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evwuniverse · 4 years

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Animal Crossing Pocket Camp is it Still Worth it in 2020?

The main question that puzzles a lot of the Animal Crossing fan base. Is Animal Crossing Pocket Camp still worth it in May of 2020? It’s all based on opinion but I’d have to say no. I do still enjoy picking it up every now and then when boredom strikes but overall I wouldn’t suggest it. It went from an immense excitement when it first released to a money grabbing scheme from those who support the community. Everything that would be free in lets say the new Animal Crossing New Horizons game isn’t free here. The fact is so sad but true. The game released its micro transactions shortly after launch which was the beginning of the applications downfall. Now almost everything costs leaf tickets which is currency you buy with money to obtain to craft special items that could always come back or to buy fortune cookies that may return during random times throughout the year.

However, I won’t say that you still shouldn’t play it if you want a small time waster for about 30 mins to an hour. It’s fun for the short term but definitely not the long term. If your careful and don’t buy into the micro transactions with the leaf tickets, shorter crafting times and now their latest money grabbing scheme which is the Pocket Camp Club subcriptions which I’ll get into in a moment. As you can see my main issue stems from the micro transactions. Most mobile games have them and yes! I’m one of those people who tend to easily buy into it but recently I’ve noticed that it’s not always worth it. Below I’ll have sections so you can find what you want to read easily. This is going to be another longer post for the fact that there’s a lot of information to tie into this to answer this question thoroughly.

Pocket Camp Club Subscriptions:

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp recently debuted a subscription plan. How fun! there are two different ones depending on what type of pocket camp player you identify as. Do you like to collect rare items and furniture through fortune cookies? or do you tend to buy into the micro transactions more often then you would like? there are two different plans for two different types of players. I’m going to explain each one and what they entail. I’m by no means promoting this product I’m staying as non biased as I can with this post while arguing my point of view.

Happy Helper Plan:

You might think $3 a month for this plan is nothing and to be honest it’s quite appealing for someone who really does enjoy the game, collect items, and finish quests while creating their perfect camping oasis. However, this adds up with time think about it $3 a month and there are 12 months this is $36 a year. Now this might not seem bad but think about what else you could do with that $36. To be fair I had this plan for about 3-4 months after it made it’s first debute. I loved Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and still do it’s one of my favorite apps that I pull out when boredom hits as I’ve implied before. But the micro transactions just get annoying. If I’m on the go I’ll play the app if i’m home I’ll either play Animal Crossing New Leaf on my 3Ds or Animal Crossing New Horizons (my new love) on the Switch. However, if you’re someone who is really into Pocket Camp and buying a game system with the game just isn’t in the cards then this could be a nice happy little alternative for you. I completely understand that mobile applications are more affordable and most are free to start unless you want to add more premium content to your experiences. Which is why I’m going into detail my experiences, opinions, and viewing it from a different perspective as well. The Happy Helper plan was the first subscription to be released for the mobile application. It currently comes with the following perks:

60 leaf tickets per month

Ability to walk around with your camp care taker (walk around with your favorite Animal Crossing character in the mobile application)

Your care taker can complete tasks for you when you’re unable to log into the app.

Your care taker will gather items for events when you’re not on the app.

Crafting times in the game with be shortened (depending on when you first started playing Pocket Camp).

Ability to read the new Pocket Camp journal which comes with news and events in the world of Animal Crossing for your mobile device.

Let’s be honest $3 a month for all of this is definitely not a bad price and 60 leaf tickets with the other perks I’d say this is pretty well priced. Normally 60 leaf tickets would cost about $2 since 30 leaf tickets is $0.99 each time you buy a set of 30 leaf tickets. So they only added an extra dollar for the extra perks you recieve with the Happy Helper subscription. If you’re someone who plays often and tends to buy the leaf tickets a lot this is probably the right route to go. I also feel like you get more for less. This is my highly recommend suggestion if you want to buy one of the subscriptions in the application. This also helps somewhat save on micro transactions. Since most of the time you’re spending tickets on shorter crafting times, etc. This was the right plan for me when I was playing.

Furniture & Fashion Plan:

I’ll be honest, I have yet to try out this subscription. This is a newer subscription that just came out for $7.99 a month and I’m not sure if it’s worth it or not yet. I’ll keep this section updated but for the time being I’m going to list what comes with this plan. It definitely feels like it comes with less then the Happy Helpers plan but from what I know this plan revolves around collecting rare items, decorating, and customization which is normally appealing to me. If I wasn’t so invested in Animal Crossing New Horizons I’d probably give this a try sooner. Below are the perks for this membership:

Choose five fortune cookies each month (each fortune cookies is 50 leaf tickets for 1 or 250 leaf tickets for a pack of 10 from one fortune cookie pack) with this you can apparently choose from past fortune cookies and current ones. Which could be great if you’re a collector of rare items, furniture, and outfits.

Store your extra items in a warehouse so you’re not taking up space in your games inventory.

Ability to save layouts you create to your saved sets

Crafting times will be shorter (depending on when you first started playing Pocket Camp).

Ability to read the Pocket Camp Club journal which is seen under the Happy Healper plan above.

As you can see this plan revolves around creation and customization which basically is the whole fun of this game. The whole idea of Animal Crossing that makes it so appealing is the customization, creation, and sandbox feel it provides. The getaway from reality into a virtual place that is our own. This would probably be good if you find yourself consistently spending leaf tickets to buy fortune cookies. But it doesn’t come with the 60 leaf tickets per mont instead it’s the fortune cookies. To delve a little bit into the price aspect $7.99 per month for 12 months comes out to a yearly cost of $95.88 so in this case we will round this up this is $96 per year. You’re spending almost $100 for virtual content per year. However, if you put it into the perspective that each fortune cookie for just one is 50 leaf tickets each and you get 5 per month that’s 250 leaf tickets. 200 leaf tickets cost $7.99 alone then to add 45 more is $1.99 and then to make it 50 add another dollar for 20 more. So about $11 for the same. Overall, you come out cheaper in the end with the subscription plan by a few dollars. Don’t you just love how companies do that? So in that case it would actually come out cheaper for those who love to collect and customize in pocket camp.

Customization of Places:

Customization of Your Camp:

When customizing your camp you have restirctions. These restrictions can be somewhat annoing for anyone who wants something in a specific place. The customization system runs off of a grid system. It ran off of a grid system in New Leaf as well. Call me spoiled but in New Horizons you can precisely place things in a more intricate way for customization so something like this now bothers me in the mobile versions. For someone who has only played the application this is a small thing to overlook. You can freely wander and walk around your camp and everything you craft to invite animals over can be used to decorate the camp for all of your animal friends. This is definitely nice and I enjoy mixing, matching, and redecorating quite often. It’s the most fun in the game and I spend hours making it look perfect and the way I want it. With all of the items you obtain throughout your gameplay. Everything needs to be crafted.

You can customize your camp in any way you would like this is what makes the application version so addicting in my opinion. I’m not going to lie I’ve shelled out money in this game for leaf tickets to obtain special items through fortune cookies. You can also spend more money through micro transactions which is super tempting to decorate the background scenery, sky, fencing, and front section of your camp. The sad fact is you can’t interact with any of it just like with most of the furniture you can’t interact with either in the application version. But your animals can and I’ll be honest it’s kinda fun to watch my animals interact with everything I place out but I wish I could do the same it would make the game so much better. Maybe it’s an idea they could use for a new subscription or something who knows?

You have main sections that you have to decorate with a tent and ameneties that you can upgrades as you get the materials to continue crafting them up to full level. Depending on the animals on your site and what there themes are these leveled amenities can boost up your animals level as well as unlock more leveling for specific animals. An example of this is if you have animals that match the elegant theme and you buy an elegant amenity this will unlock more leveling for those characters. So if they were locked to only go up to level 10 with the amenity it allows that character to go up to level 15. This is fun, challenging, but can be annoying with the crafting times which is where the subscription might be useful for players who have played since launch or for months previous towards considering the subscription. You can also tend to your own garden which is nice.

Customization of Cabins:

As you level up you will unlock a whole new floor to your very own cabin. I’ll be honest I’m only level 50 and I’m not 100% sure if there are more levels or rooms you can unlock yet but I’ll definitely edit this post as I continue my experience. The cabin is very similar to having a house in the console versions except this is a place for all of your animals to enjoy with you. Very similar to the camp site they interact with the furniture you place in and you’re able to decorate it in any way you see fit.

Customization of Campers:

Yes in this game you get a camper to customize as well very similar to the homes as well except this is more your private space without any animals. It’s nice and you can upgrade and customize the outside and inside of your camper as you move forward in the game.

Multiplayer & Playing With Friends:

So, this is something that really bothers me. I really wish that people could visit their friends in real time. This isn’t possible but you’re able to visit their islands and see a botted version of your friend standing on their island that gives you options such as giving “kudos” kind of like giving a “like” on Facebook. You also have the option to buy things from their market at whatever price their selling their items for. You can also show that you’ve been to their island and water their plants in their garden to keep them growing and healthy. When it comes to events if your collecting bugs then you can place some of your bugs on your friend flowers for them to keep when they capture them during the event before planting new flowers. It’s nice to explore other friends and players islands but I completely dislike not being able to be with them in real time and not being able to have a chat feature. This is what I love about the console version. I’m a huge advocate for virtual worlds and since Animal Crossing in general is categorized as a “social simulation” I feel like there should be some socializing in multiplayer mode. Maybe in the future they might add this but this a mystery yet to be discovered. It’s kind of sad this app has the opportunity to be something great but it always falls short with something. There’s always something missing from each category. What I’d like to see at some point is Animal Crossing for mobile that you pay one price for like for the console versions and it has everything! I’d adore that.... But these are just my thoughts and opinions on multiplayer.

Overall, a lot of things in this app are very nice and help with my OCD a lot. Everything is organized and works in a specific way and the interactions are specific. I love chaos but I’m more the type for order. This gives that sense of order which I love, however, I enjoy the Animal Crossing console games for it’s ability to be customizeable, openworld, sandboxy, and just an escape from my everyday reality. I feel like this version is a mini game with glorified micro transactions all over the place. Which let’s be honest the application never used to be this way on launch but I do understand that Nintnedo has to make money through the app somehow and this is how they chose to do it. It’s definitely fun and enjoyable for the short term but I find myself escaping to my consoles and playing either New Horizons or the older version for the 3Ds Animal Crossing New Leaf. Everything that would be free on the console version you have to buy in the mobile. It just makes more sense in my opinion for someone who has a Switch and DS to spend the money on the game and be able to do more than I can do on the mobile app. But as i’ve said before I do understand that game consoles are expensive and your phone is what you use for both entertainment, work, etc. In this case spending the money to have a very similar experience could be worth it. Just for me and this is where I’ll be a little biased it’s not for me even though the micro transactions are always tempting because I’m always afraid the item will never come back or the fortune cookies are a one time thing making those specific items rare. I do enjoy the game but the micro transactions are my biggest problem.... If this is a small con for you then this is definitely something you will enjoy just don’t always give into those micro transactions. You can have a whole lot of fun without spending a dime in the game don’t get tempted.

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casualarsonist · 6 years

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Assassin’s Creed: Origins first impressions

Yes, once again it’s time for me to play 20 hours of a game and only be able to give a ‘first impressions’ review, because in this day and age if you’re not able to play a game like a full-time job then are you even playing at all?

I must admit though, for all their flaws as a developer and as a publisher, Ubisoft have, for the last few months at least, given me some of the most consistent gaming enjoyment that I’ve experienced in a while, and it’s due in no small part to the marked increase in quality in their recent releases. It started with Far Cry 5, which I will talk about once I’ve finished it, and continues with Assassin’s Creed: Origins, which is easily one of the top three games in the series.

However, (and we’re talking about Ubisoft here, so of course there’s a ‘however’) there’s something I want to talk about first, and that’s a little thing I call the ‘Ubisoft Enjoyment Curve’.

If the title isn’t self-explanatory enough, the UEC is a visual representation of my enjoyment when playing a Ubisoft game, and it’s a pattern that is consistent among most of their games in most of their franchises. If one were to do a shitty MSPaint drawing of it, it would look a little like this:

This particular mock-up pertains specifically to AC games, but generally speaking, the UEC tracks a boring tutorial followed by a sharp increase in enjoyment as the world opens up, followed by a plateau when one starts getting into the repetitive gameplay loop. This is followed by a sharp decrease in enjoyment as the loop gets tedious, ending on a low as the final battle underwhelms. My experiences with Ubisoft games tend to follow this exact same pattern every time because the company consistently manage to do certain specific things very well, and certain specific things very poorly. For example, no-one designs an open-world like Ubisoft. While the world of, say, The Witcher 3 is a stunning place filled with gorgeous visual detail, it’s still a collection of discrete zones that can only be travelled between via loading screens. Origins, however, is one enormous, stunning, and SEAMLESS representation of Hellenistic Egypt, and somehow it performs like a dream. When the game first offered me a mission to leave the starting village of Siwa and travel to a different city, I finished everything there was to be done because I was convinced that, like Assassin’s Creed 2, for example, I’d be transported to another self-contained city sandbox, cut off from the rest of the world. So imagine my surprise where I realised you could just ride from one end of the country to the other on horseback, and as soon as I was loaded into Alexandria, I could turn right around and walk straight back to Siwa if I wanted to. You can gaze across the deserts surrounding Giza and see the glorious lighthouse at Alexandria towering on the horizon miles in the distance, and if you want, you can make a beeline for it and rarely encounter stuttering and pop-in, with nary a loading screen at all. This technical sorcery is one of Ubi’s greatest strengths as a developer, and although, for example, Black Flag had attempted something like this in their open world, the fact remains that that world is a collection of islands, lacking even half the detail and landmass featured here. Even the most recent game before Origins - Syndicate - took place in the city of London alone. A large city, but much less a ‘world’ and more a ‘zone’. So once one slogs through the grind of the mandated Ubisoft tutorial (as if you’re not just playing practically the same game as you were ten years ago), the enjoyment spike that comes along with exploring the expanding world is dramatic.

But then, after a few hours of running round on an exotic virtual holiday, they hit you with the god-awful present-day missions. Now it’s not that I object to the meta-narrative - failing to adequately follow-up Desmond Miles’ storyline is actually one of the series’ greatest mistakes, in my opinion. The promise of that story, and in particular (SPOILERS) the stunning and fantastic anti-climax for Ezio Auditore at the end of his life’s search for the secrets of Eden, as the Ancients delivered their message through him and over hundreds of years of time to Desmond, was one of the main reasons I was so excited for the follow-up entries following Ezio’s retirement as a character. But it’s specifically because they’ve failed to give the player any reasonable incentive to care about the meta-narrative that these missions are so unbearable. I mean, there’s also next-to-nothing to do in them, but it’s unsurprising that a lack of compelling storytelling begets a lack of compelling gameplay. I genuinely think that they could have thrown that shit out entirely with this entry - I would have been more relieved than anything if they had - and while I can’t comment on how this particular story develops, there seems to be little, if anything, going on as far as I’ve played. It’s more engaging than the confusing, entirely cutscene-based meta-story of Syndicate, but still, the present-day portions of Origins that I’ve played so far take place in a tiny, relatively featureless environment that offer little more than an annoying distraction from the true wonders of the game.

After leaping back into the past, however, it isn’t long before the comfortable familiarity of the AC formula and the wonder of the game world begins to offer diminishing returns. Because once one has explored enough of the map, it becomes pretty clear that whatever changes Ubisoft have made for this entry are ultimately pretty superficial - Egypt may be beautiful to look at, but in many ways it’s like the pre-rendered backgrounds of old in that there’s little by way of interactivity here. At its core, this Assassin’s Creed game is fundamentally the same as that Assassin’s Creed game, and you’ve probably got another 50 hours ahead of you before you’ve finished with it. And while this plateau in enjoyment can hold out for 5, maybe 10 hours, eventually, always, the repetition of the gameplay and the lack of true content always gets the better of me, and rather than investing in what I’m doing, I start enjoying my time less and less. I stop listening to what the characters have to say and just perform side missions by rote, and I’ve noticed that, for all the talk of Origin’s side-missions being more developed than in other AC games, this is only superficially true, and it still falls into the old trap of cut-and-paste content. On the surface, it would like you to think that the old dog has learnt new tricks, but when you find yourself unlocking a cage and carrying a captive out of an enemy camp for the twelfth time you’ll see that Origins still embodies some of the longest-standing flaws of the series as a whole. And it’s all the more annoying because the repetition in the side content doesn’t necessarily have to be such an issue, but as always, the busywork still ends up taking up an enormous amount of your time in-game, vastly outweighing the time spent engaging in any kind of story-related content, and it saps away a lot of the life the game might otherwise have.

So, with that said, what does the game do right?

The story begins in media res, and it does a fairly good job of catching the player up on the history of the main character - Bayek - and why he has you doing the things you’re doing. While it might initially felt like I’d skipped past interesting parts of a bigger story, I can’t help but feel like there is so much more to be revealed that I don’t know about yet, and this parallels the journey of Bayek himself, who begins the game equally ignorant as to how deep the conspiracy he has found himself embroiled in goes. For what I’ve seen, the game takes a rather hands-off approach to telling its story, as opposed to, say AC2, which leans into its historical figures and has a lot of fun with its fictionalised version of history. Origins opts instead to spend as little time as possible explaining its story via cutscenes, and throws the player into the doing rather than holding them up with the telling, and in my opinion it could have afforded to play with its history more. But again, I’m not sure how much of the story I’ve played so I can’t comment on how this changes later on.

The time period of the setting is absolutely inspired as well, and depicts Egypt when it was the point of intersection of three diverse cultures - the Greek, Egyptian, and Romans all meeting as civil war stirs between the armies of Cleopatra and her brother/husband (yeah) Ptolemy XIII. This incredible time in history lends the game an immense diversity of both architecture and people, and the player gets to experience the joy of interacting with these, and playing the lynchpin of the political machinations of some of the most fascinating figures ever to have lived.

Another area in which Origins excels over its previous games is the interaction between its various gameplay systems, and while it isn’t anywhere as detailed as say, something like Far Cry 2 in terms of emergent gameplay, it’s still a step up over previous entries. For example, I’ve seen soldiers affected by beserk darts crack open cages holding rebel prisoners, who have then gone on to cause extended chaos amongst the soldiers protecting a stronghold, leaving me free to slip in and out unnoticed. Sleep darts thrown into fires will explode in a cloud of sedative gas and knock out handfuls of people at a time. Poisoning corpses and wandering away can result in you returning to a dozen dead bodies strewn over the place as guards investigating dead comrades have carried disease back to their living counterparts. Tense battles can and will be interrupted by crocodiles or hippos racing in and devouring your enemies. Punt boats can be set on fire and sunk from under the people standing on top of them, or rammed and tipped, leaving their pilots swimming for their lives. Oil jars can be thrown into water, broken, and the spreading oil slick ignited. On multiple occasions I’ve avoided danger because the person who spotted me dropped dead on the spot with disease, or was attacked by a predator in the process of attacking me. I wish the game had gone farther with its fire mechanics, and I suppose in the grand scheme of things it feels a little half-hearted in terms of its implementation of some of these ideas, but still, it’s better than it has ever been.

Origins also has the tidiest implementation of its climbing mechanics of any AC game yet. There’s a far more definitive use of ‘press X to climb, press O to drop’ that leaves little room for you to be unsure as to whether you need to hit one or the other to scale that small ledge. The game is also much more forgiving in terms of which surface it will let you climb and where - as a result, Origins is much less a puzzle-climber than other games in the series, and it’s rare that you’ll end up getting stuck on something because the designers have simply decided that you’re not allowed to cling to that particular thing above your head. They also removed the infuriating restriction on jumping that was a particularly frustrating part of Syndicate - the one that completely stops you from leaping from ledges above a certain height - meaning that you’re free to leap to your death if you CHOOSE to, because this is 2018 and I should be able to make my characters commit suicide if I damn well want to. These movement tweaks open the way for more free-flowing experience, and allow for instinctive and reactive control by the player: if you’re chasing someone transporting resources and they disappear inside a stronghold, you don’t have to spend the next five minutes wandering around the perimeter looking for an entry point only to find that you can’t get down from the wall you just climbed - now you can just just take it in your stride and continue hunting your prey.

These small quality-of-life improvements make a big difference to the overall feeling of ‘tracking and attacking’ (trademark, me, 2018), particularly when combined with the overhauled combat. No-longer is the combat system a poor-man’s knockoff of the Arkham series; instead you have direct control over blocking, light and heavy attacks, dodging and parrying, and characters are free-moving with the ability to lock on. It’s a bit more button-mashy, but you don’t have to spend your time waiting for the enemy to attack; instead it encourages movement and pressing the initiative. You’re even able to equip up to four weapons, including two bows that operate as a stealthy and fully-featured replacement for the pistols/throwing knives that appeared in the previous games. In response to this, enemy awareness has been ramped up, meaning that even the quietest assassinations will alert any guard close enough to you, and you can and will be spotted fairly quickly if you creep without care. That said, even on hard, the game becomes easy as soon as you level up higher than the enemies around you, but you’re offered a menu option to make enemies level up with you, and for those that want the game to keep pushing them (and I’d say it’s necessary to hold off some of the tedium of the gameplay routine) I’d recommend it.

Lastly, I’d like to go into greater detail about the world design. From the gorgeous Mediterranean waters of Alexandria, through the verdant Nile Delta areas, to the desolate sands of the southern deserts, and the immense and haunting Giza pyramids, the game’s visuals are every bit the pinnacle of Ubisoft’s efforts. It can’t be overstated how amazing Origins looks, and there’s so much joy to be taken from simply standing and looking around, or touring the backstreets and bazaars and temples and cobbled carriageways. In a game like this it’s easy to get buried by the repetition and fail to see the forest for the trees, so it’s certainly a joy to snap out of that every now and then and just go for a walk and admire the level of detail on display. More than Syndicate with it’s rows and rows of similar buildings, or Black Flag and Rogue with their giant stretches of water, Origins feels like a world designed by hand and with care. Every surface and texture feels like it was placed with intention, and it gives you that very ‘Assassin’s Creed’ feeling in which you wonder just how close to the design the reality of the place actually was.

Collectively, my first impressions are skewed quite positive, although even now I’m finding myself falling prey to a fatigue common to my experience with these games. Taking the extra year for development has certainly done it some good - it’s clear that the ambition and quality in its presentation has increased with the increase in development time, and that a few fresh ideas have managed to penetrate the wall of executives that make all the decisions for this type of thing. But one shouldn’t be misled - Assassin’s Creed: Origins is still the same old Assassin’s Creed, and if there’s any core feature of the series that you despise, chances are you’re going to run into it here. That said, it still remains one of the best games they’ve made. It’s huge, detailed, gorgeous, open-ended, with visceral and bloody combat, a number of entertaining systems that interact to hilarious effect. When it works, it works really well - it’s fun. But it does suffer from the fact that the size and scale of the game means more faffing about with relatively meaningless busywork, and it’s this repetition that dulls the shine of the world around you. In some ways it feels more of a throwback to older AC games whilst still having some new ideas of its own, but when it comes down to it, it’s the latest AC game. So...get it if you like AC games, I guess? Because it’s the latest one.

#assassin's creed: origins #egypt #bayek #cleopatra #ptolemy #julius caesar #africa #europe #rome #greek #greece #ubisoft #open world #rpg #exploration #free running #aya

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