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Nintendogs: Chihuahua & Friends Review
Written by Dan Dormer on Friday, August 26, 2005
They're so damn cute!
Voice training has its quirks.
Nintendogs, a game even my mother knows the name of, is finally available to the American gamer, and oh lord, is it cute. You've heard it everywhere, but it doesn't really take effect until you're playing with your Nintendog - this game is devilishly cute.
That's how you're lured into Nintendogs, offered in three varieties each with a different set of starting puppies, by the cuteness. Of course, there's more to it than just that. The actual game design is amazing. These puppies look, sound, and act like the real thing. Depending on where you pet the virtual mutt, it'll move if you start to pull away slightly in order to keep getting some of that sweet TLC.
You'll need to do everything you would normal do with a real puppy that you do with a Nintendog. You have to teach it its name, how to sit, roll over, play dead, and shake that tail. Fortunately, all Nintendogs come house trained, so need to worry about having to clean up any virtual No. 1 or 2. At least, in doors. On your many walks, you'll have to clean up No. 2 in order to make sure you do your part to keep the neighborhood beautiful. Otherwise, other trainers in town will get on your case.
That's right, in your virtual city, there are other trainers who you'll get to interact wit on your walks by guiding your path through a couple of the question mark boxes on the map. They'll offer advice, conjecture, and scold you if they think you're doing a poor job. Forget to feed your dog once yesterday? Oh, expect hell from Buster's trainer Leslie.
The best way to gauge how well you've progressed with your dog's training is to see if they can take best in show at one of the three competitions - agility, disc throwing, and obedience. These offer some bragging rights, as well as some well needed prize money to keep your dog fed, quenched, and cleaned. There are also a variety of classes that keep increasing the difficulty, and the reward. Of course, if you don't place, you get knocked back down a rung and have to work your way back up again.
The only two glaring issues in Nintendogs are present in the voice recognition software and the American uselessness of Bark Mode. While it might sound easy to teach a new dog a laundry list of new tricks, it wasn't that easy the first time I gave it a go. Try as I might, it took over an hour to teach my dog how to sit. This was after I had picked what was described as a good learner by the dog store. To be fair, it seems that the shorter the command, the harder it is for the dog to actually remember it and use it correctly. So by elongating my phrases, I've been able to circumvent this problem, but the persistence of it early on in the game can be rather discouraging to younger gamers.
Bark Mode also serves less of a purpose in America than it did in Japan. While people in Japan have reported in great ernest about how well Bark Mode works, in the first week of Nintendogs' release, I haven't encountered a single other Nintendogs user. This was while walking around a college campus with over 30,000 students. You'd figure at least one person would be using this mode, but until it catches on it'll just be a nice addition that's included because it was in the Japanese version.
Nintendogs is less of a completely new creation, but an evolutionary step in videogame design. Like the opposable thumb, it manages to change that way we look at games, and is comforting to see amidst a sea of shooters, yearly rehashes of sports titles, and the newest Grand Theft Auto clone. Nintendogs is a tail-wagging good time, that's for sure. Does it have the longevity to keep players entertained over time? Ask us again in a few months, right now we've gone to the dogs.
posted August 28, 2005