Nintendo did a great job of shrouding it in secrecy
If you think that little adventure was something, just wait until you get deeper into the communication title. Keep in mind that this review is based on witnessing a limited amount of Animal Crossing (as with every other review currently available...). This game, just judging by the events calendar, has years of things for the player to see.
Anyway, Animal Crossing is all about living the life of the character you create in the game. When you first start out, things might not quite seem so cool. You won’t be wearing the snazziest duds in town, nor will you live in a palatial estate. Instead, you will be busy working part-time in an effort to pay off your debt to Tom Nook, the man that the cat gets you in touch with to find you lodging.
After finishing up your part-time work and paying off chunks of a debt that makes NASA’s bills look minute, things really start to open up for you. While you will have access to two random NES games relatively early (thanks to a letter from Nintendo which you can only receive if you are using the included memory card), you won’t really be able to enjoy them until you are done working for Nook. Nintendo’s inclusion of these games gives the younger generation of gamers a chance to enjoy them for the first time. The Big N has seen fit to include some bonafide classics such as Punchout and Excitebike, while at the same time balancing it out with oddities like Donkey Kong Jr. Math and Clu Clu Land. There are at least a dozen NES games in Animal Crossing, so happy hunting.
You might be thinking to yourself, "So, you spend the whole game doing boring stuff like work, and then playing a bunch of ancient games? Wow, that‘s amazing…" If you are thinking this, you need to:
A. Open your mind up.
B. Play the game.
Remember that part where I said you get to live the life of your character, and how things will pick up once you are done working for his Nookness? That’s kind of a wee bit important. Living your character’s life means that you can do all sorts of things you have never been able to do in any other game. Living a life in Animal Crossing consists of visiting the towns of friends and even sending letters to your friends. And no, this is not an online game. This kind of interactivity has never been offered before in a game, and it only gets better.
In Animal Crossing, you have the ability to customize the daylights out of your town. You can teach animals to say things (pretty much any word up to seven letters) and you can make friends with the animals in your community by running errands for them. Conversely, you can make some pretty big enemies if you're anti-social. Don't worry, as long as you aren’t a hermit, you will be fine.
To further the personalization of this addictive title, you get to customize nearly everything about your character, not to mention his dwelling (I would call it a home, but at the beginning of the game, that thing is barely a closet). You can customize what your character wears by creating a clothing texture, which can also be used as a wallpaper or a floor. If, for whatever reason, you don’t like the texture you have created, you can change it whenever you want to better suit your needs. This addition of allowing the player to give his or her own personal touch really helps make the game a more enjoyable experience. It may be small detail, but believe me, this single facet of Animal Crossing adds quite a bit to its overall feel. Since you will probably spend quite a bit of time in your dwelling (it becomes a home later on, don’t worry) playing NES games, musical compositions, and/or rearranging furniture so well that Christopher Lowell would blush, you will want it to be something that reflects YOU. You can make it look futuristic, elegant, rustic, or nearly anything. You are bound to either find, or create something that adds a little bit of your personality. Make use of the bulletin board in your town and post messages to your fellow townspeople to add a little flavor to the mix. Or, to add to your social standing in town, offer to help out others. There’s always something to do in Animal Crossing if you make use of the tools provided to you. Speaking of tools, Animal Crossing gives you the chance to literally dig for buried treasure, and even plant a MONEY TREE. Now how cool is that? You can buy a fishing rod, which will enable you to really rake in some dough, if you are skilled enough. You can also take up bug catching, which can net you some more dinero as well to help you upgrade the look and status of your ever-so-fancy dwelling.
To compliment all of this, AC features a spectacular control system. The button layout is logical and intuitive. The control scheme works with the player, and makes everything as simple as pushing a buttor or moving a joystick. The C stick is used logically to give you a closer, more personal view of the action unfolding in the game. This is one of the few times I can think of where it is actually used well. The controls are responsive, and will aid you in your journey in this game.
Now that I’ve explained to you just how the game works, I’m going to tell you why it works so well. I believe the key to the greatness of Animal Crossing lies in what it gives back to you, and what you add to it. You can add touches of your personality in it, for example, and your reward will be a more enjoyable game. You can also choose one main activity in the game, such as bug catching or fishing, and make that your primary source for an income. Animal Crossing has a very unique charm that carries over into each and every one of its aspects. Each character has a distinct personality, not one resembles any of the others. Odds are, you will find at least one character with personality traits close to those of someone you know, which can, and probably will, give you even more enjoyment from the game. I believe that the key to enjoying a game is to find the one thing you can connect to, and using that trait to its fullest. You will have many opportunities to find this single thing, and, if you are lucky enough to find more than one thing that latches you onto this game, you will be good to go for quite some time.