Animal Crossing: New Leaf (Review)

So in addition to everything else going on in my life right now, I picked up Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS) after discovering that I have $40 sitting in my eShop account. Actually, I stopped in at my local EB Games to pick up a physical copy first, but they were sold out (not impressed, EB Games! Work on that!) One of the reasons why I went in to buy an actual copy of the game is that I have a spare 3DS sitting around, and once I'd finished with it - not yet realizing that Animal Crossing: New Leaf is not a game that you ever FINISH, exactly - I was planning on giving it to my fiancee. Now that I've been playing it for a few days, though, I can see that this probably won't ever happen unless I end up buying a second copy for her.

Before I get to my thoughts on New Leaf, I want to take a second to talk about a couple of issues I have with Nintendo, and their policies surrounding eShop downloads. In the eShop, Animal Crossing: New Leaf is the same price as it is in the store ($34.99 plus tax - I ended up paying about $40 for it). With an actual game cart, I'm free to play it, trade it in, return it, or give it to someone else to play when I get bored of it or am finished with it. With a digital eShop copy - which again, let me remind you is the EXACT SAME PRICE - I do not have those options. Sure, there's the system transfer option, but that takes EVERYTHING from my current 3DS and copies it to another one, so there's no picking and choosing. As things stand right now, this copy of New Leaf is semi-permanently attached to one system. I really wanted to play it, and as I mentioned I had forty bucks in eShop credit that I'd forgotten about, so it made sense to buy it at the time. But this will probably be the last time I purchase a non-exclusive title from the eShop. The restrictions are simply too draconian, and don't make sense.

None of this is the fault of New Leaf, however. For those who have never played an Animal Crossing game (and I was one of them), it's difficult to describe how it plays - in fact, it's difficult to justify how, exactly, it's a game. Prior to picking it up, I read a semi-sarcastic review of New Leaf on Amazon complaining that the game didn't have any enemies to fight or any action whatsoever, and while this was hardly a surprise to me, I still wasn't quite sure what I was getting into. A game like New Leaf represents such a dramatic paradigm shift in what a videogame is, it almost feels like a parody: "Go catch bugs and water flowers! This is the nicest game ever!"

I've been playing it for about two days now, and I have to be honest: I'm still not entirely sure what I've gotten myself into. On the basis of overwhelmingly positive reviews on other sites, I was expecting something slightly different than the cutesified small-town simulator that I ended up with - it has an 87% positive score on Metacritic, and on Kotaku's review roundup for the game, Destructoid had the lowest score at 70% while IGN gave it a 96%. Critics, it seems, really like this game. But for my own part, I'm still not quite seeing it.

This is not to say that there's anything wrong with New Leaf. Sure, it's a different sort of game than the ones I usually play, but that doesn't make it automatically bad. Part of the problem with something like Animal Crossing is the very slow, regulated pacing: it isn't meant to be played through in a weekend, but - like a Tamagotchi (remember those?) - is a virtual environment to be cultivated over months and even years. Getting a good impression of what New Leaf has to offer in the span of two days, even two days where I've logged at least two and a half hours per day, isn't really fair to the game. I mean, I only just got my house this morning, and my overall approval rating is something like 47% the last time I checked. I didn't buy a bug-catching net until this morning either. So for the last couple of days, I've been learning how to fish, shaking every tree in town, picking and selling flowers, and chatting up villagers. It's a little bit on the repetitive side, but I know that in the coming weeks the game will open up much more and I'll be swimming and playing minigames and adding onto my house and more.

Patience is a virtue in New Leaf, more than any other game I've ever played. There's a certain admirable bravery on the part of the designers, in choosing to dole out parts of the game as rewards for sticking with it; it also means that while I haven't been exactly overwhelmed with options, there has still been a lot to do every day.

Note: I started writing this last week, so I'm now about nine days in at this point.  I've managed to get a 100% approval rating and open up ordinances, so shops are open later.  I've unlocked the island and its minigames.  I've made some additions to my house and I've gotten a pretty good sense of what this game is all about.  And I have to say, I am getting BOOOO-OOORED.

As I mentioned, Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a very well-received and well-reviewed game.  I'd like to offer a dissenting view.  I think that for what it is, it's relatively well-crafted and charming, but there are a few aspects to it that I just don't care for at all.  And while I have invested more than a week into it, I'm getting pretty close to throwing in the towel, because frankly, I just can't be bothered to care.

I said earlier that Animal Crossing: New Leaf is a small-town simulator.  This is only correct on paper - New Leaf is more of a chore simulator than anything else.  It's a very adorable, cheerful, and even occasionally clever chore simulator, but you will spend 95% of the time playing it running around cleaning up, grabbing things, sorting things, re-arranging things, filling out your collection of fossils or shirts or fish or whatever.  None of this is all that problematic except that every single day amounts to the same set of actions: dig up fossils, break rocks, shake trees, run from bees, gather shells, go fishing, sell objects when your inventory fills up.  Talk to villagers, set up a few meetings at villagers' houses, drop off and arrange new items at your house.  Repeat, repeat, repeat. 

There's a certain type of person for whom New Leaf will hold a lot of appeal.  Or certain types, I should say, as there is admittedly a range of things to do here.  The game caters to the hardcore Nintendo fan, first and foremost: the gamer who has played past New Leaf games, or who just really, really loves Nintendo and all of their branding.  Some of the first decorative items I found were Pikmin and a string of banana peels from Mario Kart; these items have no function other than to sit in your house and remind you that you are playing a Nintendo game.  You will also find a Metroid, Mario themed wallpaper, any number of Mario objects, Starfox memorabilia, and so forth.  Now, there's nothing strictly wrong with this, but it seems like Nintendo thinks (or wants to think) that this is far more of a selling point than it actually is.  And in the context of the game, it represents some serious brand over-saturation.

And then there are those with a collector's mindset.  New Leaf has a lot to offer to these types, as long as they're interested in collecting bugs, fish, fruit, flowers and pieces of furniture.  For myself, after catching my 200th fish and discovering that I'd mostly collected zebra turkeyfish and sea bass, it suddenly dawned on me that if I was going to be playing New Leaf as a collector, it would be imperative that I grind.  And I hate grinding.  I mean, I'll do it in an RPG because there is a direct pay-off in terms of XP and stat-building, but New Leaf presents very little to no reward for grinding other than the self-satisfaction of finally finding an elusive breed of insect or whatever.  That lack of game mechanic is becoming more and more apparent as time goes by, and no amount of medals and minigames can make up for that. 

Finally, New Leaf is worth playing if you can't get enough of adorable little animals.  I will admit, the writing in the game is top-notch, if lacking in any sort of plotline or real development.  Your town is populated by a growing cast of anthropomorphized animals, and they each have a distinct personality and set of interests.  Some of the little interstitial descriptions and comments made got a chuckle out of me, and I am nowhere near the target audience for this sort of thing.  But cutesy turns of phrase can only get you so far.  I've only been playing for nine days and I'm already sick of talking to my town's residents, and their constant demands to have me run errands for them.  If you're a big fan of Hello Kitty, or even the sanitized, family-friendly Mario universe, you'll probably get better mileage out of this. 

It could be that I'm missing something here.  Maybe I haven't opened up enough of the game, and maybe at some point mechanics come into play that offer more "game" than "chore".  But so far, at least, I'm not seeing any indication of this.  All I'm seeing is a long, largely-featureless straight road that needs weeding and cleaning up, and I have enough chores to do in real life that the idea of spending my recreational time doing it in a game is losing its lustre fast.

The World Ends With You 2?

So I don't know if I've talked about my love of the 2008 DS game The World Ends With You here before, but believe me when I say that it is far and away the best DS game ever made, in my opinion. It was the first game that I really got into when I first got my DS and the first game I played to completion. TWEWY made excellent use of all of the DS' then-revolutionary features, most notably the touchscreen and the microphone, and was an incredibly well-designed and visually appealing game to boot.

TWEWY made a name for itself as something of a cult classic - made by Square Enix, it followed the basic format of a traditional JRPG, but subverted the tropes of that genre by setting itself in contemporary Tokyo and incorporating the food, fashion and music of the Shibuya district, and offering an ability leveling system through a set of collectible pins, each of which offers a different attack or power. Pins can be set to evolve, bringing in a mechanic not unlike the Pokemon games, and this evolution can occur even when the DS is in sleep mode. After finishing the game, I left it in my DS for a few weeks and came back to discover my pins had evolved into an entirely different set.

To me, TWEWY was a revelation. I'd never played a game even remotely like it in my life. Story-wise, the game threw me for a loop on a regular basis; each of the three major chapters pairs your main character Neku up with a different partner, with their own strengths and their own storyline. Between the pin mechanic, the wide range of abilities and the strong narrative, I fell in love with TWEWY and I missed it dearly once I'd completed it.

So when I picked up and started playing Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance for the 3DS a couple of weeks ago, I was elated to discover the first segment of the game featured Neku, Joshua, Beat, Shiki and Rhyme. They weren't playable, and so far have only popped up briefly during the Traverse Town levels, but it was a reminder that Square Enix hadn't forgotten about TWEWY entirely, that they were considered part of the core stable and beloved enough to include in a Kingdom Hearts release (side note: the TWEWY crew are the first non-Disney and non-Final Fantasy characters to show up in a Kingdom Hearts game.)

Well, it looks like the Kingdom Hearts cameos were just the beginning, because all evidence points to the fact that Square Enix may be releasing a follow-up to The World Ends With You. On Monday a countdown timer went live on Square Enix's Japanese site. So far, not much is there, but the evidence is fairly suggestive: the countdown timer font is identical to TWEWY's distinctive typography, character design is attributed to Tetsuya Nomura & Gen Kobayashi (the artists responsible for TWEWY, and there's a silhouette of what appear to be modern-day buildings in the background.

I can't tell you how excited I am about this. If there's any game that deserves a follow-up, it's The World Ends With You. My best guess at this point is that the game will either get a sequel or the remake treatment on the 3DS. Unfortunately, we still have to wait five and a half days to find out. If it does end up being a sequel, you can bet I'll be first in line at my local EB Games to pick it up.

[THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU: COMING SOON Countdown Timer]

Nintendo 3DS, or: This Is Officially The Future

Sometimes you just have to buy a thing.

Therefore, this weekend I joined the ranks of Early Adopters and helped myself to a Nintendo 3DS.  On one hand, it was hardly an impulse purchase: I budgeted around the $250 price-tag, and I'd been considering buying one for at least two weeks prior. On the other, though, given the lean launch-title roster and the fact that I already own a DSi, it seemed like an indulgence more than anything.

This is the fundamental obstacle Nintendo is faced with right now, having saturated the market with new editions of their handheld console: The original DS was released in 2004, the DS Lite in 2006, the DSi in 2009 and the DSi XL in 2010, almost exactly a year to the day prior to the 3DS' release date.  These are all essentially the same device, with the exception of (primarily) cosmetic alterations - the DS Lite was smaller, the DSi XL had considerably larger screens, and so forth - but in basic form and function, every system released under the DS banner has operated in an identical fashion.

The Nintendo DS is the best-selling handheld of all time, which may be accounted for by the near-yearly re-launches of the system.  There has always been a shiny new version of the DS on the market, boasting a flashy redesign and extraneous "features", and each release has been accompanied by a potent marketing campaign. 

What's strange about this is that Nintendo has earned itself a reputation as an innovator in the current gaming industry.  Motion control with the Wii, the eponymous dual screens and touch-screen of the DS, and other intuitive, player-immersive features have made Nintendo an industry leader (heck, even the light gun that came with the original Nintendo Entertainment System was astonishing in its day).  From an empirical standpoint, they have introduced new ways of gaming to players which have subsequently been aped by their competitors.  So there's this strange duality to Nintendo, where on one side of the coin they regularly alter the face of videogaming with their clever and brilliantly-implemented ideas, and on the other side, they are content to slap a new coat of metaphorical paint on their existing devices and repackage them as the latest and greatest.

All of this is to make the point that the 3DS straddles the line between these two facets of Nintendo.  It most certainly is, at heart, just another Nintendo DS with all-new bells and whistles, but one of those bells and\or whistles is so revolutionary it almost validates the hefty price tag.  Not to mention the fact that the hardware is, allegedly, souped-up and next-gen (Nintendo has not officially released specs on the 3DS).

I'm not going to lie: the 3D feature of the 3DS is impressive.  It's so novel I couldn't NOT own one.  Even if the market saturation backfires and the 3DS ends up a casualty alongside the Virtual Boy and R.O.B. The Robot, it's going to look good doing it.  But for the average handheld aficionado - especially the younger set, who are simultaneously more concerned with the immediate wow factor and harder to keep interested, in the long run, than grown-up nerds - it's a tough sell, especially considering the DSi XL is only a year old and there aren't a ton of device-specific games that take advantage of the feature just yet.

Here's my run-down of the Nintendo 3DS, what was promised, and what we actually got.