Animal Crossing: Wild World

Thanks for getting Cat Stevens stuck in my head every time, game subtitle. *grumblecakes*

That, however, is the worst thing I can say about this little bit of crack in your DS card slot.

I never played the Game Cube incarnation of this, although my husband had it. His first semester of college, he bought a Cube and Animal Crossing (for the novelty? the memory card? who knows.). Apparently he was happy to play that game, and only that one, every day in his spare time. I still didn't give thought to playing it: it seemed like Harvest Moon without the farming, which I thought was supposed to be the main appeal of Harvest Moon.

Wrong! Harvest Moon is a torturous little brat in comparison, all making you eat ALL THE TIME and work with little reward. (Plus, after all that work of breeding a "star cow," it didn't even have a star on it. It was at this point I quit playing the game.) The soothing, breezy world of Animal Crossing feels positively liberating in comparison.

It's not too hard to describe Animal Crossing, but it is a bit challenging to explain why it's so engrossing. You play a human in a town full of animals, and you get to collect furniture/decorate your house, catch bugs and insect, dig up fossils, and design clothes and constellations. Your fellow townsfolk always have something amusing to say, and sometimes there are town contests and festivals. So I have just described a game of simple tasks. "So what?" you may be asking. I mean, I did.

One, I think, is it's a cute, harmless vicarious play-life, like the Sims, but without happiness meters and jobs. You just get to live a chillaxed existence of toodling around and improving your town and museum.

Another is the game compels you to pick it up every day for new items and new scenarios that you'd miss if you skipped playing it for a day. Every day new furniture and items are available at the shop of Tom Nook, mercantile and the raccoon to whom you are constantly in debt for owning your home. (Paying off debt = bigger house = more decorating space = unfortunate bigger chunk of money owed to Nook.) Different fish and insects appear at different times of day (and year), and darn if it doesn't get intense trying to get all of them into the town museum.

The stylus makes it really easy to play, too: you can just press a character to interact with them, rather than having to walk right up to them & press 'A.' It gives it a loose, natural, pleasant feel.

I can dig it!