Betrayed by Animal Crossing
I like video games a lot, even if I don't have much time to play and also I think I'm getting worse at them. Right now there's a puzzle I can't solve in Luigi's Mansion 3, a game for actual children. The big game release of quarantine times is Animal Crossing: New Horizons, a game where you maintain an island full of animal friends. It's a popular franchise, but the social aspect made it really appealing during lockdown. You can get online and have friends visit your island and trade items, and it seemed like a lot of fun.
My Nintendo Switch has issues with my home router. When I try to get online, I get an error message that I have to reconfigure my router, and you might as well tell me I have to kill a bear with a butter knife. It's not a possibility. But I heard that was an issue with earlier Switches and newer ones were less picky about getting online. So I bought a new Switch (a Switch Lite, to be specific) and figured it would be worth it since I was really getting lonely and this would be a fun way to make very surface level friends.
Guess what? New Switch still won't connect. It's a router issue. So I tried to play Animal Crossing as a single player game. I'd do chores and maintain my island and visit the NPC animals populating the place and just generally try to spruce the place up. And if that's all you can do, it's extremely boring. There's some fun to be had in crafting and decorating but you can only go so far without the ability to get online and visit other islands and bring back new fruits and flowers and see what's for sale in their store. I had this sad little island that I couldn't leave and couldn't be accessed by anybody else. Just me and my orange trees and a robot bird who's obsessed with working out on my garbage island. It's like a little quarantine bubble, which is not super fun in real life or in a video game.
It's a bummer to see this makeshift social event happening and to be locked out by technical issues. Every time somebody put their friend code on Twitter or talked about visiting their Animal Crossing friends on a podcast, I was watching a fun party through the windows. Video games let me down when I needed them most!
But on the plus side, I gave my extra Switch to a friend who really appreciated it, so that was a nice ending to my exile on Trash Island. I mean, I can go back there any not interact with anybody any time I want, so it's not really the end. But the same impulse that has led me to not maintain my beard since March also means I'm not going to bother pulling weeds on an imaginary island that nobody else will see. And time passes when you're not playing, so I imagine it's kind of a lawless society maybe dominated by that robot bird. He controls the water now like some sort of Rated E for Everyone version of Immortan Joe.
By the way, when you name your island, I picked "Jardin", after the town where Season 2 of The Leftovers is set. I'm as surprised as anybody that I didn't name it "Gotham".
My Nintendo Switch has issues with my home router. When I try to get online, I get an error message that I have to reconfigure my router, and you might as well tell me I have to kill a bear with a butter knife. It's not a possibility. But I heard that was an issue with earlier Switches and newer ones were less picky about getting online. So I bought a new Switch (a Switch Lite, to be specific) and figured it would be worth it since I was really getting lonely and this would be a fun way to make very surface level friends.
Guess what? New Switch still won't connect. It's a router issue. So I tried to play Animal Crossing as a single player game. I'd do chores and maintain my island and visit the NPC animals populating the place and just generally try to spruce the place up. And if that's all you can do, it's extremely boring. There's some fun to be had in crafting and decorating but you can only go so far without the ability to get online and visit other islands and bring back new fruits and flowers and see what's for sale in their store. I had this sad little island that I couldn't leave and couldn't be accessed by anybody else. Just me and my orange trees and a robot bird who's obsessed with working out on my garbage island. It's like a little quarantine bubble, which is not super fun in real life or in a video game.
It's a bummer to see this makeshift social event happening and to be locked out by technical issues. Every time somebody put their friend code on Twitter or talked about visiting their Animal Crossing friends on a podcast, I was watching a fun party through the windows. Video games let me down when I needed them most!
But on the plus side, I gave my extra Switch to a friend who really appreciated it, so that was a nice ending to my exile on Trash Island. I mean, I can go back there any not interact with anybody any time I want, so it's not really the end. But the same impulse that has led me to not maintain my beard since March also means I'm not going to bother pulling weeds on an imaginary island that nobody else will see. And time passes when you're not playing, so I imagine it's kind of a lawless society maybe dominated by that robot bird. He controls the water now like some sort of Rated E for Everyone version of Immortan Joe.
By the way, when you name your island, I picked "Jardin", after the town where Season 2 of The Leftovers is set. I'm as surprised as anybody that I didn't name it "Gotham".
Comments
Post a Comment