| Nintendo
RUFF RUFF>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Nintendogs has hit the scene today, and our copies dropped right on my desk early this morning. Copies, plural, because, if you've been following the news on this hot Nintendo DS release, you'd recall that Nintendo's pulled a Pokemon and issued three different editions of the Nintendogs design.
Naturally, I could have my choice of any of the fifteen dogs in the game because I own all three copies of Nintendogs, but because I have a soft spot for the German Shepherd breed, I popped in the Miniature Dachshund & Friends version of Nintendogs. In this version of the cartridge, I could choose the Dachshund, Yorkshire Terrier, Miniature Schnauzer and a Pug, but nope, it's a German Shepherd for me.
The game's interface is nearly entirely in Japanese, but because of all the visual clues the designers put into the game, it's not hard to figure out how to get started. After a breed has been chosen, you're then faced with the choice of either a female or male of different fur tones. You get three different ones to choose from, and you can see their subtle behavior before you take your pick.
So, I acquired a female German Shepherd, and after about five minutes of petting it and letting it get to know me, it was time to name her. Because you'll have to constantly call the dog over, the puppy needs to know this name. A "light bulb" icon pops up whenever the dog's ready to learn a voice command, and the first command is its name. It took me only three tries for the game to register the name I gave my dog -- Shiba -- since the voice recognition needs to calibrate the voice command based on the subtle differences of how you say that same word.
The first trick the dog learned, by default, is "Sit." When the dog does something that's considered a "trick," a light bulb will pop up so the player can offer a voice command for that particular move. The puppy won't do this trick immediately after hearing your voice command the first time; it will take at least three times of the dog doing the move and you saying the same exact command before he or she will know that "Sit down" means "put your butt on the ground." I went easy on my dog and made sure that the sit command made sense, but there's nothing stopping you from saying "Potato Pancakes" to mean the same thing.
Once the dog learns her name and the sit command, everything else is open-ended. In only a day, I taught Shiba how to "shake paws" by lifting her foot with the stylus. When Shiba started to wag her tail in excitement, I turned that into a trick as well with the voice command, "Wiggle your butt."
REVIEW BY IGN. |
