cute little game

Author's Rating:

Pros: It's a cute game and it has great graphics.

Cons: I wish there was more you do with the dogs in the game!

The Bottom Line: 
It's a fun game to play for anyone of any age.

Author's Review
This game has such cute graphics. It starts out with a small variety of dog breeds and as you progress through the game, you can "unlock" different breeds. They allow you to have up to seven dogs at one time and if you'd like another dog after that, then you have to delete one of your current dogs, which I found disappointing, as I wanted to have one of each breed. You can train the dogs to catch frisbees and to run obstacle courses and also to do tricks, though training them to do tricks is somewhat difficult. You have to speak a keyword into the Nintendo DS microphone to teach the dogs the tricks but you have to say the keyword the exact same way each time (with the same tone and inflections), which is hard to do! If you don't say it in the same way then the dog won't recognize the word. There are lots of cute toys, collars, hats etc that you can find while out on walks with the dogs or buy at the pet stores in the little town. You can also change the decor of your house and I really liked the variety of styles of decor which the game had. The graphics were very nice. My only issue with the game is that there wasn't really a lot that you could do with the dogs and that you could not interact with anyone else over wi-fi unless you knew someone else who had the same game. Even then, the interaction was very limited. You could basically just visit them and their dog in a park setting and trade items. This game could have been a lot more fun if you could connect to Nintendo network over wi-fi and maybe compete in the contests with the dogs of other players from around the world or take your dog travelling to a town on the Nintendo network to see different scenery while out walking or buy different items in another store. Maybe Nintendo could add new items every now and then that could only be gotten at the wi-fi store.

The very limited dialogue of the townspeople characters in the game bugged me as well. They say the same things every time you talk to them. I also did not like that you HAD to talk to them every time you took your dog for a walk. That made the dog-walking rather tedious. Also, I still did not unlock some of the more fun rare items and the last dog breed in the game (a Jack Russel terrier) despite playing this game for many hours.