28th July 2005, 10:35 PM
Um GR, that was hardly an informed review. They only said "it sucked". I would imagine they would also hate Nintendogs.
Seriously, this does have graphics all over the latest in the Petz series (to the best of my knowledge), but in what way is this different? Describe to me, in no uncertain terms, how this is a totally different game.
ABF, Tamagotchi is actually even simpler. You don't even get to pet or play directly with the animals.
Petz has every single feature Ryan just listed. You have a playroom where the animals run around and romp about here and there. You have a large number of toys. You can interact directly with the animals. You have to feed them too, and train them to obey.
Okay, now I may be wrong on this. Maybe Nintendogs will truly trump Dogz in every single way and Ryan just didn't describe the truly great stuff.
But there is an easy way to test that.
Ryan, download the Dogz (or Catz if you prefer, whatever) demo. It's free and you can just ditch it when you are done.
http://petz.ubi.com/
That's right, it's an ubisoft game. That should tell you the quality to expect.
Now let me make something clear. When I first started playing around with Dogz and Catz 2 (I got it as a bundle so combining both into "Petz" was easy, you can let the dogs and catz play with each other), I got addicted. I played with those things for weeks on end, and from what I understand, the sequels would all update your petz so you wouldn't have to abandon them. This was when tamagotchi was around, so when I had the choice of carrying around a little egg that I could barely do anything with, and a game where I could pet the animal, pick it up by the scruff and shake it around (um, no, I didn't do that!), play with it, see what it wanted, let it run around and play while I worked on stuff (running around on the desktop isn't that much, but when you are addicted to the game, it's fun to see the little AI you are attached to suddenly start tearing up the icons). I could even mess with the cats using the catnip tree. What was really fun was seeing how they reacted to each other. Some of them really hated each other, or one seemed to like the other but it hated the first, and after some time, the second started to get used to the first and at least tolerate it.
Now, that all said, the graphics certainly aren't that great. Nintendogs has impressed me on graphics. For some reason, I thought they had already released Petz 6 which I had heard had the same kind of realism, so I wasn't that impressed at first, but now I am seeing as how that's not the case.
As for movements, with greater realism comes better movement, but the old petz had some pretty nice movement of their own, if a bit cartoony. The feeling Ryan gets of playing with an actual animal is exactly what I felt back then.
So basically I'm saying I'd like Ryan to give one of those demos a try and see how that compares with the demo he's already played.
Oops: Seems they have yet to make any demos for Petz 5, and so they probably never will. I guess we'll just be waiting for Petz 6.
All I can say is, eventually Petz "got old" for me. You can only play with fake animals for so long before you say "you don't have a SOUL!" and get totally bored with the whole thing. Last I remember, I gave away the two games to a relative (this was back when I still made that 'stanank). I may get back into it, but Nintendo screwed up by claiming this to be some entirely new concept. Relative to Tamagotchi and a world without Petz? Yes! But, since Petz HAS been made, though Nintendo is totally unaware of it, I must say this is nothing more than what appears to be the next step in "the series".
Seriously, this does have graphics all over the latest in the Petz series (to the best of my knowledge), but in what way is this different? Describe to me, in no uncertain terms, how this is a totally different game.
ABF, Tamagotchi is actually even simpler. You don't even get to pet or play directly with the animals.
Petz has every single feature Ryan just listed. You have a playroom where the animals run around and romp about here and there. You have a large number of toys. You can interact directly with the animals. You have to feed them too, and train them to obey.
Okay, now I may be wrong on this. Maybe Nintendogs will truly trump Dogz in every single way and Ryan just didn't describe the truly great stuff.
But there is an easy way to test that.
Ryan, download the Dogz (or Catz if you prefer, whatever) demo. It's free and you can just ditch it when you are done.
http://petz.ubi.com/
That's right, it's an ubisoft game. That should tell you the quality to expect.
Now let me make something clear. When I first started playing around with Dogz and Catz 2 (I got it as a bundle so combining both into "Petz" was easy, you can let the dogs and catz play with each other), I got addicted. I played with those things for weeks on end, and from what I understand, the sequels would all update your petz so you wouldn't have to abandon them. This was when tamagotchi was around, so when I had the choice of carrying around a little egg that I could barely do anything with, and a game where I could pet the animal, pick it up by the scruff and shake it around (um, no, I didn't do that!), play with it, see what it wanted, let it run around and play while I worked on stuff (running around on the desktop isn't that much, but when you are addicted to the game, it's fun to see the little AI you are attached to suddenly start tearing up the icons). I could even mess with the cats using the catnip tree. What was really fun was seeing how they reacted to each other. Some of them really hated each other, or one seemed to like the other but it hated the first, and after some time, the second started to get used to the first and at least tolerate it.
Now, that all said, the graphics certainly aren't that great. Nintendogs has impressed me on graphics. For some reason, I thought they had already released Petz 6 which I had heard had the same kind of realism, so I wasn't that impressed at first, but now I am seeing as how that's not the case.
As for movements, with greater realism comes better movement, but the old petz had some pretty nice movement of their own, if a bit cartoony. The feeling Ryan gets of playing with an actual animal is exactly what I felt back then.
So basically I'm saying I'd like Ryan to give one of those demos a try and see how that compares with the demo he's already played.
Oops: Seems they have yet to make any demos for Petz 5, and so they probably never will. I guess we'll just be waiting for Petz 6.
All I can say is, eventually Petz "got old" for me. You can only play with fake animals for so long before you say "you don't have a SOUL!" and get totally bored with the whole thing. Last I remember, I gave away the two games to a relative (this was back when I still made that 'stanank). I may get back into it, but Nintendo screwed up by claiming this to be some entirely new concept. Relative to Tamagotchi and a world without Petz? Yes! But, since Petz HAS been made, though Nintendo is totally unaware of it, I must say this is nothing more than what appears to be the next step in "the series".
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)