Entry 6- Tomodachi Life

 Welcome back nerds and nerdettes! Unfortunately due to a busy schedule this week this entry is probably going to be the shortest one so far, but not to worry I have selected a fantastic game to discuss today. This entry will be about the game Tomodachi Life, released in 2014 for the Nintendo 3DS.

   Back in 2006, when Nintendo released their console the Wii, they came up with the brilliant idea of allowing players to make their own characters called Miis. Miis are characters you  create yourself based on whoever you want them to be, whether it is based on you, your family and friends, famous celebrities, or fictional characters. Growing up, my family and I had so much fun with this feature and we would follow guides on how to create certain characters as well as making our own based on family members and just weird imagination based Miis that only an imaginative child could have come up with. This idea became a huge hit for Nintendo and the Miis have been a mainstay for the company since then, being used as playable characters in many of the biggest series such as Wii Sports, Mario Kart and even Super Smash Bros. By 2009, Nintendo decided to experiment in giving the Miis their very own game: Tomodachi Collection for the original DS. While this game was sadly a Japan exclusive title, it proved popular enough to release not only a sequel, but it proved to the company that this series had potential outside Japan. That sequel was Tomodachi Life, or Tomodachi Collection: New Life as it is known in Japan. Now that we got that brief history lesson out of the way, what exactly is this game all about?

    So the plot of this game involve you, the player, creating an Island for your Miis to live on and interact with eachother. That's all there really is to it, but it just works as the game is truly only ending when you run out of ideas. The gameplay is very similar to games like the Sims and Animal Crossing where characters are controlled to do various tasks throughout the day, making friends, starting romantic relationships, and overall just living their lives to the fullest. You start off with a simple little motel on the island but the more you play the more the island grows and more places begin to open up for the inhabitants such as restaurants, shops, recreational parks, theme parks and many others. Once the Miis are established you can give them whatever personality traits and quirks you want them to have, really making the Miis have more personality than ever. The player can even choose what kind of voice the Miis will have as they talk to the player and the other Miis in the game, albeit it is just a robotic voice, but it is still a really cool feature. Much like Animal crossing the game has a real time clock that adjusts itself based on the time on the 3DS, so if you play in the day, most of your Miis will be up and running, while at night many of them will either be asleep or being night owls. The game itself looks and sounds lovely too. While the graphics and music are not anything mind blowing, they do a great job fitting the tone of the game.

    The gameplay is truly what this game is all about, so what do you do in it exactly? Well first you can visit the Miis who are living in your Hotel. You can have up to 100 Miis at a time living there. You visit them and they will ask you for help with certain things that can range to finding them something good to eat or drink, customizing their rooms, grabbing new outfits, finding fun things to do, or how to befriend and ask out other Miis. The happier your Miis get the more they level up and can be given gifts and new features such as catchphrases and animations. I always loved giving them 3DS' and Wii Us as it was a fun little nod to see in a Nintendo game. Even if the Miis do not need anything you can still just watch them do what they do on the top screen which was a fun little time waster just seeing all these Miis be themselves. Things are not always hunky dory however as the Miis can get sad, angry and sick. When this happens you have to do your best to take care of them and bring them back to their happy state. Your Miis will form friendships, rivalries, and can even date other Miis before proposing to their partners and moving out to start families. They will have their own little houses on the side when this happens and when the babies are born you can help babysit and make sure they grow up as a well adjusted adult who can then move onto your island. Now, on your island you need places for your Miis to shop and enjoy their time out, which will be unlocked the more involved you are with the game. You unlock shops to buy whatever your Miis want, a News Station where you can watch funny little news segments with the Miis, Restaurants, parks, beaches, schools and many other places where the Miis can all just have fun and interact with each other. Throughout the day various activities go on at certain times at the venues: such as rap battles, talent shows, game shows and flea markets which are fun little things to see. My personal favorite feature is the music hall where you can unlock songs for the Miis to sing and perform at concerts. The most unique thing about this is you can write the songs yourself. Of course this is a rated E game so you really have to dance around what words you put in there if you want them to sing a raunchy song, but if you spell certain words a certain way the game will see it as a normal word and pronounce it as such, which can lead to hilarious results. The Miis can also participate in minigames too in their rooms and out and about. Heck you can even go inside their dreams and see what kind of wacky things they dream about. The true beauty of this game is that there is no real conclusion, the game only ends when you get bored of it, and even then there is so much fun to be had with the game that it becomes very addicting and fun to the point where you will not want to put it down for a long time.

    Despite how fun and loveable this game is there is one major flaw that caused a bit of an uproar back when it came out. The dating in the game is only limited to heterosexual relationships. Nintendo themselves at the time said that they never intended to leave anyone feeling left out, they just never thought of putting it in the game at the time and that it would be too much of a hassle to go back through all the copies of the game to fix it since it was already released. Whether that excuse was valid or not for people it still did not help that this was in the wake of Gay Marriage being legalized in the US, so most people thought that they should have known better. Regardless, they did say if a third Tomodachi Life game gets made they will fix this flaw, whenever that may be. It has been 9 years since this game has come out here in America and despite being a huge hit financially, there has not been a true sequel to the game, but rather spinoff games with similar features but new gameplay mechanics. While these games are good and successful in their own right, there are many people who want to see a return to the laid back calmness that these games had to offer, where you could just turn it on and waste an hour or two putting your cares behind and watching your Mii communities grow. There are rumors that we will be getting a remaster for the Nintendo Switch and I really hope we do because I love this game. When I got it back in high school I would spend so much time on it to the point where I was just addicted. The game just has that charm to it where both incredibly casual gamers and hardcore gamers can enjoy it equally. I highly recommend this game to anyone who just needs a laid back and fun little game. A 9.5/10 from me.

As always thank you all for reading and I will see you all in the next entry. Until then stay nerdy gamers! Iron Pearl out!