Animal Crossing: New Horizons review — A refined island getaway

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is a tough game to assess. I’ve played around 60 hours since Nintendo sent over the download code in late February. But even if I had played 300 hours, I would still struggle to review Nintendo’s social-life simulator. That’s because the point of Animal Crossing is to play it consistently over the course of months and even years. And I can’t time travel. But even with that caveat in mind, I’m still confident in making this claim: this is the best Animal Crossing game yet.

Like past games in the series, New Horizons is about moving into a village with other animals. You get a house, you pay off the loan to a raccoon named Tom Nook, you get a bigger house to add more decor, and so on. The idea is to live a life inside a pleasant virtual town. That structure is back, but with New Horizons, Nintendo has added to and refined the Animal Crossing formula. And the result is more gripping than ever.