#rot crossing

[mrbrainrot]

[ mott havin a snewze ]

[mrbrainrot]

acnh 'free' content update catalogue

for anyone who missed it, here's what nintendo says we will get out of the 'free' update in january:

Kapp'n's family opens a resort on the pier, which contains a repackaged version of the paid Happy Home Designer DLC, which is already a knock-off of the Happy Home Academy game. It seems to have 8-16 rooms, and villagers staying there can wear outfits you make and wander your island. 1, 2

Resetti is back in the game!! as your janitor! he will clean up areas on your island en masse and put everything in storage for you. 2

Slumber Island where you can have 3 extra islands that your friends can help you build, and it also seems to work like Happy Home Designer. 1, 3

Old Nintendo consoles: you can buy old consoles in your game and then interact with them to play one game from that console. 3, 4

Amiibos from other games can be scanned to get some themed characters and items in your game. 3, 5

Lego items can be ordered from the catalogue. 6

Can increase your home storage to 9k items that can now include flowers and trees. 2

Bulk crafting: all items may now be crafted in multiples, and can pull from your storage. 7

These features mainly utilize the technology in the paid DLC. While I won't deny that it's nice for people who didn't have the DLC, it's just worth noting that Nintendo didn't actually need to do a tremendous amount of work to add this.

I'm not personally a fan of these features because they add to what I dislike about New Horizons: the way it takes away the familiar aspects of the Animal Crossing games, and the way it turns the player into a God character who can do anything. It just creates a game where all there is to do is grind until everything is perfect.

These features are not actually free. You need the Nintendo online membership ($20-$50/yr) or Amiibos ($20-$40) for them to work.

Nintendo Switch Online users already have access to these games on the Switch, and you need Nintendo Switch Online, in addition to paying the bells for the in-game consoles, so... no real benefit here.

This feature already existed in Animal Crossing: New Leaf: Welcome Amiibo, the predecessor to New Horizons, so I'm not sure why it took them so long to add this. Possibly because they were busy getting rid of all of the old Amiibo-accessible characters and replacing them with slightly worse versions; see my rants about this (and my terrible drawings) on this reblog.

I'm actually excited about this!

They show this in the official trailer, but they don't say anything about it. To find it anywhere in writing on the Nintendo website, you need to go to the page for Animal Crossing: New Horizons -- Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, but it does explicitly state that it's part of the free update. I just find it extremely weird that they didn't announce this or make a big deal of it, and they've in fact made it extremely difficult to find information about.

i know i already made a post about how i'm not excited about this update, but i felt like this would spell it out more clearly. the fact that the slumber islands would require nintendo online, even the feature itself isn't a social feature, is bizarre and greedy.

i understand and respect that a lot of people love new horizons, but as an animal crossing lover, it misses the mark for me, and these features just add to that god-like power that makes me dislike it. the release trailer for this update did get me to go back to playing new leaf, though!

[mrbrainrot]

probably not actually a hot take, but i'm really upset about new horizons in general, furthermore the 3,0 update. i'm gonna talk generally about why i'm upset about new horizons and try to explain some of why i think that new horizons-enjoyers are being given the short end of the stick.

i'm not an og animal crossing 2001 player (though i have played it in recent years), but since i was a kid, i played Wild World, City Folk, New Leaf, Happy Home Academy, and New Horizons -- i even played Amiibo Festival. i spent most of my time on new leaf because it was the version my friends had; by all accounts, i missed the golden age of animal crossing, but i think the essence was still basically there.

to me, the essence of the games was always the sense of community they brought. player is new to the town, but the villagers already lived there, and player has to spend time talking to the villagers and improving the community before they're truly trusted and 'in' with everyone. the village changes and grows as time goes on; some villagers move out, even more move in, the shop upgrades, you have more house to decorate, etc. you are a part of a growing town, and you become a beloved part. you can talk to people and help them. you're not meant to spend all day logged in, just enough to talk to everyone and maybe clean up around town, but there's no pressure to play any specific way.

hardly any of this is true with new horizons. you don't move into an established town, you move onto an abandoned island. instead of talking to people to gain trust, your main goal is to grind to build the town up from square zero. the core gameplay loop is completely self-contained, and doesn't necessitate any interaction with the villagers in the town (beyond greeting them); you just collect resources and craft. after upgrading the shop, you never need to communicate to buy or sell things anymore, with the kiosk in the town hall and the drop-off box in front of the store. you don't have to listen to blathers' information anymore, you can tell him to skip it. you have a phone now that comes with its own, secondary, currency that you earn by completing an extremely long list of tasks. the game doesn't want you to talk to the villagers -- i'd go so far as to say it discourages it by making the villagers extremely boring and providing so many alternatives -- it wants you to grind. once you finish the 'story', the game makes you god. you can completely change all of the landscape and every structure, including the villager's homes. not only does the game not want you talking to them, they have become mere accessories.

after all of that complaining, i want to make something clear: New Horizons isn't necessarily a bad game, but it is a bad Animal Crossing game. maybe it's a spinoff, or a riff, or a different entity entirely, except that it was introduced as a main line addition. New Leaf plays with giving the player more power -- and that power does slightly undermine the original feeling of the game, because you don't have to earn the trust as much as you usually do -- but it still maintains many of the key components. i was a lonely kid, and those games made me and others like me feel comforted. i now have friends and support, and new horizons makes me feel lonely.

again, NH isn't bad, but i don't like it because i have known better.

tom nook being a greedy capitalist has been a growing theme in the series, but this game crosses the line into being downright depressing; he owns a monopoly on... everything? he has the shopping industry cornered since the beginning of the series (did he push re-tail back out of business??), he has the housing industry since new leaf, now he owns hundreds of islands and seems to have the tech industry with his line of phones.

customizing furniture exists in New Leaf as well, but you take it to the quaint re-tail shop (where you can buy/sell furniture from/to your villagers in town), give it to cyrus, and talk specifics about what you might want. all of that has been killed and replaced with kits you buy. to NH players, it probably just seems inconvenient, but it's more realistic, more social, and more cute.

nook miles are kind of replacing another feature from new leaf: meow coupons! in NL, you have 3 daily goals (most of which are just daily tasks) that you get meow coupons from. those could be used to buy from harvey, who had a little glamping area attached to the town. he would sell 2 items and host a special npc trailer, which would be specially decorated for them, allowing you to buy anything in the trailer. to summarize, nook miles and harvey's photopia are replacing meow coupons and npc personalities.

kapp'n's islands were in new leaf as well, but as dozens of minigames that you could play for points (instead of an ugly hotel with rooms you could redesign, as a cheap half-assed remake of the paid dlc, which is a cheap half-assed remake of happy home academy). you could use the points to purchase limited furniture and items. you could also collect things from the minigame islands to bring back to your island, but you were under a time limit so you couldn't strip them of all resources (you mostly wouldn't, anyhow, because there wasn't so much incentive and pressure to tear up everything)

the whole game is practically a riff on this feature of amiibo festival & NL. NL had Wii U Station item that you could interact with to play a minigame called Desert Island Escape. you could scan amiibos or use your villagers to play, and you would search tiles on an island for the materials to craft a boat and leave. there were events on certain tiles. obviously, NH isn't a one-to-one, obviously, but it's honestly closer to Desert Island Escape than the actual Animal Crossing formula.

there's more that i'll edit with later when i remember

it's not all bad. i like photopia, the photo system, placing furniture outside, the new design system with extra slots, simplified pathing placement, and added infrastructure options. but that's about it. i know that the rest of it is enjoyable for some people, but it's not animal crossing. if they're doing a spinoff, they need to just do a spinoff and shed the pretenses that they're continuing the series with this.

[mrbrainrot]

playing video games with friends is great until it's years later and their ghost still haunts your cartridge

[mrbrainrot]

[mrbrainrot]

explaining things about new leaf to new horizons players can be incredibly funny.

"why do you only have 3 reactions?"

"your villagers don't give you reactions in this game."

"how do you get them?"

"you go to the club and you give the doctor a fruit and he does a comedy routine for you. then you have a reaction"

[mrbrainrot]

i gave him an old boot... 😳

[mrbrainrot]

i did NOT give them permission to use my likeness in this game.