Nintendogs Preview

This game has a lot of possibilities, but at the same time it seems like there’s just too much to do, and then it also seems like it’s not satisfying enough to do it all. In fact, on the first day I got it, even though I just couldn’t wait to try it out, after about an hour and a half I was tired of playing with it and moved on to another game. Surprised? Well, this is a handheld game so it is mostly a pick up and play experience. There are a lot of things to do, but most of these things only last for a few minutes and, at least for me, they don’t seem like the kind of minigames or activities I’d play for hours. It might work for some, but it just didn’t cut it for me in the long run. If you like playing this game a little bit everyday, seeing your dog evolve, earning cash and just getting better and better all the time then I’m sure you’ll enjoy this game a lot.

So, it all comes back to the Tamagotchi I mentioned earlier. You take care of your dog from time to time, a few times a day, or more if you feel like it, but it’s not what you’ll be spending most of your time playing, especially if you are a hardcore gamer that wants challenge. There is very little challenge involved, you just play and enjoy the experience that Miyamoto and his team have created. Sure, the game is beautiful and it really is a great animal simulator and no other game comes close to it, but it sill doesn’t seem enough for me to keep playing after a few months.

I had fun at first training my dog wherever I wanted, teaching her new moves, taking her to dog competitions and seeing her succeed after lots of hard work, taking her for a walk and finding gifts on the road or meeting other dogs, buying a new and bigger apartment, getting her cute ribbons so she’d look good and stuff, but in the end, once you’ve tried everything, you’ll probably be spending only a few minutes per day just to make sure your dog is all right. All of those new gameplay mechanics, especially the voice recognition, are fun at first, but it will get old pretty fast and it isn’t perfect though we can forgive Nintendo as it’s the first game to really take it to that level.

The selection of dogs is pretty good and there are 3 versions of the game available for you to pick up but don’t worry, every breed of dog can be unlocked in each version. You can also play with other people who have the game but I unfortunately haven’t been able to try that feature as I have yet to find someone with an import copy of the game near my house.

You can have more than 1 dog and that’s really fun because you can have them play together or, when you’re tired of one dog, you can start again with a new one form scratch. You can try different breeds of dogs as they will all act differently so you’ll have to train them in new ways which brings somewhat of a challenge to this game and it is one of the things I appreciated the most. You have dog hotels where you can store your dogs but you can also abandon them. But who would do such a thing!

Another very important aspect of the game is the neighborhood. It isn’t vast enough and it is something that could be improved in updates to the game but it does offer some interesting things. You can take your dog out for a walk several times a day so it can go pee or do the other stuff it does and you’ll need to take care of those little packages he leaves or else the neighbors won’t be happy! You can also find gifts and meet other dogs. One very interesting thing that has been brought to my attention by one of my friends is that sometimes either your dog or someone else’s dog will pee to mark its territory and your dog can get mad at the other dogs for that. It is one of many little details like that that make this game really fun. If that happens though and your dog wants to run after the other one you can always pull on the leash. You have complete control over it and depending on how you pull on it you can decide the speed of your dog when taking a walk or stop him. With so many things you can do, you must be wondering why you’d need a real dog when you have Nintendogs, right?

So overall I think I am extremely satisfied with this game as it was definitely worth the price of admission. This is a totally new experience and this is what makes this game so special. I remember at launch when Sonic Team released Feel The Magic and that the producer of the game said that they were experimenting with the hardware to see what was possible to do with the DS. This game shows exactly what talented developers like Nintendo can do with the hardware and you can easily see the reason why this game wasn’t available at launch. Nintendo took its time to really get it right and implement all of the DS’s capabilities so that people could try something totally new, something they’ll remember for a very long time. Nintendogs is, in my opinion, changing videogames and taking them in a totally new direction and I hope more developers understand what Nintendo is trying to achieve with the DS and experiment with it in the same way. If you haven’t pre-ordered Nintendogs yet I think you should now because you might not be able to find a copy come August 22.