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GC

North America

Animal Crossing

by Tonkatsu Chikara - March 21, 2002, 8:24 pm EST

6.5

Nintendo’s Animal Forest returns as an enhanced GameCube title. Is it all it’s cracked up to be?

Note: This is the import review of Animal Forest +, and not the US version called Animal Crossing.

Animal Forest Plus is a remake of the Japan-only N64 title Animal Forest. It is dubbed a communication game, and centers around daily life in a village populated by animals and your relationships with them. The ‘Plus’ refers to additions such as GBA connectivity, new items and characters, and added Famicom games. Although providing a unique experience with vast opportunity for varied and long term playability, Animal Forest Plus fails in important aspects and may only appeal to certain players.

The game begins as you choose your character’s gender and arrive in the village, named by you. Having no place to live and very limited funds, the local merchant Tanuki offers you your choice of small houses and gives you a job to help you work off the debt. This is basically a transparent tutorial for the basic workings of the game, as Tanuki’s tasks are representative of the future interaction you will have in the village. You must deliver packages, plant flowers, write letters, advertise on the bulletin board, and so on. When you finish your initial tasks, you are free to commence daily life in the village and continue to pay off your debt and expand your house.

Animal Forest Plus is incredibly non-linear. After you complete your jobs for Tanuki, you are free to do anything you want (within your capabilities). You may talk with the villagers and run errands for them such as fetching and delivering items or playing bartering games, or gather fruit or fossils to donate to the museum or sell to pay off your debt. Communication is very important. Although not compulsory, writing letters to the villagers improves relations with them, furthering available errands and prompting them to send you presents. Over time, new animals will move into the village, expanding chances for interaction. Additionally, you can shun your friends and concentrate on catching fish, collecting insects and fossils for the museum, pulling weeds, etc. But constant interaction with the villagers is necessary to ‘advance’ in the game.

The game runs in real time, featuring daily and seasonal changes and special events on holidays. Some villagers sleep earlier than others, and Tanuki’s shop keeps standard business hours.

Animal Forest Plus also features GBA connectivity, allowing you to travel to a hidden island where you can gather new items and meet an additional animal. Also, you can use the GBA to view the island and interact (limitedly) with its inhabitant when your character is away in the village proper.

The goal of Animal Forest Plus is that there is none. One could conceivably play out life in the village for years, following the ins and outs of daily life. However, this is a double edged sword. Although the opportunities for free gameplay and long term play abound, the ‘daily life’ bit can be a major disadvantage. On some days, there simply isn’t much to do, and after exhausting the available errands you have little to do except wait for letters to be delivered (often after an hour or the following day) to prompt new chances for interaction. Unless you’re content to catch fish (which are limited in variety by season and can be collected fairly quickly) or rearrange your furniture, you will sometimes be hard pressed to play for more than 30 minutes to an hour sometimes.

However, you can earn many different Famicom (the Japanese NES) games to put in your house, which you can then play at leisure. They are perfectly emulated and the enjoyment of sitting down a Punch-Out or Ice Climbers session provided me with several hours of old-school goodness.

Some people, especially casual gamers, will enjoy picking up Animal Forest Plus a little everyday and enjoy sending and receiving letters, collecting new and interesting furniture and items for their house, and keeping up with the daily events that unfold in the village during the days, whether you’re present or not. However, I am the kind that only plays games about three days out of the week, and when I do I like to sit down to it for quite a stretch. Thus, I had a really difficult time enjoying this game, even though I admire the premise and can see its appeal.

I work standard days, standard hours, and when I come home after work at 6:00 and want to enjoy a couple hours of playtime, Animal Forest Plus is quite the opposite of what I need. Many of the interesting occurrences have passed me by during my time in the real world, and some of the villagers go to bed quite early (frustratingly usually the ones I need to deliver something to in order to receive a cool new item or further the bartering routines). Tanuki’s shop is usually closed on Sundays, which is my main gaming day. When I can’t sell stuff, I can’t get funds to buy new stuff, and thus can hardly enjoy the experience of customizing my house or buying that cool new axe. Granted, one can adjust the GC internal clock before playing, allowing you to ‘live’ in the village as you wanted, but I feel that is both counterintuitive and a pain in the ass.

On a side note, my fiancé works rotating swing shifts and can only find about an hour at a time to play games, and thus she loves to be able to poke around a bit, write a couple letters and trade a few items in her free time. I appreciate the concept of Animal Forest Plus, and can see its high potential for gamers like her, but for me it was mostly a constant, frustrating tease that I personally found limited and unrewarding.

Score

Graphics Sound Control Gameplay Lastability Final
5 5 8 6 8.5 6.5
Graphics
5

Easily recognizable as a port of its N64 predecessor, Animal Forest has been only slightly improved visually. The textures are sharp but extremely simple. Polygon construction of characters, objects and landscape is very simple, clearly carried over from the N64 version. Overall, Animal Forest Plus gives the impression of a Bleem! title with the same simple object construction but wrapped in sharper textures. The characters are animated simply, but well. Addition of the ability to control the camera view when roaming the village would’ve been very nice, but would’ve required a great deal more work than was put into this somewhat enhanced port. Progressive scan is supported, although there is little need as there is no fine detail that really benefits from the clearer picture.

Sound
5

Simple background melodies and basic sound effects do not a stunning impression make. The music is catchy but definitely has a last generation quality to it. It’s better than midi, but it is distinctly made up of computer generated tones rather than real music. Likewise, the sound effects are very basic and repetitive. Not so uncommon for a N64 title, but considering you spend nearly all your time listening to the main village theme roll on and on, some real tunes would’ve made a hell of a difference. The animal speech is incredibly sped up output from the game’s Japanese language phonic tone library, altered in pitch for personality. Imagine it as similar to synthesized English speech (think Stephen Hawkins) but given a pitch adjustment to make it sound like the Chipmunks and speed up to nearly unintelligible. Not so terrible, as Animal Forest Plus is purely a text based game, but it got on my nerves quite a bit.

Control
8

Sort of a non-issue. You go up, you go down, you move back and forth and you run. This is not an action game. Happily there is a run button, without which getting about the village would become a crippling chore. Control only comes to bear when navigating a menu or advancing conversation, at which times such things are handled well. The menus are well laid out and easy to use, and conversations can be advanced rapidly with a button press. There isn’t much need for precise control, but what is done is done well.

Gameplay
6

A tough call. I had a hard time enjoying the game after the first few plays (although I stuck with it for four or five times a week for a month). I couldn’t spend much time with it in one sitting due to time related issues, in both game and real life. I often found myself without errands to run, having deliveries to make when the recipient was sleeping, unable to sell things to a closed-up store, or waiting for a letter to get delivered so I could further the bartering routines. The activities in between fell short for me, as I am not inclined to obsess over the placement of my chairs, design of my wallpaper or the weeds around my house for long, although it was novel for a short while. The Famicom games kept me busy for a decent amount of time and are a wonderful bonus, but you can only beat Punch-Out so many times. I can see Animal Forest Plus appealing to other people, but not me. I understand how casual gamers and those who enjoy playing around a little bit at a time could have fun with it conceivably for months, but the concept just isn’t suited for me. It’s a solid concept, but ultimately a matter of preference. A game is only a toy, and I feel any toy worth having is a toy that you can play with whenever and for however long you want. It’s a real drag to spend 60 bucks on a game only to be able to really play it with purpose for about an hour each day. If I want to put in eight hours a day on a RPG and clear it in a week, that’s my choice. I have the same issues with Seaman; it’s a unique and original experience, but it just isn’t satisfying.

Lastability
8.5

Again a double-edged sword. If the daily progression of village life pleases you for bits at a time, you can play this game nearly forever. But if, like me, you like your games playable in longer sittings and can’t stand having to wait until the following day for something other to do besides plant flowers, pick fruit and design your umbrella, it wears real thin before long. However, I can’t fault the game in this area just because I didn’t care for it in general. It’s solidly built and could provide months of enjoyment, if it suits you.

Final
6.5

Many people will flame me for this, but I feel it’s fair. Again, it’s a judgment call. Some gamers (those whom its style suits better) would score this game much higher. Animal Forest Plus is a solid game that could be enjoyed for months, but it has its drawbacks. Many will be turned off by the overly cutesy content, while some will find it a selling point. Many will be frustrated by being unable to really accomplish anything new without having to wait several hours or overnight, while some will love the feeling of returning to the familiar village for short stints time after time. I fall into the former category. However, all will be put off somewhat frequently by the real time nature. Problems such as being unable to deliver that video tape because the zebra won’t come out of the igloo until tomorrow only frustrate. The decisive point is: Are you content to doodle on your house’s signpost, sell fruit, or search for fossils while you wait? Or are you inclined to none of that, and would rather just turn off the game? If the latter is the case, you’d best think about whether money spent on a game sitting on your shelf rather than spinning in your GameCube is money well spent.

Summary

Pros
  • Addition of Famicom games is a real plus.
  • Customization galore! Design your own wallpaper, clothes and signpost textures. Arrange your house in your own personal style. Make friends with or piss off your neighbors.
  • Innovative communication system that reacts and tailors gameplay according to each gamer.
  • Possibility of very long term playability. Animal Forest Plus is seemingly endless.
  • Wide-open gameplay featuring incredible freedom and unique playing experiences.
Cons
  • Almost always difficult to play for longer periods of time in a single sitting.
  • Lack of a solid goal or sense of purpose is a real turn-off.
  • Real-time progression often makes for frustrating and limited gameplay opportunities.
  • Visually and aurally simple. Graphics and audio are only somewhat improved from the N64 version.
Review Page 2: Conclusion

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Genre Simulation
Developer Nintendo
Players1 - 4

Worldwide Releases

na: Animal Crossing
Release Sep 15, 2002
PublisherNintendo
RatingEveryone
jpn: Doubutsu no Mori Plus
Release Dec 14, 2001
PublisherNintendo
RatingAll Ages
eu: Animal Crossing
Release Sep 24, 2004
PublisherNintendo
Rating3+
aus: Animal Crossing
Release Oct 17, 2003
PublisherNintendo
RatingGeneral

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