Why won’t Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp let me pull those weeds?

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, we need to have a talk.

With the Animal Crossing title comes a lot of expectations: friendly faces galore; financial obligations; the need to be patient; and an appreciation for the natural world. A good, full-fledged Animal Crossing game includes all of these and then some. It’s a set of gentle objectives that makes the franchise unique.

Pocket Camp, you are not a full-fledged Animal Crossing game. That’s clear from your subtitle. But you try your darnedest, despite the limitations of the mobile platform and learning curve of the free-to-start paradigm. There are animals to befriend, money to make, time to spend waiting around and fish and flowers to collect.

Nintendo via Polygon

There are also weeds, Pocket Camp. And to be the best Animal Crossing citizen is to be a diligent plucker of them. One of Animal Crossing: New Leaf’s best innovations was the ability to have those weeds mostly taken care of for you, in fact — because it’s that important to preserve a beautiful living space.

So why, Pocket Camp, can I not pluck your weeds? Why do I find weed after after weed again, and yet when I tap on those vile stalks, nothing happens?

This is my hell, Pocket Camp. It’s not Animal Crossing. It’s not right. It is hell.

I would gladly trade in the holiday event update in favor of a patch that lets me pick those blasted weeds. I would exchange for the option with Leaf Tickets. I would sacrifice my shot at winning over the elusive Ketchup the duck with a seven-hour pizza if giving seven hours of my time away would let me pluck weeds instead.

And yet, I have become somewhat used to your disappointments, Pocket Camp. You are not the Animal Crossing I know, nor the one I wanted. But if you just let me get rid of even one weed, I may just come on board.