Posts tagged “Animal Crossing”

Video Game of the Month:

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
Boy, have I missed Animal Crossing. This mobile app game does scratch an itch. It is fun, funny, and very nice to look at, though Pocket Camp is much more “gamey” than a real Animal Crossing title. Goals are much more clear-cut, including things like leveling-up and timed goals and stretch goals. You don’t just wander around doing whatever you feel like; there are things you’re supposed to be doing. The crafting system is an intriguing addition to Animal Crossing that I actually quite like, and I’m curious if that will carry over into the next full-fledged title. Also, be my friend:

It me!

Show of the Month:

Marvel’s Runaways
One of the single greatest comic book runs of the current century, Brian K. Vaughan’s Runaways from Marvel Comics had a jaw-droppingly engaging blend of teen angst, comedy, and comic book superheroics. I am sometimes still shocked at just how good it was. This adaptation keeps the core characters but changes the storytelling from a frenetic, straight-ahead adventure to a slow-burn, laterally-expanding mystery. It works best when it focuses on the kids and their interactions. All the actors are great in their parts, even all 10 parents (geez that’s a lot). Ariela Barer is a particular standout as Gert, full of bluster and snark but also awkwardness and hope. The first few episodes have me intrigued enough to keep watching.

Tabletop Game of the Month:

The Oregon Trail
A shockingly-accurate transformation of the classic schoolhouse video game into card format, you and your cooperative team have the unenviable task of trying to survive the Oregon Trail with limited resources and oh-so-many rivers you have to cross. The way the cards form the actual trail is an ingenious mechanic. The only thing this game is really missing is a recreation of trying to shoot a buffalo or bear to get the 100lbs of meat as you could carry (but there’s a hunting expansion, so maybe that handles it). Spoiler: you’re probably all going to die before you can play the 50 trail cards you need to win. Oh, also: You have died of Dysentery.

It’s no real secret that Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. This one will be a bit different than usual, though, what with a wee beb due on the big day!

My pal Taisha likes to celebrate Halloween on every day of the month. Much like there are 12 days of Christmas, there are also 31 days of Halloween! Therefore yesterday (Tuesday) was the First Day of Halloween!

But not only is it Halloween in the good ol’ RL, it’s also Halloween in Animal Crossing New Leaf! Yesterday I was visited by a spirit in the middle of my rose garden:

It’s Jack, the Pumpkin K… no, wait, not that Jack.

Jack told me to collect scary masks all month long so come Halloween Day I could scare the living crap outta the animals in my town. Sounds good to me! I got a ghost mask and a bug mask so far. Sorry, a scary ghost mask and a scary bug mask. I’m also collecting Halloween candy! Presumably the candy isn’t for scaring villagers.

Not only that, but in the Nooklings’ store some rather exciting furniture appeared:

My sofa will scare the crap outta you!

I’m gonna fill the back room of my house with this stuff! Also, back in RL, I’m gonna totally decorate the crap outta my house this week with all sorts of things like skelebones and punkins and bats and black-and-orange paper chains and HOORAY FOR THE MONTH OF HALLOWEEN!

Album of the Month:
Robb Benson & The Shelk: Cursive Falls From the Sky
Two Albums of the Month in one year from the same artist? Yes, it’s Robb Benson, Seattle mainstay and frontman of The Glass Notes, who had my Album of the Month back in February. This time it’s The Shelk (as in part shark, part elk) and it’s another very good, catchy album. The styles are much more varied than the hard-rockin’ Glass Notes, including some interesting synth-poppy stuff. I enjoy it!

Game of the Month:
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
Easily the best Animal Crossing game since the original for GameCube o-so-many years ago. This time not only do you own a house, but you are actually the mayor of the whole town and get to build “public works” that improve your town. There’s a city section like in City Folk, but it is actually useful and necessary unlike in that game. Tonnes of new features make it hard to stop playing, and the 3DS allows you to do some really cool thinks, like making hanging out with friends over the internet super easy. And also you can tweet screenshots of the game!

Went clubbin' wit hottie @leiapico and @mikey_oops #ACNL pic.twitter.com/QoLrdqDrYD

— Christopher Harris (@angrybeef) July 3, 2013

Book of the Month:
Slan: A Novel by A.E. Van Vogt
Though it’s almost unheard of nowadays, Slan is the book that really ushered in the “Golden Age” of Science Fiction. It is the book that all of the great authors of that era looked to as a shining example of a favorite SF book. It’s a fascinating read: extraordinarily fast-paced and incredibly pulpy with a protagonist who is so superhuman that it’s impossible to relate to him. But the ideas fly fast and loose and the science is ridiculous and sketchy, and it’s a lot of fun in the way that 1940s serials are a lot of fun.

Link of the Month:
Gunnerkrigg Court
A fascinating webcomic about a strange school in a vast, mostly-abandoned industrial complex with a mysterious history.  The main characters have an amusingly blasé attitude towards the bizarre scientific and supernatural things they encounter almost constantly.  The comic steadily builds an intriguing mythology, and the art style thankfully matures with the characters.  Good to sit and read several chapters at a time.  Also available in graphic novel format!

DVD of the Month:
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
A great, magical movie. I told a lot of people to go see it, and they’d often say, “I never saw Hellboy I.” I’d then always reply, “That’s okay; it wasn’t that good. This one is way, way better.” I’d tell you to read my full review of it over in my Movie Reviews section, but I haven’t actually written it yet. What’s wrong with me? I’m so behind.

Game of the Month:
Animal Crossing: City Folk
I’m kinda shocked it took me this long to make Animal Crossing: City Folk on my “Of the Month” list, considering that Carrie & I got the game back in late November and have played it pretty much every day since then.

I didn’t get very much sleep last night—only about five hours. So this afternoon after doing some work and delivering it, I decided to relax by playing some Animal Crossing: City Folk.

I very quickly fell asleep. And, since it was what was on my mind when I fell asleep, I had a dream about Animal Crossing. For some reason, though, it was kind of a hybrid between animal crossing and The Legend of Zelda.

For instance: The game had a cartoony, “Minish Cap” style of art instead of the regular Animal Crossing style. Also, in the real Animal Crossing, you will periodically see big bugs clinging to the trunks of trees. In my dream there was a Peahat clinging to the side of a tree. It got startled when I got to near it and started (slowly) fluttering away towards the east side of town, where there’s a big cliff. When it reached the cliff it floated up to the top of it. Luckily, in my dream a mushroom-like dog lived at the top of the cliff and caught the Peahat, dropping it back down into town so I could catch it in my bug net.

My favorite part of the dream, though, was that there were Octoroks running around all over town. They were absolutely harmless, and you could catch them in your bug net if you wanted. They always traveled in groups. There would be a large one in the front and then four or five smaller ones would follow it around in a straight line. Then my dream people got absolutely stumped. What do you call a group of Octoroks?

Y’know how you call a group of geese a “gaggle” of geese, a group of fish a “school” of fish, a group of crows a “murder” of crows, a group of buzzards a “wake” of buzzards, etc.? Well, my dream people wracked their collective brains to try to come up with what to call a group of Octoroks.

What they came up with was a “shelf of note” of Octoroks. “Note” as in the sense of importance or consequence (as in, “Nothing of note happened”). So there were all these shelves of note of Octoroks running around my Animal Crossing town.

I thought that was so absolutely bizarre a choice that I had to wake up and write it down. At first, though, I only dreamed that I woke up and wrote it down. I had to catch myself and say, “Hey, you didn’t actually do that. You’re still asleep.” Then I woke up for real and, like Abraham Lincoln, wrote “Shelves of note of Octoroks” on the back of an envelope.

(or “Snowpocalypse Stormageddon” if you prefer)

I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t somehow write a blog entry on this rather unusual bout of snow that we’ve gotten here in the Pacific Northwest over the past week. Therefore this blog entry is what you might call “obligatory.”

Yes: it snowed here much, much more than it usually snows, and it has stayed much, much longer than it usually stays. And therefore much of the Pacific Northwest has gone into a panic the likes of which must seem hilarious to the upper Midwest and Northeast parts of the country, where long-lasting snow is a common happening.

The fact is that Seattleites, Tacomans, and to a lesser extent Olympians have possibly the worst weather memory in the entire country. You see, it rains well over 100 days out of the year here, so you’d think we’d all be accustomed to driving whenever it rained, right? Well, just imagine that there are more than five consecutive days without rain. For some reason it seems like the entire population suddenly forgets how to drive in the rain when it starts pouring again! I’ve lived here my whole life and this phenomenon never ceases to amaze me.

So you can imagine what it must be like if it happens to snow, which it does very infrequently. Maybe two or three times a year, tops, and it generally sticks around less than two days if indeed it does last at all. Here’s an example of the hilarity: one day last week many Tacoma schools were canceled because it was snowing… even though it was much too warm to stick to the ground. Yes, Tacoma schools were canceled because there was snow in the air. There wasn’t even any ice on the roads!

So you can imagine how the whole area basically shut down when a couple of days later the snow really did begin to accumulate on the ground.

Carrie & I have a tradition of night-walking through the snow on the first evening that it accumulates. So late that evening after Carrie got home from work we decided to take Suki with us. We also live within easy walking distance of Alice and Rufus, two Boston Terrier friends of Suki’s (and their owners, who are friends of our). We thought it’d be fun to all go for a walk, which it was. But it was also rather embarrassing, because Suki got so extremely excited by the snow and the presence of the Bostons that she kept on spontaneously barking for joy. Loudly. At 11:00 at night outside people’s houses.

Another evening a bunch of us who live close by all trudged to the nearby Engine House 9 (“E-9” as it’s called around here) for a nommy din-dins.

On Saturday Laura came over and she, Carrie, and I all went down to the Parkway Tavern to meet with Steph, Jamie, and law-school Katie for lunch, ’cause we were excited she was back in town. Well, right before we arrived a group of about 20 overly-well-dressed professionals had spontaneously shown up demanding food and drink. And only two people were working that afternoon: one bartender and one cook. So we had to wait quite a while for our foodstuffs, but it was okay because there was good company and copious amounts of pear cider. That night Fools Play was canceled due to a rather large burst of afternoon/evening snow (the owner of Mud Bay Coffee couldn’t find anyone who was willing to keep the place open late enough for us). Instead we all played Animal Crossing and we baked cookies and stayed in. Laura even ended up crashing on our couch.

Carrie had to work all day Sunday. Laura & I walked down to Starbucks and had breakfast sammitches for breakfast. The snow was like crème brûlée: a thin, hard crust over a lot of soft stuff. It was crazy to walk through it. But for lunch we walked again, this time to Wild Orchid to meet with Carrie, Christine, & Lawrence. Here’s a tip: if you eat at Wild Orchid, try the Rama Noodles. Very tasty.

We were so inspired by Wild Orchid that we decided to make our own Thai chicken soup for dinner, so Laura, Lawrence & I stopped by the Neighborhood Market on the way back to the house and bought coconut milk and an onion while everyone else went back to work. Lawrence continued on to his house, and Laura decided to drive back to hers before it got dark. Carrie made the soup when she got off of work, and Christine, Lawrence, and the Bostons all came over and ate it (well, the Bostons didn’t eat it) while watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the animated version, not that live-action crap).

Let me just say: onion, chicken, garlic, curry paste, coconut milk, chicken stock, cilantro, basil, salt & pepper (in that order) FTW.

By Monday morning the snow had pretty much stopped falling, but it was still very much there. I managed to get my car out of it and got to work with little incident.

I think my car is under there somewhere

And that’s about it. There are still about six to nine inches of snow around here. According to weather people the snow is supposed to stick around for the rest of the week, so there might be some form of white Christmas (which would be an absolute shock to the people of the Pacific Northwest; I only recall one white Christmas here in my entire 31 years of existence). I would also just like to say that it is very nice to live within easy walking distance of so many good restaurants and bars.

I hope you have a safe and festive holiday season. Until next time… adiós.

And to all a good night.

This post is about Animal Crossing.

So on Sunday I bought over 1,000 turnips for 100 bells apiece. But in my town (which is named, as is tradition, “Big Baby”) the price of turnips kept going steadily lower and lower.

In Whimsi & Toraton’s town of Banoozi, though, turnips were selling for 507 bells apiece yesterday! So I went over there and made over 500,000 bells in profit.

What I’m trying to get at is that Animal Crossing: City Folk is a lot of fun when you go over to other people’s towns. Last week Whimsi came over to Big Baby and sold her turnips, and also brought over some non-native Cherries (and took home some Pears, which were non-native in Banoozi).

Some of you might already have the game, and some of you might be getting it for some upcoming holiday or something, but I want you to come visit Big Baby, and I want to come visit your towns. Here is my pertinent information:

Friend code: 3910-1019-7948
Town: Big Baby
My name: f~Body 

Post your pertinent information in the comments, or just send them to me.