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Tag: Animal Crossing: New Leaf

  • Game of the Year 2013: #08 – Animal Crossing: New Leaf

    Game of the Year 2013: #08 – Animal Crossing: New Leaf

    Animal Crossing1Apparently, 2013 was the right time and place for a new Animal Crossing.

    If you were on Twitter during the initial release of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, you’d think it was the only game to ever exist. There was a zeitgeist around the game, and luckily, it only served to make it better for everyone.

    Animal Crossing has always wanted to be a social game, but never quite had the means to reach its full potential. The newest entry, designed for the 3DS, is the best game the series has seen. With relatively easy access to a robust online component, it’s easy to jump into friend’s towns, meet new villagers, find new fruit, find new items to collect, and more. The StreetPass features go even further, placing a model of anyone’s house you pass in real life into your game, and even adds all of their furniture and decorations to buy.

    I played Animal Crossing: New Leaf more than any other game this year. My current playtime is at over 70 hours, far above (almost) any other game released this year. I, as a grown-ass man, even set alarms to wake myself up in the morning to visit the shops, and to see what new items my friendly neighborhood raccoons had for sale. It became a lifestyle for a couple months, and one that rarely develops in any kind of game. Everyone I knew was playing, everyone on Twitter was playing, and it all felt like a really fun social experiment to be a part of.

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    Sadly, as we all do, I left Animal Crossing as other games came out, and I felt like my work in my town was finished. Clunky inventory systems and other archaic design choices limit how much fun one could have with the game, and kept me from enjoying myself as much as I feel I could have. For every hour I spent meeting new villagers or discovering new items or games, I had to manage my inventory, or make another run to the shop to sell some of the junk I had stored in my locker.

    It isn’t a perfect game, but it’s a charming one, and one of the most rewarding experiences I had all year long. I’d probably ready to do it again if they released another one tomorrow.

  • 2013 Midyear Guest Post!

    2013 Midyear Guest Post!

    What’re you playing? Today, HippoChippies is your soapbox to tell the world what games you’ve been loving during the first half of 2013. Haven’t been playing anything new, or just want to use this chance to get some of your favorite older games out there? Not a problem. Guest Posts are some of my personal favorite posts every year, and I love seeing what all of you have been up to. Let’s kick it off with…

    acnl

    “2013 has had a great start so far with titles such as The Last of Us and Bioshock: Infinite. There are tons more where that came from as well. Most would argue that The Last of Us would be the number 1 choice. Not today. My favorite title of the year so far is Animal Crossing: New Leaf. Why? Animal Crossing is known for being a casual game where you live a normal life (with animals) trying to be someone and paying off a huge debt that is thrown onto you from the get go. New Leaf changed everything and put you in charge of a town that you move to and I must say it couldn’t have been done any better. Fans of the game will understand what I mean when I say that it may be my favorite Animal Crossing yet, because of the newfound leadership which comes with tons of new opportunities for you to pursue during gameplay.

    I could talk about it all day but really the best way to understand my point of view is to just get out the ol’ Nintendo 3DS and play it yourself.

    P.S. I have nothing against The Last of Us. I just have not been able to play even a single minute yet. Looking forward to it when I do. – Trevor Baldwin

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    ss

    “I really liked Soul Sacrifice because it has this unique system of giving you super amazing power while stripping you of something vital. Like one of those abilities will use your brain to create this electric storm that does a ton of damage to enemies, but afterwards you don’t know what abilities you have in your slots. It’s a really neat system. Then there’s the upgradeable powers: you can fuse them to give you more uses, or combine them to create totally different powers. The whole game is awesome and if it wasn’t so repetitive and hard I’d probably play a lot more than I do.” – Michael Mays

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    tlou

    “My favorite game of the year so far has to be The Last of Us. Naughty Dog did a phenomenal job on the game with its storytelling and mechanics. The first 20 minutes of the game will have you so sad that you would probably wouldn’t want to play the game, but it’s the perfect setup for so much more. Naughty Dog took a risk in going the way they did with The Last of Us, but it has to be one of the greatest games they have made. During the game I noticed that there were some mechanics that had similarities to the Uncharted series, but with a fresh twist on it. Most people probably wouldn’t even notice that the combat and cover systems are pretty similar to each other, but that is to be expected from a game by the same company. Not to mention the game made you feel human, ever shot mattered, no health regen, and you had to be smart for most of the encounters you had. I could go into this game more but I don’t want to spoil anything for you, who should go get this game or at least rent it. I would play this game over and over again.” – Zack Dickerson

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    “Before I begin, I would like to thank our gracious host both for inviting me to contribute and for allowing me to talk about a game that was not released in 2013. Yes, gamefans, I’m actually going to bring up one of last year’s gems and, very appropriately, it’s a little game called Yesterday.
    Now this game had been sitting on my Steam wishlist since before it came out but I hadn’t thought I had the time to invest in it. As you can imagine, I was rather elated when I found that it was available for free download from the Google Play store right before the night I was going to get to spend in an airport terminal waiting to fly home from a business trip. I downloaded the game, started playing, and then felt it – that remorse for having waited so long to do this. It was a good, solid game. Great style, classic adventure gameplay, a good helping of wit, and an engrossing story. I’ll try not to ruin it if you haven’t played but I would like to leave you with an image that I hope inspires you to correct that soon: the image of a man with a shaggy beard sitting in a sparsely populated airport terminal at 3AM gleefully smiling at the plot unfolding before him while blissfully unaware that his headphone cable has just pulled out of his tablet and that those nearby are listening to discussions of homeless people being set on fire and are getting nervous at said bearded man’s recent chuckles.” – Shannon Nichols

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    bios“To put it simply, BioShock Infinite is the best game in the series in terms of story. My brain is still recovering from the ending.” – Jonathan Vaughan
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    Dragons-Dogma-05

    “Dragon’s Dogma is a pretty interesting game. It’s your token dark medieval setting and the story is pretty milk toast at best, but that’s not important. This game is stuffed to the gills with interesting locales, cool gear and badass monsters. The combat is a combination of Dark Souls, Skyrim and Shadow of the Colossus. If you wanna climb on top of a cyclops and stab him right in the eye, you can totes do it. Also its got a day/night system that makes staying out after dark feel really dangerous, even if you’re way stronger than any monster you’ll come across. And the graphics, oh Lord the graphics!” – Colton King

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    Once again, THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE. It really means to a lot to me, thank you to everybody that participated. This is one of my favorite things to do on the site. We’ll have another one coming up at the end of the year, so everybody get those Game of the Year picks ready!

    – Zach
  • Midyear wrap-up! 2013’s Best…so far.

    Midyear wrap-up! 2013’s Best…so far.

    This year, I don’t have a clear game to champion as my game of the year yet. That isn’t to say I haven’t enjoyed anything- it’s quite the opposite- I’ve enjoyed a certain few games so much that I have yet to choose one above the others. I’ve got a pretty specific top three games that I keep flip-flopping between, but I enjoyed all of them so much it’s tough to choose a favorite. When you get down to my favorite three, you can basically put them in any order, they’re all that good. Last year I was able to hold Journey high and above everything (until The Walking Dead) with little competition to speak of. 2013 has been pretty great so far, with some surprises, disappointments, and a whole lot of incredible games. Here’s a rough estimate of my favorites of this year, and all of these can and will probably be changed before the end of 2013, who knows what could happen?. Let’s get started with… (more…)

  • Best Games of June 2013

    Best Games of June 2013

    June has been an embarrassment of riches for me. E3 happened (Yeah, that was less than a month ago) and was the most exciting E3 ever, and I’ve enjoyed just as many games this month than I have any other time this year. When I haven’t been obsessed with Animal Crossing, I’ve had the chance to pick up more than a few exceptional games in the past 30 days. The Last of Us was probably my most anticipated title I expected from 2013, and I’m supremely impressed with how it turned out. I can only hope the rest of the year remains as exciting.

    1. The Last of Us

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    My favorite Naughty Dog game by a longshot, The Last of Us finally proves to me what the company is capable of. The performances and storytelling all come together to create one of the most believable worlds this year, and the gameplay manages to hold up its end of the bargain as well. It’s a beautiful story well told, and is just as entertaining to play through as it is to watch.

    2. Animal Crossing: New Leaf

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    The fourth game in the series doesn’t revolutionize the game by any means, but it does improve upon nearly every aspect of the formula. Nearly every day I’ve played in the past month I’ve been able to discover something new, and even now I’m stumbling into completely new avenues that I hadn’t touched before. This week, I’ve decided to completely redesign my house from the basement up. New stores continue to open, new villagers keep dropping by, and friends still have new stories to tell about what’s going on in their town. While it’s much of the same we’ve seen before, it’s a great foundation that I’m happy to keep coming back to again and again. And the hourly music makes me happy every time I turn the thing on.

    3. Kentucky Route Zero: Act 2

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    This weird series has been one of the most interesting things to come out of 2013 so far. With dream-like logic and heaps of creativity, Kentucky Route Zero is consistently the most surprising game I enjoy returning to every few months. The strange world is so well crafted, the weirdness feels right at home. If the quality stays as high as it’s been with the first two episodes, Kentucky Route Zero will be one of the most easily recommendable hits of the year.

    Honorable Mentions

    SpyParty (Open beta): SpyParty has been around for years, but this month is the first time it’s been available for purchase, so I’m cheating and putting it here. It is one of my favorite games of the year, and demands an incredible amount of patience, attention to detail, and a little luck. I can’t stop playing round after round.

    Room of 1000 Snakes: There are no words. Click the link, spend your 90 seconds, enjoy your day.

    New Super Luigi U: While it doesn’t have that new game smell, it’s an excuse to return to one of the Wii U’s best games, and plow through some pretty tough platforming.

    (Also, if for some reason you haven’t played Hotline Miami, it just came out on Vita and PS3 this month. It was one of the best games of last year, and plays excellently with either new system. Get it now, ask questions later.)

    – Zach

    Image Sources: edge-online.com polygon.com rockpapershotgun.com