Animal Crossing integrates features into its landscape

Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer is coming out at the end of September and I've been getting excited about it, so I went back to my New Leaf town. I decided to make things how I want them! I admit that when I first started playing I was really into collecting furniture, bugs, fish, and bells. But now that I've done that I'm much more interested in the personalization aspect of the game. You can design cute little shirts and dresses! What's not to like? And I think Happy Home Designer will make it easier to make things "just so." 

The in-game integration of many play aspects is one of AC:NL's strongest design features. Instead of having a pop-up or extra window, there's a place or person you can go to in order to explore other game features. It makes it so the UI can be simpler; instead of having a special menu that you have to go to to enable a feature, there's a place within the game you go to instead. Here's some examples from the game:

• Achievements: When you earn a medal, a special walrus shows up in your town. When you talk to him, he presents you with the medal you earned. It's much less invasive than a corner pop-up! 
• To visit another player's town, you go to a train station (how cute is that?). You can also "open" your town for visitors.
• To play multiplayer games you go to a special island. 
• To visit another player's "dream town" (a snapshot of the town that anyone can visit/mess up at any time without any consequences), you go to a dream spa-like place. 
• Making "pro" designs and their QR codes can only be done at the clothing shop. 
• Moving furniture, adding patterns to the ground, digging holes, and other "editing" aspects are done with your avatar (like Minecraft), not an "editing" menu. Sometimes this is really frustrating. I suspect it makes it easier for children and people who don't play lots of other games to figure out how to manipulate things quickly.
• Ordering furniture and managing your money are done through special kiosks. 

Nintendo games are really good at using in-game locations for game features; I know Fantasy Life and Pokemon Black/White have similar places you go to do multiplayer stuff. It only works with games that have persistent locations or towns where it makes sense for some building or feature to be standardized. Sometimes I think AC:NL goes a little too far with it, especially with the inventory management (you can only access your large inventory from lockers/shelves in your house, and there's no way to auto sort, and there aren't very many inventory slots). But it's an extreme example I think we can all learn from. 

Now I have some other thoughts and a bunch of screenshots from the game... view them here after the break!

Ni no Kuni is bringing the airship back

"I want an airship in my game. Not an airship where you just select where you want to go, but one you can actually move around the world in." This was my husband's one stipulation about what an RPG should have. After a bit of discussion, I wasn't sure if such a game existed this-gen (although I think Tales of the Abyss has one). I remember googling "airship JRPG" to try to find a JRPG with whole-world exploration, and not being able to find one (it's not the most searchable topic... so please comment with your favorite explorable JRPGs).

So you can imagine how we've been enjoying Ni no Kuni, the JRPG that incorporates some aspects of old-school design (including a way to explore the world aerially), while at the same time making the genre highly accessible.

And by "accessible," I mean, "a good introduction to JRPGs for this generation." Some JRPGs get difficult very quickly, and require strategies that a 10-year-old might not think of. I'm glad we have games that are difficult, but I still appreciate games that are made with children and adults in mind; Ni no Kuni does this excellently. The pun-filled "pieces of art" quests might go over a few kids' heads, but they made me chuckle. I don't mind that Drippy always tells me how to beat a boss, and I've enjoyed playing on easy to just enjoy the exploration and story.

Being able to explore a world is key to my enjoyment of an RPG. In some games the amount of possible exploration is overwhelming (like Oblivion), but I'd prefer that to a railroaded course like in FFXIII. Repeatable battles still strike me as a way to extend the "fun" content of exploring and story-reading, which makes me wonder if I'd like an RPG that completely got rid of combat (I probably would; I really enjoyed To the Moon).

Combat in Ni no Kuni is what has bothered me the most. In an effort to make the game easy for children to understand, the AI controls are very minimal (but exist!). It's very common for an ally to dump all their MP out on a battle they could have won using only one ability (the alternative is "no abilities"). It's probably a sign that I've matured in my RPG strategies; I doubt I would have cared about ally AI as a teenager.

The lack of AI control is completely forgivable given how well-written and gorgeous the art is. The creatures you fight have funny names like in Pokemon--one chick creature is a "Teeny Bopper" while a cat creature is a "Purrloiner." Yes, it's that kind of humor.




















Have you been enjoying Ni No Kuni? I-I think you would probably like it.

Top Five Cutest Console Games

One of the things I value in a game is cuteness. Looking lifelike is great, but I want a game with its own style and I prefer that style to have some cute things in it.

Kirby's Epic Yarn

Sure, you might feel like a 5-year-old playing this game, thanks to a cheesy narrator, but the fabric textures and whimsical creatures put this in my top five cutest games. Even the sound effects are cute.

Little Big Planet 1 & 2

Not only is your character basically a knit stuffed animal, but you can make him have expressions and dress him (or her, I guess?) up in more cute clothes. Personally I think there should be more games where you can dress up and then do awesome platforming, or shooting or whatever. 

Scribblenauts

A boy with a magic notebook conjures up anything he can write down. The cartoony style is consistent throughout the game, and even scary things like witches, dragons, and the devil take on an aura of cuteness. It makes sense that they'd be somewhat helpless, given that you can throw away things you make at any time.

Katamari Damacy franchise

 You know this game... go around rolling small things up into your Katamari (or "clump") so you can roll up even bigger things, even the moon, even the universe! Part of the charm is that every object has a name, and your prince avatar has a bunch of cousins you can trade places with.

Taiko Drummaster

This rhythm game is adorable. I picked up the DS version in Japan and my only regret is not also buying the Wii version (which has multiplayer and mini-games). How did they make a taiko drum so cute? The Japanese voice clips sound like a little drum just dying to play, but somehow it just sounds cheesy in English. 

I don't think Animal Crossing and Nintendogs are all that cute. Certain Pokemon are very cute, but inevitably grow into something ugly (Scraggy, for example, is immensly cute, and the grows into some punk with a mohawk). Other cute games I considered (thanks, Casual Girl Gamer): Costume Quest, Glitch, GameDevStory, all the Grow games, LevelUp, Little Wheel, Home Sheep Home, and Sissy's Magical Ponycorn Adventure, and World of Goo. Mechinarium is definitely artistic, and I think it has some cute points too. I hear that 3d Dot Game Heroes, Cut the Rope, and Obaku are pretty cute, but I haven't played them yet. What game do you think is the cutest?