It's incredibly hard to describe Animal Crossing and make it sound remotely interesting. You buy a house and it expand it, usually by collecting bugs, fish, fossils and fruits in order to pay the bills. On the surface, that's really all there is to it, and man does that sound boring as hell. But if you actually play the game, it hooks you in with it's simple charm and surprising addictiveness. You do care about catching new insects and digging up fossils. You enjoy the funny quirky townspeople, and suddenly you are hooked and don't mind so much being under the tyrannical thumb of evil real estate baron Tom Nook. This new entry does add a twist by making you the mayor, which makes the whole town your responsibility but also addressees the common complaint the series has had that since it's completely based on your system's clock, if you had an abnormal schedule you couldn't get much accomplished and now you can do things like make the town a bunch of early risers or night owls.
It's also not meant to be played in any kind of long marathon sessions, as you usually run out of things to do for the day within a couple of hours. But that's ok, Animal Crossing isn't about rushing you. It might actually be one of the best long-term games out there with it's really fantastic sense of pacing. There's almost always something going on every day keeping you coming back for weeks, months, even years. The original on the Gamecube had me hooked for a year solid and though I was able to resist the call of the DS & Wii titles, the 3DS with an easy digital download with my portable backlog all cleared proved way too tempting I've only gotten a few hours in so far, but it's proving just as addicting. Probably the perfect thing to chill me out so I don't explode in nerd rage at E3 tomorrow...
That's really it for today. I'll probably just absorb the next couple of days of press conferences and post my thoughts late Tuesday or Wednesday.
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