Quick Look: Animal Crossing: New Horizons

5 minutes in and Abby's putting on a clinic in showing off this game. Great stuff.

@nomtank: It's definitely a style of show-and-tell that has fallen out of favor with the older GB crew. It's definitely not a bad approach but as someone whose used to picking up on whats on screen and the tone of the delivery it can come across as a little tilted.

Overall I think this IS a solid Animal Crossing, but this QL gives it a pass on some of the stuff which I would find madding after more play-time. The Networking management in particular - each connection taking aminute out of each active users time - and a lot of the UI/UX decisions are so plodding/mashy in a way that we rarely see. I don't think those aspects compare well to recent titles like Stardew or Portia.

@29:28 Yeah Ben, being stuck at home I too am just playing Animal Crossing, watching Animal Crossing, and definitely weeding, all at once, day after day I feel ya

huh huh butt face huh huh

Nice!

The fact that you can only have one island per switch and the second person to start a game misses out on all the progression, effectively making their game experience lesser, is fucking unacceptable. My girlfriend started the island and now I cant get upgrades until she's gotten them or contribute resources to build things like the museum. Its absolutely baffling.

The video was so adorable. Who knew Abbey, Ben and Alex just visiting each other's islands would be so cute and charming.

This game is gonna be the death of me!

Thanks for the quicklook! This was fun to watch and informative :D Currently addicted to making my island better at the moment <3

Ugh. I wasn't interested in another Animal Crossing, but this might just be cutest thing ever. God damn it, Nintendo.

This is really tempting me to get a Switch. But how is the Animal Crossing Switch bundle so expensive?

I didn't know you could run... I feel dumb

This looks real fun. When Abby walked away from that stuff that came out of the rock before going to the Island I wanted her to go back and pick them up. They are probably not too valuable and there is lots of other stuff to show off though.

This solidifies I probably don’t need to play this. Still Nintendo being stupid about the internet for no reason whatsoever. I’ll just play Stardew some more.

i have no idea whats going on in this game

The anime run lol

Need to get Abby a new mic, lets start a gofundme

@planetfunksquad: yeah it’s such a confusing decision. The 2nd person also misses out on a lot of tutorials and exposition setting up the game. My partner was super confused about a ton of it and I had to be there to explain all of it.

Looking forward to checking this out. Thanks for the QL.

I was just trying to find Switches... apparently flippers have been buying them in huge numbers for the last few weeks. I can't find them in stock anywhere.

@convox: Yeah, I agree with you. But generally speaking, I feel like Abby and also Ben are way less concerned about that sort of stuff than a lot of people in gb crew. Maybe they should've gotten someone to take part in this ql, who is a little less excitable (though Alex is that, he didn't do that job in this one)

@d0t1q: you would think CBSi could buy her a new mic, this is for work.

I was really excited to get this for me and my kids, but the one-console one-island play looks like an absolute shitshow.

Was waiting for this! Thank you!

@swazzyswess My dad just ordered one on Nintendo Store online. Refurbished, but Nintendo Refurbished is the same as new.

As someone who's never cared much for Animal Crossing, but put hundreds of hours into Stardew, I'm having an absolute blast with this one. They finally cracked the code for me.

I was really excited for this game, and knew going in that my partner and I would have to share one island since we only have one Switch; however I was not prepared for the extremely limiting constraints put on any players beyond the first.

The first player gets to name the island and has an entire intro about moving to the deserted island, and gets introduced to the other villagers, gets to help them set their tents, etc. Tom Nook gives them tutorials and recipes. The second player just arrives on the island and gets to set up their tent.

The first player gets greeted by Tom Nook each morning with an update on today's events, any new animals that have moved to the island (and the opportunity to place their house,) as well as quests with tutorials that unlock the vaulting pole and ladder. The second player gets no explanations of any kind, just the recipe for the ladder and pole silently show up in the shop after the first player has unlocked them.

The first player gets to collect materials to build the store and make donations to start the museum. The second player just gets told 'another villager already took care of that!" and cannot place buildings or bridges.

The first player gets a robust, charming, deserted island getaway experience and the fun of meeting new neighbors, helping them setup their house, and contributing to the town. The second player gets to catch bugs.

Every previous Animal Crossing allowed you to have multiple towns per console - either one per memory card, or one per copy of the game (even New Leaf, if you had two physical copies). This is the first time where, even if you buy four physical copies of this game, you only get one island to share and a hamstrung experience for three of the four players. It's a huge bummer, and seeing all the special experiences my partner gets to have has completely sapped my desire to keep playing since all I get to do is grind bells to pay off my mortgage.

@kiruvi: I’ve been the second player and I’ve gotten most of these things, besides the early tutorials. I get the Tom Nook updates and everything. In fact, I made most of the donations to build the museum and I’ve placed villagers.

@nomtank: I agree one-hundo.

The way one goes through doors in this game is weird, right?

Should I be doing that turn-around in real life?

My partner screamed when I told her about the money tree

@kiruvi: This has largely been my experience too. I didn't think I would mind the one-island-per-switch limit when it was announced but the structure of this game has things almost like quests and as the second player on my switch, I have largely been missing out on them. I do get the town updates every morning but I haven't been allowed to place new villagers or contribute to the resources needed to build the new shop.

On our copy of New Leaf we played in the same town and while it definitely sucked not being the mayor you were still able to contribute to town projects and get most of the experience... but eventually we ended up just both playing as her character. Thinking the same might happen here. It seems crazy to me that the series has slowly making the shared-town play experience less complete with every entry, and buying a second switch, even a lite, is sort of absurd just to play one game.

If anyone knows, I would love to know if I did buy a lite, is there a way to move the save data for the town over to that system so my girlfriend could keep playing on her island? Would I have to move all of my other save data over too? She is the primary resident on the island so I think the save is technically under her profile but with all the horror stories I've heard about migrating save data on any nintendo platform, even the switch, I am not hopeful that moving game or user-specific saves is a possibility.

My wife got a jumpstart on AC while I was playing Doom Eternal. She's got maybe 15 hours on it now. I somehow missed all of this hullabaloo about the 1 island per console thing until I listened to the most recent bombcast. The experience is so stripped down for me as the second player. I've been really looking forward to this and now it seems like my only options to have a complete experience is to trash her save (not an option) or buy a whole other GD console. To play one game. What a tremendous disappointment.

PARTY ROCK IS IN THE HOOOOUSSSEEE TOOOONNIIIGGHHHTTT

I'm running with the same naming theme as Alex. Monkey island 😍. My island is Plunder island starting island from Monkey island 3.

Looks like a stupid fb game.

Welcome to the Butt Museum

Ben's bewilderment at lack of customization freedom in previous games is a bit over the top. Ben, you gotta understand that this is the first major installment since New Leaf in 2012 on 3DS.

Before that was City Folk on Wii in 2008, Wild World on DS in 2005 which were still kind of significant leaps (feature wise) from the original Animal Crossing in 2001 on Gamecube, which was a port of the original N64 Animal Crossing in Japan.

So for like 11 years they were basically iterating and bolting things onto what started as an N64 game.

The fact New Horizons is an entirely new thing built from the ground up, honestly is totally mind blowing to me as someone who never expected these games to ever change much beyond being glorified N64 games.

As the "Deirdre from Toronto" who writes in to the podcasts occasionally, I appreciate @ybbaaabby's town mandate, "Deirdre rules, so be nice to her, ok"

So this is my first AC and I'm mostly enjoying it.

But I gotta say, one thing this video and most reviews and other content I've seen about the game kind of gloss over is what you can actually do online.

Before we even get to that, Abby mentioned the process for joining or having people join your game. But allow me to emphasise, it is incredibly tedious. It literally stops everything and dumps you to basically a loading screen any time someone joins or leaves via the airport. And just getting to someone else's island is that whole dialogue and departure/landing sequence you saw in the video. Every time.

Quick side note: Almost every dialogue sequence or text blurb and reaction you see is repeated every. single. time. you do anything. Tapping B or holding R speeds them up. But not by much. And they are still there every time. There is no skip. Want to make fish bait out of all the clams you dug up? Get ready to sit through that same 4 or 5 steps for each one, one at a time since there's no crafting in bulk. Or break out the Lego Technic and make an automatic button presser.

Back to the online play. As a standard guest it's just the basics. You can fish, talk to folks in the town, craft, shake trees, catch bugs, drop and pick up items, hit up shops (aside from the Nook kiosk). As a "best fiend" there's all that plus you can dig and chop down trees.

But for whatever reason neither you nor any of your guests in online play can place or move any objects in the world. Just got a cool garden gnome you want to put out? Sorry. Not while guests are there. Want to get together with friends to do some decorating or have them help set up a little area on your map? No can do, chief. You also can not travel with guests. Which would be cool if you could all have a little field trip to another island. Oh and that app you were stuck using in Splatoon? Gotta use it for voice chat here too.

As someone new to the series and experiencing it with fresh eyes coming from nothing but other games in 2020, it all feels a little basic and dated.

There are a few other little issues I have that seem to be constantly dismissed as "well that's just not Animal Crossing" or "It's better than it was before!" like indoor crafting benches not automatically taking resources from storage (despite showing the number of mats you have in storage) but, again, for the most part this is a great little escape to dig into right now.