to a massive (in Animal Crossing terms) mansion suitable for only the richest of mayors. Oh, and it’s your duty as mayor to provide public works for the people, making sure they’re happy with the fountains and strange decorations for the town.
A part of me feels like I shouldn’t like A New Leaf. This is clearly a game made for children, and while that has never stopped me before, it’s pretty much the only thing holding me back from loving this game completely. It’s a very simple game without much depth and isn’t designed to present much of a challenge. But, in a way, that’s its greatest achievement. They’ve managed to make a game that you can play at your own pace, in your own way, in your own time. It’s relaxing to have a game that I’ll never truly beat – because you don’t beat Animal Crossing. You live there.
About the Author
Greg Giannetti A king among men, this miraculous example of perfection graces us with his presence on the internets where he can write about his opinions on things that totally matter. Greg also knows the true secret to life - lots of naps.
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