Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review

-




Gaming Hound - Animal Crossing: New Horizons Review - Saffron Taylor

Create the Island Life of Your Dreams!

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the newest entry in the Animal Crossing series from Nintendo. Previous installments saw you rebuilding towns and cities, but here you get to shape your own island paradise from the ground up! It’s an adorable and relaxing game to help you wind down after a long day.

Starting by talking to the young twin tanukis Timmy and Tommy, you fill in some basic information and then arrive on the island with two other randomised animal villagers who could very well be your new best friends! The Bell-loving tanuki – Tom Nook – will be on hand to introduce you to the island life and get a tent set up for you to live in. After this you’re mostly free – the island is your oyster.

Something the series has had from the start is that it’s set in real time. You can play an hour a day if you want to and wait until the next to do another time-based task. Other players choose to time travel so you can get ahead and not have to wait, but I personally find it’s fun to have something to look forward to the next day and even later in the year. Obviously, it’s up to you how you want to enjoy it. There’s a whole variety of seasonal activities too – catch cherry blossom petals in the spring or roll snowballs in the winter!

One new feature to the series is crafting, where you can use things like tree branches lying around or even the annoying weeds that will have filled the island before you even got there! Use the crafting tables provided to make tools – such as a fishing rod which you can use to catch fish in the rivers and ocean around the island. You can also make a net to catch an array of bugs, or a shovel to bash rocks or dig up fossils. All three can be donated to Blathers the owl for the eventual museum that gets built and see everything you’ve caught. If you’ve already donated something, you can sell extras for the in-game currency Bells.

Character customisation has been altered too; you can now freely change your eyes and hair – or even your nose and cheeks! Visit the Able Sisters to purchase new clothing and dress up your character with shirts, bottoms, dresses, hats, socks, and shoes. Thousands of items have been added – even as a player from the very beginning I’m still finding more to buy!

There’s a whole range of other activities to do, including talking to your new neighbours. They are based on real animals – where else can you befriend an alligator?! Give them gifts, do requests for them, or watch them interact with items. You can have up to ten neighbours and all with different personalities and aesthetics.

Go sea diving, celebrate real holidays such as Halloween, explore other islands, upgrade your tent to a house and fill it with all kinds of rooms and decorations; make it your very own sanctuary. Terraform your island and create waterfalls or cliffs. Run around with your friends via local or online multiplayer and share everything you’ve found! Earn Nook Miles that are essentially rewards for achievements as they give out a different kind of currency from completing daily tasks or milestones, so you can spend these on special items. There really are so many things you can do!

I would personally give this game an 8.5/10. There are a lot of new features to keep you busy, and improvements like graphics with many, many more items which make the game fun to explore. I’ve loved this series since I was a child and think it’s an excellent addition. However, I feel it did lose some of its charm from the previous games. Villagers can get a bit repetitive now and some NPCs were missing that could have been there from the beginning. Though these don’t overshadow the rest of the game, and you can change up how you play all the time!

Previous players or newbies to the series will both enjoy the game as there is so much you can do, and you make it your own! I mentioned a lot of features but there’s still more for you to discover in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.


© Saffron Taylor for Gaming Hound 2022

Popular posts from this blog

Dead Space Remake (2023) Review

-
Image
Gaming Hound - Dead Space Remake Review - Saffron Taylor All Aboard the USG Ishimura! The Dead Space remake is my first ever foray into the franchise, so this review will be from the perspective of a new player. Spoiler alert – I absolutely loved it! I found it a little bit like Resident Evil but set in space. As a huge fan of the aforementioned series, it is fairly reminiscent with the gameplay style, and I liked that aspect. The protagonist is a man named Isaac Clarke, who is an engineer sent to repair the USG Ishimura, only to be met with a gory massacre, a missing partner and hundreds of creatures called Necromorphs. What went wrong? Now, I can’t necessarily make comparisons, but this game is absolutely stunning in the graphics department. Crystal clear textures, easy to read text and a lot of disgustingly beautiful details like the way blood splatters on Isaac’s suit or the grotesque remains of creatures once you’ve finished them off. The audio certainly helped a lot with its cr...
Read more

28-Day Tiny Creativity Jam | Day 1 | Chrome

-
A silent spaceship sits alone in the lonely, expansive universe. Metallic liquid drips from the ceiling to the ground in a slow rhythm. The multi-coloured sheen is mixed in with the crimson hue from the viscera left behind, creating a grotesque visual of Christmas wrapping paper. There's a blood trail escaping a tongue that was once used to scream. It lines the floor in a staggered line, following a path all the way to the silvery claws of a creature draped in melted chromium, dragging behind it the remains of what used to be a human, a person, a living being just like itself. The creature turns a corner to automatic doors that won't open, but it oozes through the narrow gap in-between with ease. The human remains don't make it through, just lying on the floor left behind like the beast got bored with its plaything. Done for the day, the creature scans the ship's kitchen looking for the next appliance it can camouflage itself on, ready for the back-up crew to make their...
Read more