Review: PlayStation Vita Pets (PS Vita).
It’s hard to judge a game intended for the youngest players, when he slowly hits a quarter of a century himself. You can improvise – try to get into the mind of a few-year-old and guess what he might like. But why do this, when you can sit with a few-year-old at a portable console, turn on PlayStation Vita Pets and take on this – in my case – difficult task.
The game decided to combine the idea known for several years from Nintendo consoles, in which we deal with our own pet, with a hint of adventure. In Pets, after we choose one of the four possible dog breeds (because only dogs are available), we jump into our house quite quickly, where we start all the fun. When giving a name, we are asked to say it aloud. And here is the first screeching – there is a microphone icon, which, however, does not show us if the game is catching what we say. I ended up repeating a simple name five times in different keyboards. Eventually, the game caught my calm voice.
Fortunately, the problems ended for a while. As part of the tutorial, the dog takes us to the yard. To move around locations, just move the analog stick and touch the appropriate elements of the screen with your finger. What we can interact with is surrounded by a glow of different colors and distinguished by an icon. Of course, this is how we can feed the dog, shop on TV, bathe, scratch it or play with it. Each of these activities is so simple to perform that the younger person will easily get what their pet wants from them. Of course, sometimes you have to explain, because such commands are marked a bit too small, which in a stressful situation – and it happens – does not help. There is one more drawback here – the description of the puzzles is weak. We have a drawing in the log that doesn’t tell us what to do. Additionally, the drawing is very small and cannot be enlarged. This aspect of the game caused the biggest problem for my girlfriend’s sister – here I had to intervene and calmly show what needs to be done.
Fortunately, the rest of the activities are so simple that more than two hours of continuous play without asking for help. We can take the dog for a walk to the nearby forest, where, after digging out the King’s log (it is connected with a mini-game, like most activities), we learn about the history and follow its traces deep into the forest. In theory, it is impossible to get lost, but in practice the minimap is slightly unreadable for a younger person. Perhaps if the cursor was not white or the map was larger – it would be possible without the questions: “Am I going?” Or “I’m lost?”. I must also mention the incredibly sensitive camera that can be controlled by touch or knobs. A slight movement in either direction caused the rotation almost 360 degrees.
There is a lot to do in the forest and its surroundings. And this we dig up the next rubbish that we sell, and this we look for royal coins and take pictures of the king’s emblem. Sometimes we come to the point where our pooch is too weak to perform a given activity. So we still have to remember to play and exercise with him.
Wrestling improves, among others. the strength of the grip on his jaw, which seems natural. Just like playing with a ball, which he retrieves better, or with other toys. These can be bought in the store, and the coins are obtained by selling the dug scrap. There are also points awarded for completing internal challenges. And it is enough to scratch the pooch until he is fine, and then go out with him and play. There is so much work to do that after two hours of play, my assistant gave the console back with a sad face. However, I did notice a problem with the dog’s behavior while she was playing. It is very good that there is a Polish language version, complete and very well done. But the pooch suffers from amazing ADHD and keeps throwing up other ideas. And it wants to play, to ask for scratching after 3 seconds, and a moment after that – to throw the idea of a walk. Of course, during the walk, he has a million thoughts and requests. What’s wrong with that? For a child it is too many messages at the same time. The excess of requests initially caused quite a confusion, and only after I explained that you don’t have to do everything the dog is asking for at a given moment, the game became calmer.
After all these experiences, I can confidently say that this is one of the best (if not the best) offers on PS Vita targeted at a younger player. Full polonization, a chatty dog that you can talk to (yes, Julia answered the dog every now and then, even though the game doesn’t read it for the most part) and have fun. Even if you run the title for an hour, it will be an hour full of fun. Older people have nothing to look for here, but it’s not a title for us.
