The wonderful virtual dogs are very charming, but this game gets stale quickly and the charm wears thin in a short time.
Right from the start Nintendo have really poured good ideas into it, like politely knocking on the door of the kennel with the stylus. Choose your pup and you are launched into an epic story involving two warring sides that fiercely battle throughout the land of *insert long complicated fantasy name here*.
Well yes, the DS is sort of a playground for innovation, and Nintendo have put the stylus, touch screen and microphone to good use. The stylus lets you affectionately stroke your dog, hold its lead, bath him, and throw sports objects such as tennis balls and frisbees. The microphone is a great touch, as the good voice recognition system easily lets you call your dog by its name and make it do all manner of tricks... all through your voice! Tell it to sit, shake, spin, roll over, lie down... the only drawback with this great feature is that you really can't play this on the bus or train, as if they see you shouting "Maxwell" or "Brian" into a handheld they will call the men in white coats and you will be locked up in a desolate asylum for the next two decades. Or, even worse, the bubble blower, which requires to blow into the microphone like you're forcing the dust off an ancient prehistoric relic you found in your grandmother's attic.
And while all this is very, very good and can certainly kick the crap out of anything the PSP can come up with in terms of creativity, there are a load of annoying hindrances in the game that really spoil what's otherwise a simply unforgettable virtual life sim. First there's the hunger, the thirst and the sheer neglection. Abandon this game and your dog will probably run away to the open arms of the RSPCA, and poor Lucky won't have an owner anymore, regardless of how much a cold-hearted sod he is. And then there's the feeling that there's essentially NOTHING HAPPENING. It's all kind of pointless and makes Nintendogs feel like a DS tech demo which shows off all its gizmos. I thought to myself after opening my thousandth tin of dry food, why the hell am I torturing myself by caring for a dog that doesn't physically exist?!? Why?!? And why am I not really doing much except walking a virtual labrador to the park and back for no apparent reason?!?
And all this hardship is made worse at how cute and innocent the dogs look. These are beautifully rendered blobs of canine adorableness, from the splendid animations to the brilliant way he cocks his leg up to mark his territory. It actually hurt when my dog ran away simply because I couldn't be bothered sparing any money for a water bottle. I'm so sad that I put Nintendogs at the bottom of a very deep pit and went to play some Advance Wars: Dual Strike, which I might add is the best DS game I've played so far.
There's a lot to learn in Nintendogs. One, owning a virtual dog is cute and memorable, but the core gameplay of the game isn't very good. Two, that the dogs are so cute it actually hurts when you put the cartridge away. I actually woke up in the middle of night and heard a dog crying out in a hurt way in my conscience, so much that I HAD to pick up my DS and find that Sheba had ran away. I really wanted to love this game, but at its heart, Nintendogs may as well have been called Nintendevils... they're cuite asnd remarkably, but look past the sheen and you'll find the dog is just a spiteful little sod.