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jlb834's Animal Crossing (GC)
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| [March 28, 2011 09:51:09 PM]
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Intro:
Animal Crossing is a life-simulation/role-playing game that was released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2002. Animal Crossing has a two dimensional game-play, but is represented in a three dimensional world. The game is single player, but allows multiple players to play in the same game world at different times.
Game world:
In Animal Crossing, when a player starts the game for the first time, they must create a new world by giving it a name, each time a world is created the world is assigned random NPCs, non-playable characters; however, some NPCs are recurring in every game world, such as the shop keeper Nook. One of the most unique attributes of the game is that the game world reflects the setting of the GameCube’s clock. If the clock is set to winter, the game might have snow, but in the spring and summer the game would have rain. Also, the game world changes based if a month has passed from the last time the player has played the game, then the player’s house will have cockroaches and there will be weeds growing around the game world.
Players:
Animal Crossing supports multiple players, with up to four players, to play in the same world, but only one world can be created at a time. So if a new world is created it will destroy and replace the current world. Everything that a player does, good or bad, in the game world is reflected in every player’s game world because they all share the same world.
Play sessions:
I played two different play sessions. The first session involved me setting up the game and getting familiar with some in-game concepts. The second game-play session was focused more on customizing the game world and testing the system’s clock dependant feature of the game.
First session:
The first game-play session started out naming my character and naming the game world. Then, the store owner, Nook, sold me a house to live in and require me to perform some tasks to help pay the debt. The tasks were meant as a tutorial to show several of the different opportunities for making money. Most of the tasks were “fetch quest”, Nook wanted me to deliver something to or get something from another NPC who then sent me to another NPC. Most of the first session involved learning how to do different activities in the game such as fish, chop down trees, plant tree, and catch insects. After a short time, I was left to pursue my own ways of making money with a promise that I would pay off the house eventually. The first game-play session ended with me trying every different type of activity at least once.
Second session:
The first game-play session took place at night, so in the game world was also dark with lights on insides houses and some of the stores eventually closed. The second game-play session took place the next day and as with the night before reflected the time of day by being daylight, although in the game it was now raining. I spend the majority of the time chopping down trees, adding things to my house, and changing my clothes and umbrella design in an attempt to make the game world appeal more to me. Despite my efforts, the simple world was very mundane even after playing the game only a short while, and the ways of making money were very repetitive with very little reward. I started to use the in-game clock to cheat by changing the system clock to skip to different dates in the game. This worked nicely at first, but had some interesting consequences. The game world was littered with weeds, and my house was infested with bugs. I soon found that playing the game every day in an effort to maintain a very simple and limited game world is asking too much from a player, which is probably why most games have a faster game clock than normal time.
Overall:
I think that the most unique and interesting feature of Animal Crossing is the ability to make changes to the in-game world based on the date and time of the system’s clock, but the game punishes the player for skipping forward in time, also playing the game at specific times is pointless because all of the shops are closed. In the end, the game was fun, but putting an in-game event for Christmas, December 25, but punishing the player for skipping to that date is a bad design choice because it assumes anyone will rightfully be playing the game on a holiday even though playing the game without cheating would be very boring after a couple of consecutive days of play.
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jlb834's Animal Crossing (GC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Monday 28 March, 2011
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