It's been over three years since the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but players are still finding surprising tips and tricks hidden in the game.
24.07.2023 - 14:05 / ign.com
I have deleted my save file in Time Bandit and started a new game three times now. I keep messing up and missing a very, very important appointment with a strange figure in scuba gear who wants to meet in secret. Fourth time’s the charm - I wake up early and make my appointment. Finally, I can get back to work.
Developer Joel Jordon pitched me on covering Time Bandit for this column months ago, based on my known love for a similarly real-time game, The Longing. Time Bandit exists within the same very small genre of games that take place in real-time, but which also are not endless in the way that Animal Crossing or certain mobile games are - it’s a story that plays out, minute-by-minute, as you go. You play as a worker in a factory tasked with mining mysterious objects called Time Crystals, most of which are hidden throughout the facility behind minecarts, rubble, and other obstacles. Your job is to use your trusty forklift and other tools to remove the obstacles one by one and collect them for the company. Simple, yes?
But it’s not. First off, the forklift (and all other tools) take both energy and time to use. Energy can only be replenished by returning to your apartment and sleeping for hours, which is convenient because your tools need minutes, even hours to finish moving a single obstacle at a time. Tools are also powered by fuel, which you have to pay for out of pocket using wages you earn once per real-time day. All this means that Time Bandit is largely a game where you open it up, collect your wages, buy fuel, set your forklift and other tools to start their respective tasks, and then go back to sleep and shut the game off while you wait.
Describing Time Bandit is like describing a farm sim full of chores, in that it sounds deeply tedious but in reality is compelling. Some of that I can chalk up to its haunting, Metal Gear-inspired, PS1-era aesthetic luring me in with striking shots like the one of the city center clock tower. But most of my fascination stemmed from the game’s narrative context. Early on, the aforementioned scuba fellow accosted me outside the factory and asked me for a secret meeting at a time of my choosing the next day. I was urged, repeatedly, not to miss it. I never found out what happened if I did – I was too worried about upsetting him, so I restarted the game all three times I missed it. When I did eventually make the meeting, I was told about the factory’s true motivations, and the real power of the Time Crystals I was mining for them. Armed with new knowledge, I now had a choice as to what I did with those crystals, a mission centered around the value of time and labor, and the ability to commit, yes, literal time theft from the game’s 1%.
Speaking with Jordon over
It's been over three years since the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but players are still finding surprising tips and tricks hidden in the game.
When creating a board game based on a video game, the absolute worst thing you can do, in my opinion, is to directly port it to the tabletop. The resulting analog adaptations that I’ve played over the years have all been invariably tedious and dull. If I wanted a direct dose of the source material, I’d rather just turn on my PC or game console and plop down on the couch. So it was with great trepidation that I sat down to a demo of Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game at this year’s Gen Con. Turns out my long-held opinion on video game adaptations doesn’t apply here. CMON’s latest effort is both very close to the original and extremely well done.
Cyberpunk 2077 brings the look, the flash, the aesthetic. Those vibrant Night City neons and chunky, robotic upgrades and weapons will always remain the height of cool. Meanwhile, we’ve got Metal Gear Rising, the fast-paced, ultra-stick MGS spin-off that delivers rapid-fire combat and wild combos in constant succession. Put them both together, and maybe add a little Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, and you get Axiom of Maria, an upcoming Steam action-adventure game with heaps of style that’s available to play right this moment.
Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear series has topped over 60 million sales worldwide.
The Metal Gear franchise has been dormant for a while now. It’s last major release was Metal Gear Survive in 2018, and if you want to completely ignore its existence (which, why wouldn’t you), you’d have to go back to 2015 for Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. And yet, despite being treated like a forgotten step-child by Konami, the series is managing to attract its fair share of new sales.
Konami recently published a corporate update on its digital entertainment business, which is predictably dry reading—the company is «Creating New User Experiences» and «Focusing on Further Expansion and Stimulation of esports» and I'm already overdosing on buzzwords. There's one interesting titbit, however. Since its launch in July of 1987, the Metal Gear series has achieved 60 million total cumulative sales.
The Metal Gear series has topped 60 million sales.
Two LEGO leakers have suggested that LEGO sets based on Nintendo hit franchise Animal Crossing will launched in March 2024. Only the product numbers have been released but both exabrickslegogo_ on Instagram, and Brick Clicker on YouTube have said that these are LEGO Animal Crossing sets.
There’s a new rumor going around that Animal Crossing is the next Lego video game crossover.
Look, we're all very excited that Lego Animal Crossing sets might be a thing. But before we get carried away, let's preface this by being very grown up and noting that it's not confirmed yet.
Two LEGO leakers have suggested that LEGO sets based on Nintendo hit franchise Animal Crossing will launched in March 2024. Only the product numbers have been released but both exabrickslegogo_ on Instagram, and Brick Clicker on YouTube have said that these are LEGO Animal Crossing sets.
It looks like Animal Crossing Lego sets are reportedly on the way.