Animal Crossing
Based on Doubutsu no Mori / Animal Forest, a Nintendo 64 game in Japan, the Gamecube game Animal Crossing is an open-ended, cartoonish life simulation. While the concept may seem simple, there is an absolutely incredible amount of things to do, and the game changes every day.
Animal Crossing is as good as you want it to be. Whether in maintaining an entire town, or just going on nightly fishing trips, AC has something for almost everyone.
Being an open-ended game, the story of Animal Crossing is fairly simple: you're moving. Enter your name, a name for the town you're moving to, set up some things, and bada-bing bada-boom, you're in the village ready to start. At first, you'll have to run some odd jobs for the shopkeeper Tom Nook, to pay off your mortgage (you have to buy a house, after all); but after that, the game releases you into a wide array of things to do.
Variety is the name of the game in Animal Crossing. You can upgrade your home to up to three total floors, including a basement; decorate your home with hundreds of furniture items, as well as wallpapers, and floorings; change clothes; play up to 55 different musical tunes; play several emulated NES games; catch insects and fish; dig up fossils and other items; donate insects, fish, fossils, and paintings to the museum; buy and sell items; run errands for your animal neighbors; send and receive mail; cut down trees; the list goes on and on. Your computer-controlled animal neighbors will reward you for doing favors for them, will talk to you whenever you wish, and even have dynamic emotions depending on how you treat (or don't treat) them. A very interesting feature of Animal Crossing is the ability to give items to other people. Tell Tom Nook someone else's town and character names, then give him and item, and he'll give you a 28-digit passcode; tell the other person this passcode, and they can give it to Tom Nook, and receive the item you gave. There are a lot of other interactive features in Animal Crossing, too, including multiple people in the same town and visiting other towns via train. Animal Crossing also takes advantage of Gamecube/Game Boy Advance connectivity - with a GBA and the Gamecube/GBA link cable, your Animal Crossing character can visit a tropical island ("Animal Island"), which can be stored on your GBA's RAM and played on the go. The eReader can also be used with Animal Crossing: special eReader cards will give you items in the game.
Animal Crossing also takes advantage of the Gamecube's internal clock. Hours will pass in real-time within your town, from morning to day to afternoon to evening to night, and all over again. It also keeps track of the date, and seasons will change: Spring will have growing plants, Summer will have green scenery, Fall will have a leafy atmosphere, and Winter will have a beautiful snowy look. It can also rain in your Animal Crossing town - or, if it's Winter, snow. There are in-game events which happen on specific days: there are Spring and Fall sports festivals that happen once a year, there's a celebration for New Year's Day, the last day of every month is raffle day at Tom Nook's store, there's even a special event on your birthday, and dozens of holidays and special times of the year are celebrated in the game. There are multitudes of day-specific events, and the time of day and time of year can also affect other things in the game, such as what insects and fish will be available to catch.
The graphics are, though, somewhat unimpressive; the textures particularly don't look so good, and there's a fair amount of jagginess in character models. But much of the scenery is very nice-looking, like the trees and the water. The sound is nothing to complain about, and with an incredible variety of (customizable) sound themes, chances are that anyone will find at least a few they really like.
Animal Crossing has endless replay value. As the box says, the game is "...happening every second of every day, whether you're there or not!" Since most of the game is time-based, it changes every day, and there's always more to get. In the extremely unlikely event that you completely finish everything in a town - acquire all the items, upgrade your house completely, and completely fill out the museum - you could always move to a new one. A town's terrain is randomly generated upon its creation, meaning that if you make a new town, it's almost like a new game.
Perhaps the only major issue with Animal Crossing is the fact that it's so addictive. It's hard to get anything else done when you're hooked on AC. But if you let yourself be immersed in it, and you have the time to do so, it's one hell of an experience.
Progress: Gave Up