It's been a while since I've posted on here - and that's for both good (and not-so-good) reasons. Often finding myself preoccupied with my full-time job, the world has been in a topsy-turvy WarioWare Twisted-esque mini-game for the past couple of months now, and it's finally invaded my personal life.
Coping mechanisms can be found in (m)any forms - binging old TV shows, watching new movies, catching up on the latest flame wars, writing. With that said, I've found my method being heavily satiated in video games. With my workload lessening with each passing day, I've been looking for voids to fill me.
Enter Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal.
On the onset these two titles, developed by two very different studios and on entirely different sides of our Earth, sound so dichotomous when uttered under the same breath that you may laugh as I séance them. You'd be wrong, however, because even if their development, methodology and gameplay mechanics are on opposite sides of the spectrum, they were both created with the same goal in mind.
To escape.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons is not my first entry into the franchise. I had picked up New Leaf some time after it had initially released, partially due to my then-girlfriend's interest in the series. And I gotta say - it never captivated my interest. It felt slow - lifetime progression, gathering and selling material, greeting and interacting with my villagers, and that real-time day-night cycle.
If I could compare video games to alcohol, Animal Crossing: New Leaf would be a frothy stout. Its heady, and it requires sipping. In that comparison, New Horizons is like an ale, where the taste is more palatable to a wider audience and its easier to down.
What makes Animal Crossing: New Horizons so much more of an improved game over its predecessor is its progression and crafting system. New Leaf felt like an extremely slow drip feed where it may have taken days at a time to actually acquire items that you wanted. New Horizons is like a continuous, steady pour where each day you're being given new items to acquire or build, new ways to expand your village and new ways to customize it. There's always something interesting happening on any given day, and it really shows how far along the team creating this game has come since New Leaf.
The two most drastic changes that are the most welcome is how the game starts and the crafting system. In New Leaf, you were brought in to an already existing village that already had tons of things happening, whereas in New Horizons you're building everything from scratch. Not only that, but this time around you get to actually get to shape your village exactly how you want it - including where your villagers live. It helps to really make it feel like its your town and not just a hand-me-down.
To go along with that, you aren't just handed all the materials to build your village - you have to craft them yourself. The crafting system isn't complex in the slightest and definitely doesn't get as in-depth as Minecraft's system can be (the most basic comparison I can make). That's to the game's strength, though. It makes crafting items feel extremely obtainable, especially when you're limited on the amount of material you can obtain on your island on any given day.
There are several changes made to New Horizons that enable it to be a lot stronger of a successor - the smartphone, for instance - but those two very fundamental changes help to shift the gameplay of the franchise into something much more digestible. And honestly, this couldn't be coming out at a better time.
Now that large swathes of people are being mandated to stay indoors and only leave for essentials, Animal Crossing provides the perfect escape from the harsh realities that lie beyond your door. It encourages you to be nice to others and to be part of a community and build it up to something magnificent.
On the other side of this coin, we have another game - Doom Eternal. And if New Horizons was a fine ale, Doom Eternal is like a double shot of hard liquor to the gut.
Doom Eternal pulls no punches about what it is - a straight-shot-to-the-face, balls-to-the-wall shooter. Much like its predecessor, Doom (2016), Eternal is brutal and manic. It's a game that demands to be played at the highest refresh rate possible because you need that pinpoint precision to even stand a chance at conquering your enemies and progression through the game's 15 hour campaign.
In stark contrast to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Doom Eternal doesn't try to make too many changes to the tried-and-true formula that Doom (2016) found so much success with. What it does do is take that and crank it up a couple levels past max - and that's to the game's strength.
The level design is a little more open and there's more space for movement. You'll need all the room you can get in Eternal, as there will be numerous areas (sometimes one after another) where you'll be swarmed by everything and the kitchen sink, including past boss encounters. There's a point early on in the game where you're even told that if you're not constantly moving, you're going to fail.
It's like if you shook up a snow globe - there's always something moving, something going on. You don't have time to think while playing - only when you die and are waiting for the game to reload.
Much like Animal Crossing, this game encourages you to shift your focus from the real world and your routine worries - just in a different way. In Animal Crossing, I found myself constantly thinking about what to do in the game - what to work towards next into making my village perfect. Doom Eternal asks you to shut your brain off, and not to think so hard about the ridiculousness of the things happening on your screen.
In that essence, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal are dichotomous in synchronicity as they try to create an escape for you.
Now, I know there will be people that combat this revelation I'm making about these games - that games are "designed to be escapism". But that's simply not true of all video games, and that goes back to the argument on whether or not games should be considered an art form.
Well, of course, the answer is "Yes". And much like other art forms, not all art is made as an escape. Some art is harsh - an astute reflection of modern and past atrocities. Look at any number of World War II movies, for instance. Not all art is made with the same goal in mind, and that extends to video games naturally.
With that said, it feels almost too perfect that these two titles, made by two very different studios, released on the same day with the same intent behind it. And they're both fantastic, which is another bonus.
So, I suppose to get to the point of this exasperated diatribe that I just wrote - Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Doom Eternal are equally great choices to play right now in this time of pandemic crisis. If anything, they were made for this occasion.