Animal Crossing: New Horizons provides a relaxing gaming respite. B Y
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Cour tesy Nintendo
Indoor Neighborhood
Like all Animal Crossing games, New Horizons has you making an unassuming avatar and moving to a town full of cute talking animals.
Learning from SARS
A trip to Southwest Asia nearly 20 years ago demonstrated more genuine leadership than what we have in America today.
APRIL 22-28, 2020
fwweekly.com
Of the major games releasing in this time of self-isolation from the relaxed guitar background music to the kindness of and quarantine, few could be as timely as Animal Crossing: your fellow islanders, the Switch’s graphical prowess making New Horizons. The latest entry in Nintendo’s relaxing the animals fuzzier, the breeze gentler, and the vibe just even life-simulation series has all the laid-back gameplay more relaxing. What’s new to the series is that, instead of moving to an people know and love while also bringing in much-needed already established town, you and two random animals start tweaks and additions. New Horizons, like all Animal Crossing games, has on a deserted island. There are no houses and no shops, just you making an unassuming avatar and moving to a town roughing it in a tent or as rough as it gets in Animal Crossing. full of cute talking animals. There’s no world to save, just You can’t starve or freeze to death or anything, leaving you to collect sticks, stones, and other materials to a life to live, each day providing new things Animal Crossing: craft tools like the shovels, axes, and fishing to do as the in-game clock counts forward in New Horizons rods needed to turn your island from a weedreal time, sunup to sundown. As in older titles, Available for Nintendo infested plot into a thriving village. In some you’re free to wander your town, befriending Switch ways, it feels like adding depth to the game by your furry and scaly neighbors and pursuing Genre: Casual/Life Simulation putting your starting point further back than in pastimes like catching bugs, collecting fossils Rated E previous entries. However, with crafting comes for the museum, and buying things to furnish customization, and being able to make your your home with while also paying back local business owner and Realtor raccoon Tom Nook for your move own home furnishings and paint them adds a deeper level by selling things like fish you catch or seashells you pick off of personalization. This goes even further, as you can now the beach. Even after all these years, it’s still adorably chill, place furniture outside, allowing you to decorate the yard in
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In 2003, my friend Dan and I explored Southeast Asia. The SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic was winding down, but, in the last few months, a new strain had emerged, characterized by fever, diarrhea, respiratory duress, and a high fatality rate. Several folks in remote Cambodian villages had succumbed to the affliction, perishing in fits of coughing, choking, and delirium. Locals were sacrificing pigs and chickens and standing up straw effigies to ward off evil spirits. In Thailand, SARS was never mentioned. We never even saw anyone in surgical masks. We didn’t realize it was still lingering in the region until we attempted to enter
Cambodia. At the Poi Pet crossing station, we flashed our passports and began the visa application process. We were the only visitors in the facility. After we paid for our visas, we were accosted by three young machine gun-wielding representatives of a Cambodian militia. In broken English, the shortest one explained that, due to the SARS outbreak, we would be required to submit to a supervised quarantine. If we coughed or sneezed or exhibited any symptoms of pneumonic complication, we would be held pending further medical examination or turned away outright. Dan looked at me and shrugged. The quarantine staging area was simply 20 grimy, plastic lawn chairs tucked under a tarp behind the station. We dropped our backpacks and grabbed a couple of seats. Two silent machine gun-wielding teenagers monitored our condition. For the duration of the quarantine, Dan and I tried to remain solemn. Dan flashed hints of a smile a few times, and we both tried not to laugh. It can be exceedingly dangerous to scoff crude customs you encounter in the Third World. Especially when your immediate point of contact has a machine gun. On the Cambodian side of the border lay typhoid, hepatitis, encephalitis, malaria, and six million land mines. It seemed ironic that the Cambodians might be concerned about two doughy Yanks bringing anything
front of your home, as well as select where buildings like the museum go when they’re available. Later on, you’re even able to change the island’s layout, moving rivers and raising or lowering land. There are smaller quality-of-life changes as well. Character creation is simpler, and the game gives you a large storage space when you get a house and the ability to more easily rearrange furniture in it. But the best addition may be the new multiplayer mode. Not only does it give you the ability to visit other towns, but now you and other gamers living in your town can play local couch co-op, allowing you to run around, craft things, find fossils, and reduce debt at the same time, which is perfect for friends and families stuck inside. It’s unlikely to change the minds of those who see its low stakes and casual nature as a bore, and it has some drawbacks –– only one village is allowed not per game cartridge but per Switch console. But New Horizons refines the already great Animal Crossing formula and, perhaps most relevantly, provides a refreshing simulation of going outside with friends. l dangerous into their country, but the Vietnam War wasn’t that long ago — I’m surprised they let us in at all. When our 20 minutes were up and we had neither coughed nor sneezed or even cleared our throats, the shortest soldier returned and smiled. “Welcome to Cambodia,” he said. I think about the experience a lot these days. Our president’s messaging regarding COVID-19, a cousin of SARS, seems politically skewed and opinion polldriven. Our governor’s efforts to “cure” abortion during this pandemic are nakedly partisan and evil, even for him. And some of our neighbors are beating up AsianAmericans, conscientiously stressing social distancing while they know immigrants are still crowded together into prisons on our border with no conscience whatsoever, and averting their gazes as our sons and daughters in the Navy see captains punished for simply having conscience and conviction. The primitivism Dan and I encountered at Poi Pet that day may have been laughable, but at least it was honest — which is more than I can say for what’s passing for leadership in the United States today. The Weekly welcomes submissions of all political persuasions. Please email Editor Anthony Mariani at anthony@fwweekly.com.
