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The canine has been called man’s best friend for a good reason. No animal will show you
more devotion than a dog, and that includes humans. Now, there are a lot of households
that don’t allow their kids to have dogs, possibly for allergies or space, so it was
inevitable that games were going to start popping up that attempted to simulate the
experience of owning a dog. The most popular of these is Nintendogs, a smash hit by Nintendo
that was actually a really good pet simulator, giving you a 3-D dog in a great environment
with tons of stuff to do, but Ubisoft had been releasing games like this on their own.
This is Dogz, with a “z” for the Game Boy Advance.
The first thing Dogz actually has you do is pick your gender, name, and what features
you like in a dog. Now, I tried to make this pretty close to my dog at home, so I said
that I wanted a smaller, relaxed female dog. Your character is supposed to be 8 when you
get your first dog, and I was 10 when I got my first, but its close enough. You enter
the pet store and can pick from any number of different breeds that match your favorite
traits. Once you have the one you want, you take the dog home and give it a name. Given
the fact that this dog was going to be seen by all of you, I named her Review.
Gameplay in Dogz feels like a more restricted version of The Sims: Bustin’ Out for the
GBA. You walk around in your house, eat your own food, feed your dog, clean up after your
dog, and teach it tricks, among other things. Some of these tasks can be performed at your
leisure, but other things are asked of you by your parents at specific times, like coming
to the table. This is when I discovered that my virtual mother says “Bon Appé***”
before every meal. The game is all about trial and error. Your dog tends to be more free
with his or her initial bowel movements, so you’ll have to scold them. Training is also
a lot of perseverance and repetition, and after a while into the game, you’ll be able
to take your dog for a walk in the neighborhood. The game also uses stats that show how much
progress your dog has made in certain areas, and these will go up depending on how much
time you spend in each category, like sitting, lying down and toilet training.
My main issue with Dogz is that it doesn’t feel like it trusts the player very much.
I understand that dogs need to be fed at a certain time during the day, and that a third
grader needs to go to bed early, but I wish that the game would give me a little more
time to explore and try things out before telling me what I have to do next. It feels
very scripted, and that can take some of the fun out of a game that wishes to emulate the
feeling of having a living, breathing dog in your house. The game’s style of play
isn’t bad, but it doesn’t give the freedom to the player that I would’ve expected.
Visually, Dogz is pretty run of the mill for a Game Boy Advance game, with the standard
level of detail that you’d expect going in. Colors do look fairly nice in the outdoors
areas, though, and the dogs do have some personality in their faces. Audio is also fairly limited,
but the sound effects included for the dogs clearly illustrate what they want or feel.
Dogz is a game that separates itself from Nintendogs, which was released around the
same time, by giving you a little story in addition to having the dog, but it feels like
it doesn’t quite know which one it wants to put the emphasis on. The character elements
are actually kind of fun, but I wish that the game would decide what it wants to be,
instead of giving me a sample from a few different bowls of food.