Introduction
Animal Crossing, weird name, even weirder game, you say? Too cute for me, you say? Most people would think that when they first take a look at this game with definite Japanese roots. The problem is, I can’t stop playing this game. It’s the fix for my crack addiction. It’s the fulfillment to my day. It’s an addiction I can get rid of. Animal Crossing may have less-than-great graphic appeal and it may be rated E due to “intense cuteness factor”, but Animal Crossing’s charms in other areas make this one of the most fun games of the year.

Gameplay
Despite having mediocre visuals, AC has much better stuff for your ears to listen to. As can be expected, the game is full of cartoon/anime sound effects, but they are all pleasing to listen too, even when you hear them all the time. The game contains a huge library of songs written by the local guitar-toting dog, K.K. Slider. One of the most innovative and humorous aspects of the game is the voices of the townspeople. It isn’t really a real voice, but a mixture of sounds that follow in rhythm to the dialog across the screen. That sounds vague, but the way the voice sounds are so unique and unexplainable you have to hear it for yourself. In short, don’t worry about having to turn down the volume and crank up your Metallica, of course if you have to, chances are, you are not into AC anyway.

Story
Like I said before, AC isn’t something you will buy for the graphics, unless you enjoy the huge-headed cute animal inhabitants. Originally planned to be a Nintendo 64 game, the GameCube came along during development and the developers switched to the new console, but did little to the graphics. The characters are blockier than your average next-gen game and the textures seem blurred. I am assuming they decided to do little to improve the visuals and put more time into the gameplay and numerous items, which was definitely a plus.

Graphics
The heart of any good game is gameplay. The thing is, this is a great game. The first ten minutes I played of this game made me believe what I had heard about it. Fall into the first few moments of the game with me: You begin in first person mode, riding on a train to your new town. A blue cat with a giant head walks up to you and asks you if he can sit across from you. Sure, you say. He asks you your name and after putting it with the easy-to-use on screen keyboard set-up, he mocks your name and then makes sure to say he was just kidding, but it’s still a weird name. This is just a small bit of the very funny dialog that the characters in the game present. The introduction part was so funny I didn’t care what I actually had to do in the game, as long as it stayed with the humorous dialog. The thing is, I was mostly laughing on how true-to-life the banter was. If you talk to the characters long enough, they will play on how the trees “mysterious vanish after you chop them down” (which, in the game, the tree fades away after falling). Without getting too deep, I can say that the characters in the game are independent and intelligent. They will interact with each other, one may spin around and change into a new shirt the other gave him, or may storm off with red exclamation points flashing overhead. If you start running into the villagers and pushing them around they yell at you for being so “pushy” and chastise you the more you do it. The game even punishes you for “cheating” if you restart the game without saving it (i.e. – you just sold an item you didn’t mean to). A new villager will pop up and begin giving you heck for cheating and his rants get longer the more you do it. There is a huge amount of items in the game: clothes, seeds, fruit, furniture, stationary, utility items, etc. For doing an errand for one of the townspeople I received a bright orange radioactive waste barrel to decorate my house with. What the-? You can even receive NES games to play in your house. Oh, have I mentioned your house? You can put up wallpaper, lay down carpet, organize your furniture to win Bells (the currency in the game) and even upgrade it through the town’s main man, Tom Nook (a raccoon with a business streak). You can cut down trees, dig up fossils… out wait, am I supposed to be evaluating this game? That’s what AC does to you.

Sound
Animal Crossing has much more than what I’ve described, that is just the tip of the iceberg. I don’t think I’ve ever been this addicted to a game since Super Metroid. The only people that probably shouldn’t buy this game are people who think they are too cool to be playing such a “cute” game and people who don’t think that laying back and fishing for that 15,000 Bell fish to come up is exciting. Otherwise, you owe it to yourself to pick this game up. Until I get my hands on Metroid Prime, Animal Crossing gets my vote for the “Game of The Year” award.