Zero Punctuation: Animal Crossing: New Leaf

[Olas]

I remember loving the Gamecube version and playing it almost every day for nearly a year, then I ended up buying the DS version and eventually Wii version but didn't actually get around to playing either too much and sorta forgot about them. I'd go and try them out again but honestly I'm a little scared at what I might find in my wake.

Animal Crossing is really the only game I can think of that makes you feel genuinely guilty for not playing.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I KNEW it! This game is evil. Every time I hear someone talk about how good this game is, I'm wondering how such a banal game could be that good. Now I know...

Thanks for confirming this, Yahtzee.

 

[Quiotu]

Yeah, there's a reason I don't play this game, or care about dailies in MMOs, and got out of EvE Online as soon as I wasn't depressed and working graveyard shift anymore.

No! Fuck off, game! I'm not doing your daily grind, I don't give a shit what you give me as a reward. I like playing games I can get back to in a week because I have a goddamn life, and a game that tries making me feel bad for NOT playing it can EABOD. If I wanted something that requires daily maintenance from me and is fun, I'd get me another dog. I can go on vacation and board the dog, and the dog isn't pissed and disappointed in me when I come back.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Oh, so it is like "The Host" by Stephanie May... zzzzzz...zzz

I first thought of how demonic and angelic possession works on Supernatural after hearing Yahtzee's opening.

 

[Souplex]

Your other Animal Crossing Review was far better:
http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/reviews/animalcrossing.htm

 

[Aptspire]

Oh man, that takes me back to when the channel used to play really old tv shows
OT: Good review, seems like a pretty shiny Skinner Box.

 

[Roman Monaghan]

In before someone points out the series existed before the gamecube game over in japan like a hopeless despot?

Probably not.

 

[theultimateend]

Animal Crossing: New Leaf

This week, Zero Punctuation reviews Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Watch Video

The most amusing part is when you describe why you shouldn't play Animal Crossing you are also describing why nobody should live.

Something dark in there.

I like me some Animal Crossing.

PS. For 20K in game (a few seconds of selling) you can make the game do all the upkeep work for you.

Animal Crossing has always and will always be a terrible Skinner Box game that the sheep enjoy.

Someday you will look back on this sentence and realize it sounds like something a person with terrible brain damage would say.

There is almost no case where unironically calling people "sheep" doesn't end up sounding pants on head and glasses on ass stupid.

 

[McMarbles]

Animal Crossing has always and will always be a terrible Skinner Box game that the sheep enjoy.

I suppose we should all at least be grateful you didn't use "sheeple".

OT: This review came two and a half weeks too late for me. Damn you, you filthy raccoon, why can't I stop buying house upgrades? And why am I the only one paying for my fountain? It'll benefit everyone!

 

[Ice Car]

Animal Crossing has always and will always be a terrible Skinner Box game that the sheep enjoy.

Sheep? I love sheep. They're my favorite villagers in the game next to wolfs.

But really, I think some of people's attachment to the franchise has to do with them growing up with it. If you start it when you're older you might find it harder to get into but I got into it when I was like 9. I spent like a year playing it and I bought every game in the series.

Either way, I think the franchise has charm and it's relaxing. The only goals you have are the ones you set yourself and you're not going to get much out of it if you don't set a goal for yourself. Generally my goals for each game are to get a nice house, pay off all the debts and maybe make my town as pretty as possible. New Leaf gives a lot more options for customizing your town and a lot of dream towns I've visited shows just how much more customizable and amazing your towns can get. It's a fairly simple game. I don't play it every day just so my town doesn't go to shit, I continue to play it so I can get closer to my goals, and when I get tired of it all I just quit.

 

[Evonisia]

I don't know whether I like this video or not, maybe it's just the game itself not being a particularly interesting subject to talk about.

Loved the joke at the end though

 

[triggrhappy94]

I remember playing Animal Crossing on the Game Cube.
I took a lot of convincing of my parents, because the thought it was a hunting game (because of the name).
I tried naming my town "Earth" but ended up with "EATH."
I tried setting the in game clock correctly, but fucked up on the AM/PM. There was only a small window really earlier in the morning and late at night that little me could successfully play the game (because Tom Nook is the only not nocturnal raccoon in the world).

Good times. I almost found all the fish and dinosaurs.

I thought about going back to good old EATH, but decided it'd be too sad. Like the end of Toy Story 3, minus any kind of resolution.

 

[Ice Car]

Animal Crossing has always and will always be a terrible Skinner Box game that the sheep enjoy.

I suppose we should all at least be grateful you didn't use "sheeple".

OT: This review came two and a half weeks too late for me. Damn you, you filthy raccoon, why can't I stop buying house upgrades? And why am I the only one paying for my fountain? It'll benefit everyone!

You have to get the rooms on the left and right to be able to change the exterior of your house to Castle, Zen Castle, Modern, etc, and they cost the same as one of the late house upgrades (in the range of 400k bells).

I pretty much pay off every public work on my own, usually in the day I start it, but I assume the developers assumed you'd be collecting donations for several weeks and paying it off little by little. Maybe if you didn't want to pay it off all at once you could wait a bit for the donations from villagers to accumulate.

I don't know. It does bother me when I'm the only one to show up for the ceremony in a fucking thunderstorm for the public works project I paid off all on my own. I hate my villagers.

 

[JenSeven]

Yahtzee, you're starting to slip up man.

The game is called Animal Crossing and you didn't put in a reference to The Island Of Doctor Moreau?
Seriously?

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Animal Crossing has always and will always be a terrible Skinner Box game that the sheep enjoy.

So edgy and cool.

I bet you get all the ladies, with your non-conformist, radical ideas.

 

[Crispee]

i liked The Prisoner reference, even though I read that joke on another website weeks ago.

I do wonder why he claims to dislike games he says himself are addictive though, he says "Play until you get bored", which is weird because if you stop when you're bored then you're obviously not bored beforehand. But oh well, funny jokes I suppose.

 

[geldonyetich]

Too late for me, Yahtzee, I'm already hooked on this game despite the objections of my higher brain functions. Freedom would normally come for me in about 7 million bells, when my house is fully upgraded, and gaining debt becomes an impossibility... except Animal Crossing: New Leaf gave you that whole mayoring thing to do, so technically you can put yourself in debt endlessly to the donation gyroid in the name of new and interesting ways to spruce up the town.

I will point out that, if you do have more than an hour to burn on Animal Crossing: New Leaf a day (something which will cause your animal neighbors to berate you) you can actually go to a nice tropical island where you can go on tours in order to ignore what the ex-mayor tour guide directs you to do in order to reap a great infinite fruity bounty at about the rate of about 100,000 bells an hour. So there's not really a hour limit on what you can do each day. Somewhat important omission, that... well, insofar as recommending grinding can be consider valid.

Also, that you cold pass the beautiful town ordinance that makes weeds cease to exist, so you don't have to worry about too much guilt about leaving your animals to fend for themselves for a few months, at least not as much as the previous installments. (I imagine my City Folks down is a travesty by now.)

Also, you should have used == for that equivalence check at 1:37, but maybe this is the final pathetic nitpick that makes the nitpicks in the last two paragraph considerably less valid by simply existing.

Though this review did cause me to wonder if I can find a good Cooking Mama on the Nintendo eStore...

 

[Enlong]

Animal Crossing has always and will always be a terrible Skinner Box game that the sheep enjoy.

No, no, see, the main character is a human, and sheep are villagers. Well, sheep and dogs and birds, but the main point is that the one enjoying the game is a human, and the sheep can only be NPCs.

 

[Longhorn]

Animal Crossing has always and will always be a terrible Skinner Box game that the sheep enjoy.

Sheep? Really? You'd think that sheep wouldn't be able to afford a 3DS and Animal Crossing, let alone actually enjoy the game. I mean, they don't even have hands. How on Earth are they going to play it?

 

[Yokta]

Of all the noteworthy critics I expected to enjoy playing Cooking Mama, I would never have guessed in a thousand eternal years that Yahtzee would be one of them.