Nintendogs review!

People who used to follow my blog back in 2009-2010 (I believe this is a grand total of three people, including my boyfriend, who only read my blog because I made him), would remember that I reviewed the Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts. (I would put in some cool hyperlink over the word "Scribblenauts" that would take you to the relevant blog post, but I'm frankly not tech-savvy enough for that kind of thing yet.)

Today I'm reviewing another Nintendo DS game... Nintendogs!

The version I have is "Labrador and Friends" and the breeds of puppy available include the Toy Poodle, Schnauzer, German Shepherd, Shiba Inu, Corgi, and some other breeds that I can't remember because I didn't find them particularly cute, at least not in pixelated version (in real life all puppies are cute). I've included an image of the game's cover to the right so you can have a look at other breeds available.

If you get lots of "trainer points" (for being nice to your puppy and remembering to feed it and take it on walks and enter it into competitions), the "kennel" will get in "new breeds of puppy". So far I have unlocked two new breeds, the Pug and the Shih Tzu. Both breeds are pretty cute.

I believe you can have a total of three puppies in your house at a time, and there is always the "Dog Hotel" you can send your puppies to if you find that they are too much to handle. See, Nintendogs operate in real-time, meaning that if you feed your puppy, turn off your DS, then don't play again until two days later, your puppy will be starving. This real-time aspect kind of turned me off at first; I had a bit of an "I don't have time to be playing this every day!" sort of attitude. But really, nothing too drastic happens if you leave your puppy alone for like months on end, as I have done. (It's not like the Tamagotchis we all had in primary school, which got banned from schools because if you left them alone for like six hours, they would die.)

The game advises you that if your puppy feels neglected they will run away, but this has not happened to me yet, so I suspect it's just an empty threat. Anyway the aforementioned "Dog Hotel" is a handy way of effectively 'freezing' your puppy's hunger and thirst statuses if you need to take a break from your DS for a long time.

I currently have three Nintendogs, and at the risk of sounding like a boring mother who won't talk about anything except her children, I'll give you a quick summary of my puppies:

• Henry is a tan coloured Shiba Inu (I actually want a Shiba Inu in real life!) who is very good at Agility Competitions, fairly good at Disc Competitions and pretty bad at Obedience Competitions because under all that agility he is actually a pretty naughty and hard to train puppy.
• Lucy is a white Toy Poodle who is pretty good at everything. She is also quite friendly.
• Batman is a black Pug who annoyed me from the very beginning because of his refusal to wear his ribbon as a bow tie. Ribbons are "Accessories" you can purchase to pimp up your puppy, and generally speaking, boy dogs wear their ribbons as a bow tie, and girl dogs wear their ribbons on their head. The whole point of purchasing Batman the pug was so that he could actually look like Batman the superhero (I had a vision that he would be entirely black, then wear this yellow bow tie, geddit?) But Batman the pug had other ideas in mind and preferred to wear his ribbons on his head. I have absolutely no problem with this subversion of puppy-gender roles, but, you know, he doesn't look like Batman the superhero.

None of my puppies are particularly good at Obedience because I find obedience training incredibly banal and boring because it's so repetitive! Even teaching the puppies their name is painful. Not to mention embarrassing, if you happen to be doing this in earshot of anyone.

Competing is the only real way of earning money in Nintendogs, which you need in order to buy puppy food, water, milk, treats, shampoo, brushes, and other puppy essentials. However if you're no good with the competitions there is another way to not-starve, and that is by taking your puppy on frequent walks (they can go on as many walks in a day as long as they take a 30 minute break between each one) and selling the items that puppy will find along the way. Preeeety cheap-ass.

Hmm, that's really all I have to say on Nintendogs, so I'll just end this game review with a bunch of random ratings of arbitrary salient points...

• "Gameplay" (not really sure what this means except perhaps the degree to which actually playing the game is fun and challenging) - 8/10
• "Visuals" - 7/10 (it's pretty pixelated and the competition commentators always look like Bill Gates)
• "Sound" - 5/10 (the music played in the competitions is pretty boring... until you get to the Championship level! Then it plays cowboy music. Other than that the constant yapping of the digitalised puppies gets a bit grating sometimes)
• "Plot" - 2/10 (there is no real plot to this game because it's meant to be a "slice of life" kind of storyline... just going through the daily motions of walking and feeding your puppy, bathing it, and entering it into competitions)
• "Replayability" (my gamer boyfriend tells me this refers to the ability to replay the game and still find it interesting after you've finished it the first time) - 10/10. Nintendogs does not really end because you can always start fresh with new puppies. Also, there are always new items and accessories to collect, and surprisingly, the other characters in the game have not yet run out of stock things to say to me when we meet whilst taking our respective puppies for walks.

In conclusion, Nintendogs is a very entertaining and even addictive game for anyone who likes basic gameplay and a proliferation of puppies. It's a tiny bit Tamagotchi but with the added bonus that your Nintendog cannot die. Highly recommend!