The part of Nintendogs that got everybody’s knickers in a twist, was the seemingly deeper level of interaction that you could have by using the stylus to control your actions. So just how would a virtual pet work on the PS3? Traditionally, while a controller pad works well for most genres, it’s hardly the most interactive or dynamic medium when dealing with a virtual pet. Enter, the PlayStation Eye. While you will still use the PS3 controller to play, most of your interaction will be with the PS Eye and the ‘Magic Card’.
You start off by being walked through the set up for your play area and you must have the PS Eye to play. We found our 'host' annoying, but maybe he's an acquired taste. The game blatantly assumes that your gaming setup is your atypical living room and asks you to make space for your pet. After calibrating the camera and settings, you then need to hatch your pet. Doing so is a rather overdrawn process that eventually yields a mogwai looking thingy. Your pet is a little tricky to describe. It’s not a cat, it’s not a dog and it’s not really a monkey, more a combination of the three.
Wah! It moves!
There are two primary ways to interact with your EyePet. Firstly, the reason that you have the PS Eye is that it will record your playing space, which is where your pet will roam. The Eye is there to pick up your hand gestures and any part of your body in the playing area will become an obstacle. The use of the technology to get your pet’s attention with gestures is really quite remarkable, even if your pet can sometimes have a poor attention span. Secondly, you have an item packed with the game called the Magic Card. Given the right situation and the right handling in front of the camera makes it a highly dynamic tool. It can basically become anything for the right situation, from your pet’s feeding bowl to a little pet shower to a launch pad. Basically, it’s a remarkably dynamic and flexible tool and an excellent implementation of recognition and interactive technology.
There are other very interesting uses of the technology. At a basic level, you’ve got a camera to take pictures with and can then share them. However, at a much more fascinating level, the game can recreate things that you draw. So basically, you can draw a car on a piece of paper, and with the camera, it will be recreated into the game. So then, you can drive around in your creation. Probably the most fascinating aspect is that your drawings can be dynamically recreated. So when you draw a car, it will not be a canned or premade model. However, we found that the recreation could at times be a little inaccurate, having spaces where there weren't any. Still, it was quite fantastic in what it did.
The activities for your pet are unlocked as you play. You have a series of ‘days’ to play through, where you start off with some of your pet’s basic activities and build to the more complex and dynamic stuff. You’ve also got some challenges using the things you’ve learned along the way. Once you’ve played through and completed an activity, it will become available for you to use whenever you want. As you play, these activities and challenges will unlock accessories and bits of clothing to dress up your pet. There are also options for changing your pet’s style, with the dreadlocks being particularly fun to watch.
Dance, skeleton boy. Dance!
While these possibilities may not excite someone who is excited by the like of the blockbuster titles of the season such as Uncharted 2 or Assassin’s Creed II, you’re not losing much with a below full retail price. Not to mention, this price includes the PS Eye. It’s not too shabby if you’ve got kids or a girlfriend to consider, even if it’s just to play around with the technology. However, there are some aspects that need to be mentioned before you jump in.
EyePet has some deeply fascinating technology working behind the scenes; The way you interact with your pet with gestures, the simple yet highly effective and dynamic use of the Magic Card and your own drawings being recreated in the game. However, it’s the kind of technology that only seems to be scratching the surface, as there is the distinct impression that it still could be done better. Namely, for every moment that you go “Wow”, there is moment where you go “So, what do I do here?” or waiting just behind it.
The most frustrating aspect of the game is that it’s often too difficult to tell whether you’re ‘doing it right’. So you’ll follow what the game tells you, and when it doesn’t respond, you don’t know whether it’s because you’re doing it wrong or because you’re five centimetres too far or forward, or your pet is being 'natural'. The game won’t tell you and it will happily wait until you eventually stumble on it. Furthermore, there is little clarity in a number of the objectives. So you’ll do what it says, but when it doesn’t complete, you’ve got no way of knowing what it is you need to do to complete. While you can get through this with patience, we all know that kids are unlikely to oblige. So while this technology is great while it works, developers really ought to concentrate on making it more flexible. Still, we did find that the game is more effectively played on a table top, such as a coffee table or in a large open space. Basically, you want your pet to fill up good space.
I'm a lion. Grrr!
It’s the deficiencies in the technology and the lack of feedback that make the game come off as something of an experiment. While the overall concept is something worth exploring in future games, the next step is to get the proper implementation going. As far as a virtual pet game goes, EyePet falters with it’s lack of evolution. There are a reasonable number of things to do, but you can get through them pretty quickly. the novelty of the new trick wears off while it’s not responding, it’s not as if the game can fall back on a constant stream of unlockable items or growth in the capabilities of you pet. That being said, there are more items to access over the PSN, some at a cost.
Interestingly, the look of the game will depend on how nice your playing area is… Seriously though, the exaggerated style and fabled pet give the game some more flexibility in being able to pull off a lot of what it does. This is opposed to being confined to the realistic needs of a cat or dog. There isn’t much to say about the game in terms of sound, through a few cutesy tunes and sound effects but these are likely to be replaced by the sounds made by you and who ever else is playing the game. Your host is a decent actor though.
There is a lot to like about EyePet. It makes fantastic use of new and existing technology to show that there is life in the virtual pet genre and that there are new and innovative ways to interact with games. It's the next step after Nintendogs. However, the brilliant and dynamic but inconsistent technology along with a lack of feedback will likely frustrate the type of audience that this is meant to appeal to. That, and the lack of evolution and things to do will likely stilt the play time as well. Still, for what the package offers, you’re not losing much if you just want to try out the technology and can’t resist the cute little critter, particularly if you don’t already have a PS Eye.
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