Animal Crossing: Fixes and Wants

Animal Crossing is a very relaxing series that really only demands from the player what the player wants to put into it. While Wild World expanded the scope of the series with things like new characters and online play, City Folk’s attempt to add the fabled “City” to the series was received a gigantic sigh from its’ audience. Then along came New Leaf which added new items, a new mayoral system and changed how older mechanics worked, specifically special visitors and how certain items are collected. However, the world of Animal Crossing is still not ideal, with many problems old and new plaguing it that need to be addressed for the series to improve, as well as desires from myself that I’d consider a major step forward for the series.


Fixes
Online Play
- Opening/Visiting Towns
Ever since online play was implemented into Wild World, players have had to suffer through the arduous task of having to open their gates, be notified that someone was coming over to visit, the game saving, watching a slow animation of players passing through the gate and then finally regaining control. This process repeats every time a player enters or leaves a town. While New Leaf allowed hosts to end a multiplayer session, having players leave en mass, there’s still a lot left to be desired about the series’ online functionality. There needs to be an option to allow players to start games with their gates open so players can come and go as they please. Saving every time someone enters/leaves a town needs to stop as well. The game should save in the background, and not impede the gameplay of people already in town, as how it is currently dissuades people from playing online.

- Safety from Trolls/Thieves
Another issue that dissuades players from playing online is trolls and thieves. When a player enters your town, they can do anything you can do in your town, including running over flowers, chopping down trees, and taking items that lay freely on the ground. While it’s recommended that you don’t allow these people into your town, you never really know who you can trust or when accidents may happen. To remedy this, visiting players need to be restricted from destroying flowers, chopping down trees and picking up items unless they are in a designated area of some kind. While it may “restrict” some of the fun players can have visiting peoples’ towns, it still allows people to get items from different towns as well as shop, talk to villagers, catch bugs, fish and visit the island. Ultimately, this doesn’t really take away anything from anyone.

Inventory Management
- Tools
Tools are a staple to the Animal Crossing series, as well as to any player’s inventory screen, which is exactly the problem. Tools give you the ability to cut down trees, uproot fossils and gyroids, catch fish and bugs and shoot things out of the air. In New Leaf you are only allotted 16 item slots, and with new tool additions such as the Wet Suit and Megaphone to go along with the Shovel, Net, Fishing Rod, Axe and others, your inventory becomes limited very quickly. As much as 10 inventory slots can be taken up by unique tools overall. Additionally, your Tools aren’t granted protection like some items, which means they can be sold accidentally to Re-Tail and lost forever, which is painful if you accidentally sold a Gold or Silver item. So what’s the solution here? Some items in New Leaf are granted what I call “protection,” meaning that they can’t be sold, traded or let go of, like the Bingo card during the winter months. My suggestion here is that Tools and items like the Bingo card be allotted their own inventory screen so they don’t take up regular inventory space and can’t be lost by accident. They’re staple items, and should be treated differently from regular inventory items.

- Money/Fruit Stacking
In previous entries, Animal Crossing allowed you to stack money that you accumulated over 99,999 bells in your inventory space up to 99,000 bells per space. New Leaf took this a step further by allowing you to stack fruit so you could carry more. The major missing component here is that these do not stack automatically has to be done so manually, which is a chore and cumbersome to do every time. This needs to be addressed going forward by automatically stacking fruit up to 9 pieces in one slot as well as bells. This would immensely help minimize item management.

Public Works Projects
- Police Station
There are two types of PWP’s. Ones that are received by performing a set of various in-game objectives and those received at random. The ones received from objectives are special ones, such as the Dream Suite, the Reset Center and the second floor of the museum. Like these, the Police Station share the same restriction that they can’t be demolished once built. However, this one can only be received as a random request from a villager. The question is why? It’s the bane of many New Leaf players that haven’t received the request to build this, despite having played for months. It needs to be unlocked in a special way like the Museum’s second floor, the Café, and the Reset Center instead of being rewarded at random.

- Katrina’s Shop
Katrina’s Shop is earned by visiting Katrina’s Tent in the town plaza of your own town 20 times you’re your playable residents. Considering that Special Visitors in New Leaf are not on a strict schedule like in previous games, this is a major pain. It can be months between Katrina visits in your town, delaying how often you can get psychic readings from her. The fastest way for you to get her shop is to visit Katrina 5 times with 4 different playable villagers and the last visit being with your Mayor. The number of required readings needs to be reduced, Katrina needs to be put on a set schedule (like other visitors) or the chances of her visiting goes up once you’ve gotten everything from all special visitors that come on a schedule (Redd, Gracie, Gulliver, etc.)

- Dream Suite
The Dream Suite is unlocked by visiting Isabelle after a few days of playing the game where you find her asleep at her post. This place allows you to visit copies of player’s towns at the exact moment of them being uploaded and updated with the exception of Main Street, in-town shops which are closed, and villagers which still roam freely around town and can interact with them. While the concept of the Dream Suite is nice, and being able to see a large portion of villagers you may have never seen before, the one problem here is the process. Your dream town, which if damaged won’t affect your regular town, is assigned a dream code. Now if you don’t update every couple of days your code can change. But the question is why? The old code still remains, and can still be accessed by players, but can never be updated, nor are they deleted like the game says. This needs to be fixed. When your town is assigned a Dream Code, it needs to stick. It shouldn’t be change, regardless of how often you update your Dream Town. It’s a hassle to change dream codes, it causes confusion for people who want to visit the same town multiple times and it follows the same stigma of friend codes, which are simply unintuitive.

Grass Wear/Animal Tracks
Animal Crossing City Folk added a new mechanic to the series that quickly became a bane to most players, known as Grass Wear or Animal Tracks. This mechanic slowly wore down grass so dirt paths were now present between common paths players and villagers took in each town. In City Folk, the mechanic worked too quickly, making it very easy for towns to become a barren wasteland where no grass was in sight. While New Leaf improved greatly on this mechanic, it’s still nearly impossible to re-grow grass, even in matters where the best player knowledge comes into play. There’s no specific in-game trick, tool or device to allow players to grow or maintain grass levels. The fix here is simple: Get rid of the mechanic entirely or give players a tool to allow them to maintain grass levels. One thing is for certain though, grass wear is not a mechanic many players enjoy and needs fixed.

Tournaments
Every few weeks or so on a Saturday, your town plays host to a Fishing or Bug-Catching Tournament. The rules are just like you think, with limitations some of the time on what can be entered. The big problem here is that there isn’t a scoreboard available for the Tournament. You can only receive your current standing when you talk to the Coordinator, and he’ll vaguely tell if you’re first, second or third. There needs to be some kind of visible scoreboard available at all times to give you an indication of where you stand against other competitors throughout the day.


Wants
Expanded Able Sisters
The Able Sisters throughout the history of Animal Crossing has been the primary place where you purchase clothes. While the series has secondary ways to acquire clothes and City Folk introduced Gracie’s shop in the City, New Leaf brought a lot more purchasable clothes in all forms, in addition to new forms of clothing such as pants, socks and shoes. While Kicks is a place to get Socks and Shoes as well as accessories from Labelle, you’re still severely limited to the amount of shirts/bottoms you can normally obtain from the main Able Sisters shop. While Nookling Junction has been expanded many times, the Able Sisters haven’t. I think it’s a good time for this to happen, allowing you to buy even more Shirts, Dresses and Bottoms than you can normally.

Bigger Town
Animal Crossing has over 300 unique villagers. In New Leaf, at any one time, you can only have 11 (10 villagers and 1 camper) villagers in your town. Players of the series can play day-in, day-out for months and not see a single new character if they don’t play with others or visit other peoples’ towns via the internet in some way. Animal Crossing needs to expand by allowing players to have more villagers, perhaps in the form of districts where more villagers could make residence in each one. Doing so would allow people to meet more villagers and have an expanded view of what the series has to offer to fight off repetition.

Item Bank
Animal Crossing has always been notorious for item collection. It’s also been notorious for having a low amount of inventory space in each game. With the increase of items in New Leaf, as well as ones that can’t be re-purchased, item space became even more premium. One of Nintendo’s recent releases is Pokemon Bank, which allows players to transfer and keep Pokemon from older games and be able to transport them for use in newer games. The concept would be similar for Animal Crossing, but for items and clothes. It can take years for players to obtain a complete Catalog in a single Animal Crossing game let alone multiple versions. Why not allow loyal players to keep their item collection for years to come? It would definitely cut down on some of the monotony of daily window shopping and allow players to concentrate more on their town and villagers.

Statistics
New Leaf introduced the concept of Badges as proof of your accomplishments in-game. One thing that’s missing however is the simple understanding of how close you are to achieving certain goals for them. New Leaf allows you to see the number of people who’ve visited your town, but beyond that, there isn’t much. Luna should be able to tell you how many times you’ve dreamed, Leif should be able to tell you how many weeds you’ve picked, flowers you’ve planted, etc. etc. etc. It may not seem like much, but it will make those seemingly unobtainable goals seem much closer than you think they are, encouraging players to keep going.


Animal Crossing is a great series, and New Leaf is arguably the best entry in the series to date after offering a fresh entry into a series that was getting stale. In order to prevent it from getting stale in the future, these fixes need to occur, and I hope the things I want get added to the series in the future so I can continue coming back to my town for years to come.

2013 NFL Week 11 Predictions

Here are my Week 11 picks for the 2013 NFL Regular Season.

Winners are indicated in BOLD lettering

Thursday Game
Indianapolis @ Tennessee

Sunday Early Games
NY Jets @ Buffalo
Baltimore @ Chicago
Cleveland @ Cincinnati
Oakland @ Houston
Arizona @ Jacksonville
Washington @ Philadelphia
Detroit @ Pittsburgh
Atlanta @ Tampa Bay

Sunday Afternoon Games
San Diego @ Miami
San Francisco @ New Orleans
Green Bay @ NY Giants
Minnesota @ Seattle

Sunday Night Game
Kansas City @ Denver

Monday Night Game
New England @ Carolina

2013 NFL Week 10 Predictions

After a solid week of picks in Week 9, I'm back at it for my Week 10 Predictions of the 2013 NFL season. This past week had some drama, which is nice after what has been a lackluster season thus far. Hopefully the quality of play picks up even moreso than it did last week, so here's my picks for this week.

Winners are indicated in BOLD lettering

Thursday Night Game
Washington @ Minnesota

Sunday Early Games
Cincinnati @ Baltimore
Seattle @ Atlanta
Detroit @ Chicago
Philadelphia @ Green Bay
Jacksonville @ Tennessee
St. Louis @ Indianapolis
Oakland @ NY Giants
Buffalo @ Pittsburgh

Sunday Afternoon Games
Carolina @ San Francisco
Houston @ Arizona
Denver @ San Diego

Sunday Night Game
Dallas @ New Orleans

Monday Night Game
Miami @ Tampa Bay

Sonic Lost World (Wii U) Review

Sonic the Hedgehog used to be a gaming icon. During the Genesis days, the Blue Hedgehog once competed with Mario as gaming’s #1 icon. Over the course of his history, his allure faded, due to the quality of his games, and his rough transition into the third dimension. Unlike Mario, Sonic didn’t have great success right off the bat in the 3D space. Going on adventures, getting clones and many horrible friends, Sonic’s had it rough until recently. On the momentum of Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations, Sonic Lost World hopes to return Sonic to that high point after a long fall. But the question is, if Sonic falls again, how far will he fall this time?

Lost World begins with Sonic and Tails chasing Dr. Eggman, who has captured some critters whom he hopes to turn into Badniks. While trying to save some critters, Sonic and Tails are sent crash-landing on Lost Hex for a brand new adventure. The game has a lot of flash, running at 60 frames per second, a great art style and a good soundtrack; ultimately, this is where the universal praise for Sonic Lost World stops. Lost World starts innocently enough, but gives players a plethora of new mechanics if you’re a veteran, including a run button, a new lock-on attack system and parkour system. The run button allows Sonic to have more precise platforming moments which have been sorely missing from more recent Sonic games. As a consequence of this, Sonic, even while running, is significantly slowed down. This isn’t a bad thing, as it allows players to control Sonic more precisely, even during those high octane moments. Sonic’s lock-on system is by far the difference from past games, and worse for it. In certain moments, you can lock onto and attack multiple enemies at once by holding the attack button. The problem here is that the system is entirely dependent on how far Sonic is away from enemies, and given how the level design lays out these enemies, you will frequently not target all enemies that you wish to target, resulting in your momentum stopping, forcing you to re-attack remaining enemies or scramble to get back on level footing. It’s frustrating considering that a few bosses require this mechanic to work properly, and can too often lead to the in-game time running out, resulting in a death.

Speaking of death, the parkour system featured is half dead. Its’ implementation in the 3D space is a joke, offering nothing more than climbing up a wall or two per level in order to progress. While there are some sections of levels that allow you to move forward by running on walls, these are few and far between, and seem like afterthoughts and in some cases realizations from the developers that the section they designed for them were too hard to finish. It represents an overall problem with the game, that the levels aren’t designed around the game’s mechanics, but vice versa instead. Another issue is that some of the levels aren’t designed with the game’s mechanics in mind at all, but instead shamelessly ripping off better Nintendo platformers Super Mario Galaxy and Donkey Kong Country Returns. These homages are poor substitutes, taking ideas from them and implementing them in rushed, overly long, poorly paced levels that will cause you many deaths and baffling moments about how they design their physics engine. The pacing of these levels, in other words, how levels are presented, in a Level-Boss-Level-Boss format, two of each occurring per world. This formula gets old quick and doesn’t deviate from it until the game is done, when afterwards you get access to the Hidden World, which feels like nothing more than a few levels that never even left the beta stage.

The more I played Lost World, the more I ended up hating it. It devolves into a formula is repetitious, frustrating and plain un-fun, which haunted many of the past 3D Sonic games. The inconsistencies in its controls, mechanics and level design are not something to be admired, but abhorred. While Sonic the Hedgehog from 2006/07 was a horrible game from beginning to end, Lost World started bright and hopeful, and ended up a terrible mess. The cycle from its’ unveiling to its release mirrors the game, and in that sense, a new Sonic Cycle is born.

Score: 2.5 out of 10
+ Excellent Soundtrack
+ CG graphical magic
+The game runs extremely smooth
- Inconsistent Homing Ability
- Level Design not built around the mechanics
- The epitome of what a rushed game is

2013 NFL Week 9 Predictions

Another week, another set of predictions.

Predictions are indicated in BOLD

Thursday Game
Cincinnati at Miami

Sunday Early Games
Atlanta at Carolina
Kansas City at Buffalo
Minnesota at Dallas
Tennessee at St. Louis
New Orleans at NY Jets
San Diego at Washington

Sunday Afternoon Games
Philadelphia at Oakland
Tampa Bay at Seattle
Baltimore at Cleveland
Pittsburgh at New England

Sunday Night Game
Indianapolis at Houston

Monday Night Game
Chicago at Green Bay

2013 NFL Week 8 Predictions

Another week has come and gone, and yet the NFL keeps on ticking. So do I, apparently. Here are my picks for this week in the NFL.

Thursday Night Game
Carolina @ Tampa Bay

Sunday Early Games
Dallas @ Detroit
Cleveland @ Kansas City
Miami @ New England
Buffalo @ New Orleans
NY Giants @ Philadelphia
San Francisco @ Jacksonville

Sunday Afternoon Games
Washington @ Denver
NY Jets @ Cincinnati
Pittsburgh @ Oakland
Atlanta @ Arizona

Sunday Night Game
Green Bay @ Minnesota

Monday Night Football
Seattle @ St. Louis

2013 NFL Week 7 Predictions

Another week, another set of predictions made early. This week has 1 great game, a few okay games, but the rest are games I wouldn't want to watch if I were blind, and since I'm obviously typing this, I'm not. It's not a pretty week for the NFL, and it's not a good season in general so far.

Thursday Night Game
Seattle @ Arizona

Sunday Early Games
Tampa Bay @ Atlanta
Chicago @ Washington
Dallas @ Philadelphia
New England @ NY Jets
Buffalo @ Miami
San Diego @ Jacksonville
St. Louis @ Carolina
Cincinnati @ Detroit

Sunday Afternoon Games
San Francisco @ Tennessee
Houston @ Kansas City
Baltimore @ Pittsburgh
Cleveland @ Green Bay

Sunday Night Game
Denver @ Indianapolis

Monday Night Game
Minnesota @ NY Giants

2013 NFL Week 6 Predictions

Hello again. Due to me being busy, I've decided to make my predictions earlier in the week so I can provide a more consistent schedule. While I may dislike making predictions on Tuesday and Wednesday, I feel it must be done going forward to maintain updates. With that in mind, here we go.

Thursday Game
NY Giants @ Chicago

Sunday Early Games
Carolina @ Minnesota
Green Bay @ Baltimore
Cincinnati @ Buffalo
Detroit @ Cleveland
Oakland @ Kansas City
Pittsburgh @ NY Jets
Philadelphia @ Tampa Bay
St. Louis @ Houston

Sunday Late Games
Jacksonville @ Denver
Tennessee @ Seattle
Arizona @ San Francisco
New Orleans @ New England

Sunday Night Game
Washington @ Dallas

Monday Night Game
Indianapolis @ San Diego

2013 NFL Week 4 Predictions

After a 2 week hiatus, I'm back with my weekly NFL picks. I'm sorry about missing the last two weeks, but I've been fighting medical issues as well as some personal issues. But nothing is stopping me this week, so here are my picks. I hope that I can return to my regular prediction schedule this time. And don't worry about last night's game, I'm writing this a couple of hours beforehand.

Thursday Game
San Francisco at St. Louis

Sunday Early Games
Baltimore at Buffalo
Arizona at Tampa Bay
Pittsburgh at Minnesota
NY Giants at Kansas City
Indianapolis at Jacksonville
Seattle at Houston
Cincinnati at Cleveland
Chicago at Detroit

Sunday Late Games
NY Jets at Tennessee
Washington at Oakland
Philadelphia at Denver
Dallas at San Diego

Sunday Night Game
New England at Atlanta

Monday Night Football
Miami at New Orleans

2013 NFL Season Week 1 Predictions

Welcome back everyone! I know it's been a while, but it was a bad summer for me. Some people, while I didn't know them, that have had an effect on my life, passed away this summer. It's hard to forget someone you remember so fondly. I hope we all try to interact with many people as we can before all of us pass on, so no one will ever truly be forgotten, and live on in peoples' hearts. But that's not why I'm here. I'm here for one reason, FOOTBALL PREDICTIONS!

The NFL returns tomorrow (okay, it technically returned Thursday, but no one counts that as the true opening of the season now, do they?), so it'd be a good time for me to make my NFL predictions this week for every game on the calendar. While I did miss Thursday's game, I will take it as a loss for sportsmanship purposes. Now, let's get to it.

*- Winners Denoted in BOLD
*- From Week 2 onward, I will only refer to teams by their City name with the exception of the Jets and Giants

Thursday, September 5
Baltimore Ravens @ Denver Broncos - No Pick

Sunday, September 8 - Early Games
New England Patriots @ Buffalo Bills
Seattle Seahawks @ Carolina Panthers
Cincinnati Bengals @ Chicago Bears
Miami Dolphins @ Cleveland Browns
Minnesota Vikings @ Detroit Lions
Oakland Raiders @ Indianapolis Colts
Kansas City Chiefs @ Jacksonville Jaguars
Atlanta Falcons @ New Orleans Saints
Tampa Bay Buccaneers @ New York Jets
Tennessee Titans @ Pittsburgh Steelers

Sunday, September 8 - Afternoon Games
Green Bay Packers @ San Francisco 49ers
Arizona Cardinals @ St. Louis Rams

Sunday, September 8 - Sunday Night Football
New York Giants @ Dallas Cowboys

Monday, September 9 - Monday Night Football
Philadelphia Eagles @ Washington Redskins
Houston Texans @ San Diego Chargers

Enjoy the return of Football everyone!