QCF: Animal Crossing: New Leaf

This Review was Freelanced by Cody Winn; you can find his other work here.

f there's one thing that really impresses me as a gamer, it's when a developer gives me control of their game world; lent trust and the magical brush of creation, or even just modification, I become obsessed for months on end, singing the game's praises and praising the game's every pixelated inch. With a game like Animal Crossing: New Leaf, I control my destiny -- even if it comes at the price of being monetarily enslaved by a raccoon.

For those of you who aren't too familiar with the Animal Crossing franchise, let me give you a rundown. Well, the best rundown I can give you for a game about both everything and nothing. You move into a small town filled with tons of animal neighbors, many of whom run shops, festivals, and traveling attractions. You interact with these neighbors through conversations, errands, letter-writing, and a slew of other ways. You can buy items like a fishing poll or bug net to go fishing and bug collecting, respectively, or grab a shovel and dig up dinosaur bones. You can visit the lost and found or even the dump to collect furniture for your home. You can visit tropical islands. You can visit your real friends' towns. You can chop down trees and plant flower gardens or orchards. In the original Animal Crossing you can collect NES titles that you actually play in the game itself. You can design your own clothes. You can wash cars. You can feed walruses to earn wallpaper. You can help turkeys stay alive for Thanksgiving. There are so many possibilities that the mind boggles at them all.

But the best part? You can sit back, relax, and watch the grass grow. As much as one can do in these games, the perfect sense of peacefulness always gets me, and it's stronger than ever in New Leaf. Everything rolls out at a blissful pace, and without the need to worry about micro-transactions, pop-up notifications, or any of the other things that make gaming seem like such a chore these days. When I get off work each day, I turn my 3DS on, load up NL, and just… relax; that's truly a wonderful thing.

There's always something to do in this fun game, be it chatting with your animal neighbors, buying used items at Re-Tail, visiting Main Street to get new threads or remodel your home, or simply sending messages to your "Best Friends," a new feature to the series that lets you contact people on your friend list even when you're not in their game. If you do somehow manage to run out of activities, you'll probably notice, like I did, that nine hours just went by and you should really get some sleep.

Though past AC games haven't really focused on presentation, NL is quite a sight, with huge amounts of detail in all the right places, from the ocean waves rocking against the beach to the lighting effects that make the animals and world pop. Great 3D effects combined with the rolling world feels just right on the eyes -- not gimmicky, not painful, not pointless. The music is top notch, too -- it changes depending on the time of day you play the game, so nights sound cool and quiet, the afternoon is upbeat and chirpy, and early morning are soft and welcoming.

NL has a lot of new content to offer in terms of the AC series as a whole, with tons of fresh additions, the biggest one being your new role as the town mayor. With your newfound power and reach, you can set "ordinances," such as having the town keep stores open late while animals stay up past midnight, or stopping weeds from growing (even if you're a nefarious "time traveler") and letting the citizens of your little berg keep flowers watered so you can focus on your mayoral duties. You can also contract different landmarks for the town, be they purely visual, like statues or fountains, or extra bridges to make traversing around town easier.

Nintendo also beefed up the game's multiplayer aspects as well, thanks to the 3DS' single friend code system, meaning you can hop right into the game with your current friend list and be ready for a night on the town(s). There's no voice chat, but using the text chat system is easy enough and it actually more than suffices, at least during my time online. Once you're in another player's town, you can visit their shops for different selections than back home, share items, play mini-games together, or just goof around and have dance parties. There's also the new Happy Room Academy system that lets you street pass with folks so their homes show up in your town's HRA area, or a place that lets you visit peoples' towns (including official Nintendo ones) through dreams.

Seriously, this game is just packed with stuff to do. If you're looking for something a bit different, and don't mind giving up your social life once you become addicted like me, well, have at it. It's on cartridge as well as the eShop right now, so what are you waiting for?