Living with animals was never this fun

In this GameCube exclusive, you play as the only human in a town filled with animals. Nintendo has been known for weird games, and this is no exception.

Plot

You move into a new town, that is inhabited by animals. You must live with them, and become friends with them.

It's a basic plot, but it works just fine for this style of a game.

Gameplay

You start the game on a train, which is on course to the town you are moving to. You will have to answer some questions, which determine how you look and the name of your town. Once you arrive in town, you will be introduced to Tom Nook (the shop owner, and owner of the houses). You must choose a house (all of which are the same except for minor details inside). Once you do this, you must work for Nook to pay off the debt you just earned.

After this is done, you have free will to do almost anything in town. You can plant flowers and trees (regular and fruit), rearrange your items in your house, talk to villagers and much more. You instantly can't get all the items you want at first, because you are low in money (which is known as bells in the game). To earn money and items, you must do tasks for the villagers. The tasks they ask you to do are only usually a few things however, which gets repetitive at times.

Besides animals, there is Tom Nook, police officers that tell you of events coming up in town (also they run a lost and found), the mayor that gives you items on certain events, plus an owl that runs the museum, and porcupines that run a design shop.

The rewards are well worth it though, as there is a large variety of items. There is dressers, chests, tables, NES games (which you can play), stuffed animals, plants and more.

If organizing your house isn't a big deal to you, there is other things to do as well. You can collect a variety of fish and bugs in the game. These are seasonal, so you will have to play the game for a full year to get every one of them. You can place them in your house, or donate them to your museum. Besides bugs and fish, you can dig up dinosaur bones (which also can be in the house or museum).


The game is done in real time, so if you are playing at 4 PM, it's 4 PM in the game (as long as your GameCube clock is set to your actual time). There is special events that take place at certain times. Some are random, which include a giraffe that has you wash her car for a shirt. While others are on certain days: Halloween, Valentine's Day and more real life holidays are included in the game. Some of these are worth doing, as they have good rewards. However, many aren't that great as you simply just get an item from the mayor.

The game is simple to learn and has easy controls that make the game very easy to play. The control stick moves your character, while the A button does must other actions. The other buttons are used for minor functions as well.

While the game is fun for the most part, it does get repetitive. Besides the tasks for the animals (which I mentioned above), just playing every day for a while might get boring. Not all days have events, and after a while the animals will say the same things that you've read many times already. Fast forwarding (by changing the clock) is one idea to do events sooner, however that's a bit cheap and takes the fun of the game away if you do it too much.

Graphics and sound

The graphics are cartoon looking, but still look decent. The wide variety of animals are all sorts of colors, sizes and shapes. It's not the typical animal color in all cases, which adds great humor in the game. Some animals have bandages, glasses and other features that only humans in real life would have.

Animal Crossing has various sounds as well, which are fairly good as well. The animals speak a language of their own, which sounds like gibberish. However, you can sometimes understand it. Many of the other sounds in the game sound realistic. For example, when you cut down a tree, it sounds like the real thing. The game also features many songs which you can get from KK Slider, which range from rock, country and many other types. They have good beats to them, but are just instrumental with no words to them.


Replay value

There is many items to collect and place in your house. The NES games alone add a lot of value, as all are full versions of the original games. Various other items in the game are interactive as well. Some examples are: a fan that actually moves, and some television sets that can be turned on. Overall, the game has great replay value to it.