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Animal Crossing isn't a big-name, billion-dollar brand like the popular Mario and Pokémon series. In fact, it's arguably one of Nintendo's lesser-known series. But this doesn't stop it from being one of, if not the best life simulation game of 2013. Behind a seemingly childish exterior lies a very deep game - to the point where you'll never have truly seen it all. In 1,000 hours of playtime, I haven't grown tired of Animal Crossing.

The game starts out with you, the player, riding on a train to your new town. A cat named Rover, who is coincidentally also riding the train, sits on the seat across from you and asks you a few questions. It is here that you name your character and your town. He then hands you a map of the town, and if you don't like it, he'll swap it out for another map, effectively allowing you to pick your town's layout. However, despite the fact that Rover only holds a few maps, there are well over 25 different town layouts.

Each town has the following: a river, a beach, a train station, a town hall, five houses with residents occupying them, and Main Street, a place to buy tools such as a bug net. When your character leaves the train, the secretary of the town, Isabelle, informs you that you're the mayor of this town. You think this is a mistake, but then you realize - Rover was supposed to be the mayor. The confusion arises from the fact that Rover told Isabelle he'd be leaving from the very train you rode. But your character is deemed the mayor, and it sticks.

This is the first Animal Crossing game where you're the mayor. In previous installments, you just lived in the town. There wasn't much of a point. But as mayor, you can improve your town. Build items like fountains, trash cans, pyramids, and sphinxes...and also set ordinances, which are particularly fun. An ordinance basically defines how the town is run. The late-night ordinance, for example, makes the stores on Main Street close two hours later than usual. There's an early-bird ordinance and a beautiful town ordinance, among others. This leads to a very customized town.

And then we have the residents. Hence the game's title, they're animals. They range from wolves to cats, and they all have different personalities. You can talk with them, do them favors, and even invite them into their houses. I cannot explain the whole game itself in this review, however, as it has its own feel to it unlike any other game. But the main part of Animal Crossing is actually guilt - if you buy this game, you'll feel it despite the fact that your residents are simply bits of data. If you don't play the game for a while, they'll start to miss you, and send you letters. It's never too many letters, however, and it doesn't feel like they're stalking you. Villagers can also move out, and they send a goodbye letter with them. 

Animal Crossing also has a fantastic multiplayer mode. You can have three others come to your town, or you can go to someone else's, over the internet. There's a chatbox in the game itself, which you can type messages into. It gets annoying after a while, though, and a lack of voice chat hurts the experience a little bit, but this is remedied if you use IRC or instant messaging. However, a word of caution: if you close your 3DS while the game is saving in single-player mode, there's a chance your town will be corrupted. Don't do that.

Overall, Animal Crossing is a great game that really can't be described all that well. If you like action games and not slow-paced ones, this isn't the game for you, but if you've never tried an AC game before, this is a great place to start. There are a few minor niggling factors that take away from the experience a little bit, but they're not very noticeable.

Score:  9/10
+ Addicting
+ You can customize your town very well
+ Great multiplayer mode
+ The game always finds a way to pull you back in
- Text chat on mulitplayer mode isn't intuitive
- Town is easy to corrupt, just by interrupting saving