Animal Paradise
Put this one down
Tags: Animal Paradise Categories: DS Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on May 6th, 2009
Photography-centric games are uncommon, but when they show up, they’re usually pretty damn good. Pokemon Snap, Fatal Frame, Beyond Good and Evil, Dark Cloud 2… these are all games that utilized photography as a gameplay mechanic and were much better games because of it. The latest photographic game, Animal Paradise, on the other hand, breaks this chain by being a game about animal photography that doesn’t actually let you photograph the animals in question. Instead, you’re merely going through a few simple minigames to get them ready.
This might not be quite so bad if these minigames were worthwhile, but they’re really the most inane and basic of activities. Scratch the screen to pet the animal. Drag food to his mouth to feed him. Point to where you want him to run to walk him. There’s no skill, no challenge – just chores to complete. It’s like all of the work of owning a real animal with none of the fun.
At the very least the graphics and sound are decent enough – the animals (and there’s a good variety of them) are all rendered in 3D with a realism that, while not nearly as good as Nintendogs, does at least approach it. And the music does at least manage to remain mostly unmemorable and unoffensive.
In the end, though, this feels like a game where the core gameplay has been removed, and all that’s left is the filler surrounding it. There’s just not enough actual game here to be of interest.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
| + The animals all look nice | 3.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- There's only minigames here, and not many of them at that - The minigames are as simplistic and boring as minigames could possibly be |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| The animals may look cute enough, but there's not enough game here to make this title worthwhile. | |
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Tags: Animal Paradise
Posted by Jake McNeill on May 6th, 2009 and is filed under DS Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
