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Dogz: Reviews

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Game Score: 4/10

Dogz is arriving quite a bit later on the DS than Nintendo's own brand, but is actually a much older franchise. It was 1995 when the Petz series first came to life, in the form of some simple virtual pet desktop companions on home computers. The Dogz then marked their territory on a Nintendo system in late 1999, with a Game Boy Color cartridge that found a less than favorable score.

Now eight calendar years later, Dogz still looks like it'd be most at home on a Game Boy. The visuals are simple spritework. Dogz came to the Game Boy Advance in time for the 2005 holiday season, and it looks like the style and assets established for that release were given just a few tweaks and sent here to the dual-screen system. The second screen is little used, in fact, further supporting that this project had "GBA+" written all over it from early on. You'll get a non-real-time clock and a simple view of the sky outside on the top screen, most of the time.

The action takes place on the touch screen, where you'll find clean and joyful environments presented in an isometric perspective, similar to the Mega Man Battle Network games. It's a visual style that's upbeat and uncomplicated, but uninspiring. Certainly far removed from the fresh first-person 3D perspective of Nintendogs, a difference that effectively changes the entire feel of this experience.

While Nintendogs is undoubtedly a member of the virtual pet genre, Dogz feels like a hybrid of both virtual pet and RPG. Both cast you as a new owner of a puppy, both give you your choice of several different canine breeds to begin with, both let you name your new friend and take him or her home. Once there, though, the differences quickly manifest. Nintendogs is more about the interaction, about using the unique features of the DS system to become immersed in the experience of playing with your digital dog. Dogz has a different focus.

Your Dad reminds you to feed your puppy. Your Mom lets you know how to brush its coat. An "Internet-connected" computer in your house's den accesses tips and tutorials for training your terrier, separated into every imaginable topic. It's not long that you're playing Dogz before you realize the true nature of the game. It's a training program for potential puppy owners.

Dogz isn't really about playing with your dog at all, but rather a kind of educational pet care role-playing game. That's not necessarily a negative thing, but it's almost certainly not what you'd expect to find on tearing off the shrink-wrap. Sure, you can take your dog for walks. You can chase it around the living room with toy R.C. cars. You can clean up its poop. (Yeah.) All fun activities. But the reality is that dog ownership is repetitive, and repetitive rarely means fun.
Dogz is interruptional, and irritatingly so. You'll be in the middle of trying to have fun with your puppy when one of your virtual parents will beckon, declaring dinner to be served or that it's time to go to school. You'll try to feed your dog its lunch, only to see it react in recoil with a message that it's not hungry. Then, ten seconds later, play is paused for a cutscene of your Mom reminding you to feed your dog. It's those kinds of nonsensical, flow-breaking elements that get in the way of actually getting to play with your pet. Another one is control.

Tacked-on touch screen control is nothing new for GBA+ titles, and here again we find a prime example of underutilization of the Nintendo DS system's unique abilities. You can move around and interact with objects and characters using the stylus, but recognition of swiping motions is poorly implemented. You can use the microphone to call out the name of your pup, but you'll often be met with an error screen chastising you for poor pronunciation or pitch control. You can write in a digital diary at the end of each day, the game saving a page of your own personal handwriting to memory, but the canvas there is smaller even than a single window of Pictochat.

Enjoy the game! : )