Features// Animal Crossing: New Leaf - Diary Of Gregg from The Hood

Day 2

I awoke and turned the 3DS on immediately, shielding the screen form my wife. She doesn’t need to know that I’m playing this game. She’s used to me shooting people in the head and screaming at ‘Replay Watchers’ during a game of FIFA.

I’m sure I’ll break the news to her eventually. But for now, this will be our dirty little secret.

I’m used to getting a bollocking from my wife in the mornings. Usually because I haven’t put my dirty jeans in the washing or for not doing the washing up the night before. I didn’t expect to get one from a videogame. That’s exactly what I got.

Some punk called Mr Resetti got all pissy with me because I didn’t save before I quit the game. Well, maybe Mr Resetti isn’t quite up to speed with modern day gaming, but manual saving is a thing of the past.

Unfortunately there wasn’t an option to back-chat the little prick so I had to take the beating and adjust my play style so that it suited the year 2004.

Today was a quiet day. With no sign of the real mayor of The Hood I decided to go with the flow and take the job on. They deserve all they get for not checking my credentials.

Or perhaps I am the mayor? I mean I have no knowledge of what I was up to before I was on that train. This feels like Memento. Maybe I should start looking for John G.

Either way, my first task was to build a house, which annoyed me slightly. If you know a mayor is coming to town, at least make sure he’s got a fucking house to live in. But no, I visited the local builder ‘Nook’ who put up a tent for me as temporary shelter. Bang goes my dream of an Alan Partride-esque mobile home.

Nook said something about payments and I wanted to warn him that I had literally no money, but I kept quiet. I’d deal with that later.

Then came a ceremony to accept me into The Hood. I had dreams of a fight to the death with a fellow resident like you see in those films that you can’t sit through, but alas all I had to do was plant a tree.

And that was day 2!

I’m not sure what to think about the game so far. It’s not been a 'game' in the sense that I understand games, but I’ve enjoyed its casual manner. It seems enough is going on to make my short play periods enjoyable while at the same time not demanding too much of my time.

This could be the start of something beautiful, but it’s early days and I hope you’ll join me over the coming weeks and read along with my adventure... or lack of it.