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Dogz

Posted February 1st 2007 by Jordan Mammo.

Sometimes when I'm playing Dogz I end up thinking about its obvious inspiration. On one hand I say it's nice that a title like Nintendogs, something most of us don't consider a traditional gaming experience, really pushed the Nintendo DS into the public's eye. On the other hand, however, I regret that it had to be this type of experience. When Nintendogs was released it had already garnered a lot of hype among a wide range of people. Millions of them bought it. Tons of them spread the word. Most of them stopped playing after a couple of days.

Dogz falls into this same category. Upon starting the game up, you'll realize your character is really excited because today is a special day: you're getting a puppy! Your parents will tell you to settle down but you can barely contain yourself. "Thinking about those puppies makes me crazy!" you'll yell at the top of your lungs. At the pet store, you'll spend much time deliberating between which of the eighteen breeds of puppies to choose, even though half of them look the same anyway. Unlike Nintendogs (and even the other Petz games, for that matter), though, the puppies in this title aren't rendered in 3D and are rarely, if ever, seen up close. Instead Dogz goes for a simple 2D look that it manages to pull off pretty well because, really, I don't want to know how you can screw up making puppies look cute.

After leaving the pet shop you'll take your dog home, name him after a roommate, feed it (five different kinds of food available right from the start!), pet it while screaming "STROKIES!" and play with it by ramming a radio-controlled car into its body and watching it just sit there and do nothing. Along with trying to teach Kurt where to poop and how to sit you can also take pictures and create diary entries. At various points in this first day your parents will interrupt you simply to say how cute the new puppy is, and if the box art didn't give this away already you'll quickly realize that Dogz was made for six-year-old girls and not for you.

The day will soon end and you'll go to bed, wake up, and do it all again. And again.

It's interesting that a game that tries so hard to be lively and energetic can feel so robotic. Every morning your character wakes up and says today is going to be a great day, though absolutely nothing different happens at all. Every day you're surprised that you have to go to school in the morning. Every time your dog poops you're surprised that dogs have to poop. If that's not bad enough, the town's canine obsession will surely turn some heads. Half the channels on the television feature dogs. You've got posters of puppies in your room. The people you meet either have puppies and love them or are jealous because they want a puppy sooo badly. It's a horribly scary world, but since you're confined to the house for the first week, you're very sheltered and your options are basically feeding your puppy, brushing its hair, and pushing "sit" enough times so the command is learned.

Then Saturday hits.

Saturday is important. You see, Saturday is puppy vaccination day, and that means you can finally take your four-legged friend outside the house. You can go for walks, meet other puppies, talk to a butcher, and go to the park. It's also at this point when you start amassing a horde of items and presents that you can't do anything with except place on the floor of your room. Though with presents ranging from an abacus to a yellow box of tissue paper I can't say I'd do much else with them myself.

Your newfound freedom definitely helps in making the days go by faster, but unfortunately none of this is very compelling. Nothing is especially interactive. Your pet barely responds to the toys you get it, the items you get yourself have no use, and though you can hold "parties" every Sunday and invite your puppy's friends over, all that happens is that the camera zooms in on the living room for a few moments and you watch three or four dogs run around. Then the day's over and you wake up Monday morning shocked that you're still going to school.

Dogz's saving grace is easily that it has a diary you can keep, though I think this is the case because pictures of a dog named after your friend taking a dump all over the place make for some entertaining journal entries. When three college students are playing this game at once it can be an... interesting experience. Unfortunately, the amount of pictures you can take to accompany your entries are disappointing since you can only take them when you're standing around doing nothing. You can't take pictures while playing with the puppy, giving it strokies, or even when you're outside, so creativity is key!

Slight Pulse - Thinking about those puppies makes me crazy!

Dogz is a game for people who don't mind living in a world devoted to cute puppy dog worship and doing the same things over and over again in the name of it. Younger players would probably get a kick out of this if they haven't already played Nintendogs, though with that series being so successful and having been available for so long I have to wonder if there are enough people left who'd spend their money on a second game of that kind.

Posted in: Reviews