Animal Crossing review

On March 20, along with Doom Eternal, another quite popular game in narrow circles was released – Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Moreover, the shooter yielded to its cute competitor both in rating on Metacritic and in views on Twitch. We talk about one of the most high-quality and addictive “farms”.

What kind of game is it?

Many might not have heard of the Animal Crossing series because they released it exclusively for Nintendo consoles. The new New Horizons was no exception and went only to Switch – and even got a version of the console with a special design. And all thanks to the huge fan base and high virality of related content, especially in the West.

In fact, Animal Crossing is a more or less standard farm with social elements. The player is sent to an almost uninhabited island, where his new life begins. It is life, not survival: here there are no basic needs of the character or serious dangers, with the exception of spiders and bees, from the bites of which the hero can lose consciousness.

Most of the time, the player collects resources, crafts tools and various cosmetic trinkets, plants trees and flowers, catches fish and insects, and also earns money or a conditional currency of achievements. All this allows you to discover new content: a museum of living creatures and fossils, a full-fledged store and the ability to climb up that hill beyond the river.

No shotguns with a cat hook should be expected. The main thing in Animal Crossing is comfort, so the store offers a lot of things for every taste for home improvement. For example, my pink flamingo.

Got bored on your island? You can go on a trip to a random remote site of land, where, possibly, there will be other resources and rare animals. In the same way, you can fly to the “farm” to a friend. They will not let spoil flowerbeds or chop down all the trees without special permission from the owner, but it seems like he went to visit, despite the quarantine.

What am I supposed to do here?

As such, there is no purpose or plot in Animal Crossing. The player himself determines what he needs to do, build or buy. You owe it only to the owner of the island – Tom Nuk – for building a house. But even this local “mafia” is not rushing you to repay a loan, it’s impossible to expand your home without it.

Yes, you can build the largest house, fulfill all the instructions of animals – neighbors on the island and catch all the animals for the museum. True, to do this honestly will not work until December – in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the seasons change according to the real calendar, and the game clock does not lag behind that set on the Nintendo Switch.

Of course, you can change the time on the device and trick the system, but why? The whole point of Animal Crossing is in the absence of any rush. There is no one to compete with, and there is no need to rush to build a house – it will still be erected only tomorrow. Exactly tomorrow, and it will come on the next real day: just sleeping through the night in the virtual world will not work.

In such a situation, you can continue to farm resources and money, do repairs in the house and create clothing designs, or simply postpone the game, if, of course, you manage to come off. In a strange way, Animal Crossing is very addictive, even when there are no concrete cases on the island, and all the neighbors go to bed.

On the first day, I decided to draw the Virtus.pro logo in the local editor. This turned out to be more difficult than could be expected. Next in line is a jersey and cap.

Why do I need all this?

First of all, Animal Crossing: New Horizon is an excellent timekiller. No matter how the game tries to restrict the user in the content, getting out of it and going to bed at 4 a.m. is really difficult. Meditative weed picking and fishing brings some inexplicable pleasure that can be difficult to get in other titles.

Perhaps the fact is that Animal Crossing: New Horizon is literally made to relax and cheer up. Every detail works for it: cute animations, silly dialogs and stormy applause after the character crafts even the simplest fishing rod. In a sense, this game has a therapeutic effect – you can’t get angry at it, no matter how bad the day before.

March 25 is my birthday, with which Tom Nook personally congratulated me on the first launch of Animal Crossing for the day. They even sent me a cake – from my mother. Yes, that’s what they wrote in the in-game letter.

Initially, I was skeptical of Animal Crossing, which is given at the same price as the objectively cool Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Astral Chain. Obviously, the game was made for children, but this can only seriously concern those who still require realistic graphics from all titles and completely reject Nintendo products. After a couple of days in the game, I got the feeling that Animal Crossing could appeal to absolutely everyone, just not everyone admits it.