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Nintendo has had a strange couple of years as a game console platform holder, but Animal Crossing: New Leaf was a timely reminder that it can be a peerless game developer - as were games like Fire Emblem, Pokemon X and Y and Super Mario 3D World. What a year Nintendo's had, in fact! All the same, I wouldn't recommend Animal Crossing: New Leaf to a new player any more, even though it's close enough to being my game of 2013.When it came out this summer, I played Animal Crossing: New Leaf every single day. Before I even got out of bed, I would wander around town looking for signs of unsettled earth and new rock clusters to whack with my spade, chow down on a fortune cookie in the hope of winning a Nintendo toy, check in at the museum to assess my new fossils, and say hello to my neighbours, secretly hoping they weren't about to invite themselves over at the same time as something else I had on that day - in the game or otherwise.
There are two things I really love about Animal Crossing: New Leaf. The first is the wealth of charming and chaotic systems it disguises behind its superficial simplicity. You're the mayor of the town, you can change the town flag and town tune; you gather fruit and fish and bugs and buy furniture for your shabby house. But all the while you're trying to get a handle on this weird bunch of bustling, lazy, arrogant, insecure, babbling, bashful animals who move in to town around you, and keen to decipher the comings and goings that add so much unpredictability to your daily routine. After a while you realise you don't want to know: understanding things isn't the point of Animal Crossing.
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