


These laws help change the game to fit the way you play - as an early riser, the "Early Bird" ordinance made the town run on my real-life schedule.

Or you can force townsfolk to be more diligent about tending to your town's greenery. You can singlehandedly pass one of four laws into effect at a time, allowing you to make businesses open earlier, stay open later or buy and sell goods for additional Bells. Ordinances are the other half of your mayoral powers, though they're not quite as fleshed out as Public Works. The cast of characters is imaginative and hilariously written It's part sandbox, part zen garden - a combination that works swimmingly. Urgency is not the order of the day, self-identity is, and New Leaf affords you scores of options to establish that identity. There's no hunger meter, or friendship quotas to maintain. Unlike other, more demanding entries in the genre, Animal Crossing eschews the bottom, stressful rungs of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It's a minimalistic simulation of life, but not a shallow one, which is where many of New Leaf's charms lie. Scores of newer activities are available in New Leaf, but even the core tenets are deeper than ever, from your house's customizable front facade, all the way down to your avatar's customizable socks. Players will still fill their hours collecting sets of furniture, putting together fashionable wardrobes and acquiring Bells with which to pay their escalating mortgages. The domestic core of Animal Crossing: New Leaf hasn't deviated too far from the series' roots. New Leaf is part sandbox, part zen garden
