It seemed like fate when Animal Crossing: New Horizons released just in time for the start of the COVID lockdowns, promising a much needed opportunity to hang out with virtual animal friends in a relaxing island atmosphere.
It worked for me -- for a few days. Then, suddenly, I turned it off and realized I had no desire to ever return, which was odd to me, considering Animal Crossing is a game that runs on a real-time clock and calendar, and is supposed to be played in short sessions over the course of years. Also, I had poured almost a hundred hours into its predecessor New Leaf on the 3DS, not missing a single Christmas (sorry, "Toy Day") since 2013.
So, what happened? To be honest, the culprit was this well-made parody video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auTi3stuL5M (CAUTION: Watching this might ruin New Horizons for you forever.)
It was the moment when the painful truth became clear to me: I kind of hate New Horizons. Watching this chopped-together, fan-made satirical video promising all those easy to implement little things that would make the game just a little less tedious and condenscending, knowing that Nintendo would never, in a million years, be arsed to do any of those things, made me finally say to myself, “You know what, Animal Crossing? Fuck you. Fuck your disingenuous cutesy aesthetics, fuck your arbritary restrictions, fuck your skinner box OCD bait.” I have not touched the game since.
Even if the gameplay was less cumbersome, the world of New Horizons feels utterly sterile, boring and lifeless. There are tons of decorative objects and pieces of furniture in the game, but you can do practically nothing with them but place them in the world and look at them. For a “life sim”, there are virtually no social dynamics, and no opportunities for emergent storytelling. Villagers wander around randomly, spouting the same few phrases, and NPCs like Tom Nook or Isabelle serve as nothing more than glorified, painfully slow menu screens. It works better in New Leaf on the 3DS, because that game's scope is limited enough that it lines up nicely with its mechanics and interface. But in New Horizons, every bigger event or introduced feature is just yet another bar for you to fill or new set of bullshit items to collect.
Soon after, I discovered The Sims 4 and never looked back. Yeah, that game is a piece of garbage (play The Sims 3 for an actually good life sim), but it has the courtesy to let me use mods and custom content to get rid of all its bullshit, dig into its well-designed creation tools, and turn it into whatever I want. No bars to fill, just unlimited creative freedom. Just what I needed after hours of fumbling around with materials and storage space in New Horizons. And hey, if I ever want to be overwhelmed with ungodly amounts of tedious busywork, I can always go back to real life.
It worked for me -- for a few days. Then, suddenly, I turned it off and realized I had no desire to ever return, which was odd to me, considering Animal Crossing is a game that runs on a real-time clock and calendar, and is supposed to be played in short sessions over the course of years. Also, I had poured almost a hundred hours into its predecessor New Leaf on the 3DS, not missing a single Christmas (sorry, "Toy Day") since 2013.
So, what happened? To be honest, the culprit was this well-made parody video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auTi3stuL5M (CAUTION: Watching this might ruin New Horizons for you forever.)
It was the moment when the painful truth became clear to me: I kind of hate New Horizons. Watching this chopped-together, fan-made satirical video promising all those easy to implement little things that would make the game just a little less tedious and condenscending, knowing that Nintendo would never, in a million years, be arsed to do any of those things, made me finally say to myself, “You know what, Animal Crossing? Fuck you. Fuck your disingenuous cutesy aesthetics, fuck your arbritary restrictions, fuck your skinner box OCD bait.” I have not touched the game since.
Even if the gameplay was less cumbersome, the world of New Horizons feels utterly sterile, boring and lifeless. There are tons of decorative objects and pieces of furniture in the game, but you can do practically nothing with them but place them in the world and look at them. For a “life sim”, there are virtually no social dynamics, and no opportunities for emergent storytelling. Villagers wander around randomly, spouting the same few phrases, and NPCs like Tom Nook or Isabelle serve as nothing more than glorified, painfully slow menu screens. It works better in New Leaf on the 3DS, because that game's scope is limited enough that it lines up nicely with its mechanics and interface. But in New Horizons, every bigger event or introduced feature is just yet another bar for you to fill or new set of bullshit items to collect.
Soon after, I discovered The Sims 4 and never looked back. Yeah, that game is a piece of garbage (play The Sims 3 for an actually good life sim), but it has the courtesy to let me use mods and custom content to get rid of all its bullshit, dig into its well-designed creation tools, and turn it into whatever I want. No bars to fill, just unlimited creative freedom. Just what I needed after hours of fumbling around with materials and storage space in New Horizons. And hey, if I ever want to be overwhelmed with ungodly amounts of tedious busywork, I can always go back to real life.