Archive: 23th December 2005: Animal Crossing: Wild World / Eurogamer
“The first thing I remember is waking up in the back of a warm taxi cab, speeding through the driving rain. The driver, a frog, introduces himself as the Kapp’n, and asks me a variety of questions to find out who I am – secretly it helps me ascertain that very thing myself. It turns out my name is Mathew. I’m heading to the town of NewGenki, a small town populated by animals, and I have no money to pay the fare. Despite that fact, he drops me off cheerfully.I have strange vague memories of another place, another time, when the Kapp’n would take me across to a beautiful island, and sing sea shanties while he did so.
The girl behind the counter in the Town Hall, Pelly, is very helpful. She let me know Tom Nook had prepared a home for me. I found it using my map. It’s little more than a shack, and Nook, an entirely too-friendly raccoon, is forcing me to pay off my mortgage, an astounding 19,800 bells, by working for him in his shop. They are mostly menial tasks, allowing me to get used to my surroundings, helping me get to know my animal friends. I’m particularly taken with a burly penguin called Roald – he’s always so… ‘Pumped’. In the end the work raises a mere 1,400 bells, and Nook has already tired of me.
With the deepest, strangest feeling that I’ve done this all before, I roll into my bed, close my eyes, and wait for the next day.”
Up until my work for Eurogamer during E3, I would guess this was probably my most read and most discussed piece; a review of almost 2,400 words that is unashamedly that reviled beast known as “new games journalism“, or at least as Kieron Gillen described it. To be honest, I have no idea how my second review for them ended up such a monster; I knew the word limit was about 1,000 words back then and yet somehow just before Christmas I wrote and submitted this! That they printed it is sign that the lads at Eurogamer know talent when they see it.
Not that everyone else agreed. My most famous dissenter was, fantastically, the RAM Raider, the sadly misguided “games journalist kicking against the pricks”, or whatever he’d refer to himself as. I’d like to pretend it was major watershed moment, but when you get down to it, getting insulted by the RAM Raider really isn’t that groundbreaking. What was lovely however was how well John Walker, whom I had never personally spoken to by that point, defended me (it took me literally weeks to realise that the RAM Raider had made an “example” of me; I don’t check his blog that often.)
There is some scope to discuss NGJ as a form on this website (I’ve briefly broached the topic before) but I think that Walkers observations on this review in particular are perfect, and it’s simply a shame that the RAM Raider didn’t see fit to argue the points in the comments thread, leaving it up to some anonymous types (not, really, that the RAM Raider is any less “anonymous”.) I may yet personally provide my own spirited defense of the form, however right now I’d like to let this review speak for itself.
Because I still think it’s ace.
It is very ace.
Comment by Shapermc — October 19, 2006 @ 12:32 pm