Monster Rancher 2 - Full Review (PlayStation 1 game)

This is no ordinary virtual pet game and, despite comparisons to Pokémon, Monster Rancher has a defined identity with its own tantalizing hook; find your monsters by inputting your own CD disks into your console. Unlike typical ‘pet raising’ games you don’t buy them from shops or trek through jungles in search of powerful creatures. Instead you must put any audio or PS1 game disk into your PlayStation console and, depending on the disk, receive one of over 400 monsters with many of these only being acquired once you’ve earned the right to raise them.

Developer: Tecmo
Genre: Simulation
Release date: 2000
Platforms: PlayStation 1
ESRB: E –Everyone

‘Monster Rancher 2’ is arguably the most successful and popular game in the Monster Rancher series despite later editions boasting better graphics and additional features. Often compared to Pokémon, ‘Monster Rancher 2’, or simply ‘Monster Rancher’ if you have the European edition, puts you in the role of a certified monster breeder where your job is to train monsters to fight in arena style battles. This strangely enticing game has the potential to take up hours upon hours of your time and dozens upon dozens of your old CD disks as you try and unlock the hidden mysteries within your CD and PS1 game collection.

Gameplay and Story

After introducing yourself and taking a short personality test you’re thrown into the role of a certified monster breeder with your assistant, Colt, by your side. The story of Monster Rancher 2 is mostly non-linear with key events only occurring when you choose to engage in them or when you meet specific requirements. The game also never has to end if you don’t want it to as you can carry on playing even after watching the ‘end’ video so this is a fantastic game for the casual gamer. The general aim of the game however is to raise different monsters, unlocking rare breeds and rising through the 6 ranks by beating other monsters in tournaments and cups. 

Gameplay is split into different segments that mostly revolve around training your monster or battling other monsters. After finding and naming your monster, be that by purchasing one of the three available at the market or by finding one on any audio or PS1 games you happen to have, you take it back to the ranch with you. This unusual twist to the game is painfully addictive and you’ll find yourself rooting around the house for any old CDs that you still have but, in this new digital age, I personally lacked enough CDs to get a real variety. Frustratingly a lot of CDs contain a ‘rare monster’ that means you haven’t met the requirements to train it yet but, by playing the game and advancing through it, those rare monsters will be unlocked with enough time and dedication and if anything it gives you an incentive to continue playing. 

 

Almost every aspect of your monster’s training regime can be controlled by you including choosing what food it will eat at the start of every month, all of which have different effects, which drills they engage in or when they should go on an ‘errantry’. All monsters have a collection of stats to be raised; Life, Power, Intelligence, Defence, Speed and Skill but monsters exceed at these in different ways, for example some monsters are intelligence based rather than power meaning rather than brute strength they adopt entirely different attacks that focus on not just damage but reducing the ‘guts’ of their opponent. ‘Guts’ is what you need to attack your opponent so by reducing them in the enemy it means they cannot physically attack you and allowing you to chip away at their health gradually until they either die or the match is up. Battles are won by having a greater percentage of health at the end of the battle, whether or not you K.O your opponent doesn’t tend to come into it as matches are fought on a time limit. 

The battles can, admittedly, be frustrating as luck tends to factor into it quite frequently and often you’ll be battling against your monster’s unwillingness to listen to you. How many opponents you face depends on what kind of tournament it is and there’s a nice round mixture of tournaments where sometimes you’ll be fighting for the most wins and sometimes where you’ll only be battling two or three other monsters who were the winners of previous fights. Whilst occasionally battles can become repetitive there’s a huge variety of opponents that are genuinely quite challenging and, when you enter a new grade or start with a new monster, verging on impossible. Due to the quite steep rise in difficulty level as you rise through the ranks the game is kept constantly challenging and rewarding so there’s no worry of out-levelling any of your opponents without some serious dedication to training. 

The amount of interaction you have with your monsters fighting and training regime is kind of variable as during battles you can choose to control it yourself or allow your monster to fight by themselves. You will always see how the fight plays out but this effects your ability to select the techniques, when to select them and whether you advance or retreat during matches. You cannot use items during battles which may seem a little odd at first but, provided you use them outside of battle, there are still plenty of items that can be used though with unusual effects. Generally however these items don’t affect the outcome of a battle as that depends entirely on how well you’ve trained your monster and how well you can play to their strengths during a match. 

Training your monster involves drills or errantry but you can also select whether to train using light drills or heavy drills. Each light drill will raise a single stat whereas heavy drills will raise two and decrease one as well as tire your monster out faster. When you select which drill your monster will perform it takes an entire week and, with only four weeks in a month, you can at most only get away with three training sessions a month and with one week to rest. During the drills themselves you can either watch the scene of your monster engaging in it, for instance swimming around a course or enduring the force of huge battering rams pounding into them, or you can just skip the cutscene and get straight to the results. Your monster is not just limited to failing or succeeding; they may also cheat or exceed and this often reflects how they are raised or their individual personalities. The way in which you can praise or scold your monster is an added dimension and a contributing factor in how loyal your monster is to you, as well as how spoilt they may be. Monsters that are frequently scolded, refused praise, pushed too hard during training sessions or doing their individual ‘dislike’ such as feeding them something they hate or forcing them to battle when they dislike it will ultimately stress your monster out. A stressed out monster means that they will die sooner, are more likely to fall ill and will frequently be tired and unable to fight properly. Monsters that are stressed out or neglected may even run away and this usually occurs when they dislike you but, on the other hand, a monster that likes you and that has more loyalty is more likely to listen to you during battle. Unlike many ‘virtual pet’ games, if this can be considered that, the fact that the way you raise and train your monster has a huge impact on the game makes it all the more absorbing as sometimes your personality and training regime will clash with a monster. What worked with your previous, precious monster now no longer works for your brand new one who needs to be brought up to speed. What this results in is you and your new monster both hating one another and either this poor partnership continues or you change your tactic and adjust to the new personality and style of this new, baby monster.

A huge part of the game and one I particularly enjoy is the feature of combining your monsters into new ones and unlocking more disk stones. Your monster won’t last forever and, depending on the type of monster, will have a lifespan that will decrease depending on how stressed or mistreated they are. There’s no actual way to view the lifespan of your monster so sometimes it can come as a bit of a shock when you wake up one morning, open the barn and find them motionless on the ground. Combining monsters is something of an art and it’s fairly confusing at first as it can be temperamental. The basic idea is that you raise two kinds of monster, the same breed or different ones, you can only have one at a time but you can ‘freeze’ them which is essentially putting them in a cryogenic freezer to be defrosted whenever you want to use them again. Once you’ve got two fine specimens you can then combine them for a flat fee, this merges their DNA to produce you one new monster that is supposed to have traits from its parents including stats, personality and any techniques the parents learnt. To help push your combining in the right direction you can use special items that you’ve picked up from expeditions, won from battles or found in other way. Items can include bits of a broken disk stone which is basically an essence of another, possibly rare, monster. Your new monster will always be back at the lowest grade for battles, level E, but this is doesn’t mean he’ll be lagging behind as the monsters you fight in battles do not raise their stats so, just as his parents did, your new monster can climb the grades and attempt to become a champion. 

Graphics and audio

As PlayStation 1 games go, Monster Rancher is reasonably attractive though not especially detailed. The sprite animations for the dialogue are particularly nice however and each character you encounter has an original look so there’s no rehashes of models. Everybody, including your monster, rae rather animated in their emotions and what’s especially nice to see is that your monster’s personality shows through the way they express themselves and move around. There’s also a noticeable growth in monsters as they age and visual indicators like this are always appreciated. Depending on the breed of monster and the sub-species that they may contain they all look different; colours, textures and features like horns or spines may be integrated into a base monster’s original appearance and this diversity is critical to making each monster feel like an individual. The environments too are pretty decent though the ranch is very unfurnished and mostly consists of just an empty expanse of rolling green hills. The weather is done particularly well in the game and you’ll notice the change in seasons is quite apparent due to the level of light and little things like the hue of the grass, how rainy or stormy it is and whether there’s snow or not. Finally, the battle arenas and town areas are fairly well drawn however, even though most of the buildings in the market do remind me of a bunch of disturbing faces, but overall I’d say the graphics for the game are of a decent level of quality. 

The music is something I particularly enjoy in the game as it’s very atmospheric and, the battle music in particular, changes depending on what kind of tournament you’re playing. It’s a very memorable soundtrack that after several sessions of playing is likely to be stuck in your head forever. There’s no verbal dialogue in the game as everything is done via text but your monsters will make noises that reflect their mood so I guess that’s something.

Overall

There’s a great potential to get hours and hours of gameplay out of Monster Rancher and still not quite understand how the complex calculation system of combing works, but it’s fun all the same. Whilst the graphics aren’t exactly the game’s strong point and gameplay can become repetitive and uneventful there’ s still this sense of achievement when you raise your monster’s rank or find a new, rare creature. The game is a nice level of challenging but is still very accessible and I particularly love how connected you can feel to your monster and how you develop favourites, I hate Pixie’s for example because I personally believe they’re a bunch of spoilt brats who never do what I say and who cheat all the time. Ahem. The game is definitely addictive and extremely time consuming, the original spin of finding your own monsters by using your own disks from home is always a draw for me and there’s a lot of replay value in the game due to how different the monsters are. This is one of those games where you can play it for the long haul or for a short stint but, I warn you, it’s a rare find and will cost you more money than your average PS1 game. If you can pick it up for less than £20 I advise you to buy it, immediately, because it won’t remain that cheap for long.

The Good: 

• Original premise of using your own CDs
• Lots of personality
• Huge selection and of monsters
• Nice difficulty curve
• Addictive gameplay
• Monster combination very fun to toy with
• Monsters are very interactive
• Lots of hidden features to unlock rare monsters
• Some nice quirky events to break things up such as birthdays and expeditions
  

The Bad:

• Can become repetetive and boring
• Training your monster takes a long time
• Graphics are a little grating
• Could use more features and places to go

The Score: 7/10

Final thoughts: "This is the golden age of Monster Rancher, it's really fun, super addictive and just has bags of originality. It's not like Pokémon, I swear."

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Viva Piñata - Full Review (Xbox 360 and PC game)

'Viva Piñata' presents a tantalizingly unusual premise that you’ll either love or hate; attract a variety of Piñata creatures into your lovingly crafted garden on Piñata Island then tame, personalize and manage them all. These Piñatas come in all shapes and sizes but are all based off of real creatures though with quirky names that reflect a type of candy and a strange array of colours that may be changed, if you can figure out how. There’s no denying it, this is a very casual game for the causal gamer but despite its childish appearance it’s a charming and addictive game with great creative opportunities for those who enjoying gardening, designing and pet keeping.

Developer: Rare (Xbox 360) Climax Group (PC)
Genre: Life simulation
Release date: November 9th 2006
Platforms: Xbox 360 and PC
ESRB: E - Everyone.

Story and gameplay

There’s not a great deal of storyline though there is some attempt to explain what’s going on; you start by walking through a beautiful haven filled with flourishing flowers, trees and crops with piñatas flying overhead, prancing through the grass or drinking from streams and pools. In the centre of all this fluff however is a tiny plot of hard, cracked earth with a woman sobbing in the middle of it all. After comforting her you’re charged with using this plot of land as your own and to turning it from something that resembles the aftermath of an explosion to something more in tune with the surrounding area. You’re given a watering can that’s practically falling to pieces with rust and a shovel that looks like it’ll snap as soon as it touches the earth, armed with these two devices you’re instructed to get to work. The game is vastly open-ended with very few objectives once the tutorial is finished with and though it may appear to be a simple gardening free for all there’s a hidden structure in the way that you progress. As you begin your gardening career you’ll gradually unlock new titles, better equipment, more garden space and different seeds that allow you to garden in more complex ways.

Whilst initially you’ll attract low level piñatas that simply require you to have a certain amount of grass, dirt or perhaps a particular flower or vegetable you’ll soon catch glimpses of wild, black and white creatures as they prowl the outside border of your garden. Attracting the attention of huge eagles, magnificent lions or clumsy elephants will take time, dedication and maybe even a few sacrifices as, after all, the animal kingdom is not known for its kindness towards smaller, weaker creatures. You start out in a very restricted manner; confined to a tiny plot of dilapidated land that’s in need of some serious maintenance but once you’re removed all the junk, beaten out the cracks and grown a bit of grass you’ll be faced with an empty canvass for you to play with. You’re never thrown too far into the deep end yet you’re given just enough freedom to discover a gardening style by yourself. Do you start with patches of flowers and draw in butterflies and bumblebees or do you opt for a vegetable patch to try and allure some rabbits or mice? Either way they’re all low levelled but the way in which you advance and nurture your garden will have an impact on the creatures you’ll lure inside your newly developing patch. Piñatas will only enter your garden once you’ve met their individual ‘visitor’ requirements and, once inside they’ll develop an additional set of requirements in order for them to actually become a resident. Once you’ve finally convinced them that they should inhabit your garden they’ll move in, change into their true colours and settle down to enjoy themselves. Here, they’ll live, sleep, mate and attract other piñatas to become residents too or, if you choose, entertain people at parties should they be that lucky piñata that gets chosen. It’s, admittedly, a very strange concept but still a very entertaining one once you’ve become enthralled in the everyday drama that comes with managing a horde of cute, but ultimately wild, animals.

Although a huge part of the game consists of attracting and taming Piñatas the game is so much more than that and, if you feel like exercising your creative side, there’s huge opportunity to get inventive with your garden’s design. There’s a surprising amount of content packed into this charming game whether that’s levelling up to unlock new features or dressing up your Piñatas to increase their worth before sending them off to children’s parties. If you enjoy gardening then you’ll be delighted at the whole host of trees, crops and flowers you can nurture and at the vast difference a few drops of fertilizer can make. The variety in trees, flowers and crops is actually quite impressive and there are some lovely elements like the magnificent oak tree that, when fully grown, has a trunk that appears to be carved with the forms of many different species of Piñatas. Whilst the huge range of, not only flora and fauna but buildings to, may seem impossible to fit all into one garden due to a build limit of sorts you can have multiple gardens with the same profile. In this case, chocolate coins and your gardening level all pass over so you will still have access to everything that has been unlocked yet now with a completely empty plot of land. It makes sense to have multiple gardens as many piñatas are specialized creatures who will only live in certain environments that would be extremely difficult to integrate into an already beautified and designed garden. Large piñatas such as hippos require gardens that are mostly consisting of water, for example, so attempting to make 80% of your garden consist of lakes and rivers whilst speckled with bulrushes and water lilies will, quite naturally, naturally destroy any attempt you had at a designing a perfectly crafted flower bed and orchard.

You are not the only non-piñata resident on the island however and throughout the game you’ll be guided and helped by the local residents who offer services in shops and, if you pay for it, services in your garden such as weeding, gathering and as either watchmen or night watchmen. Whilst the first couple are pretty self-explanatory the presence of watchmen in the game is unusual as gardening and virtual pet simulation combinations tend to be of the peaceful variety, not this one. Amidst the everyday scraps and brawls that occur between piñatas that don’t get along you also have to contend with outsider aggressors such as sour piñatas, ruffians and the evil Dastardos who’s the ringleader of all of these. Sour piñatas can be made resident and turned into good variants of their sour selves but ruffians and Dastardos are evil for life. Whilst ruffians simply make a nuisance of themselves by dropping poisonous sweets for your unsuspecting piñatas to eat and throwing up land over rivers and pools you may make, Dastardos is actively violent. When your piñatas get sick, by losing a fight or eating something poisonous, Dastardos will show up and break them open with a stick, effectively killing them. Well, not exactly kill them as this is a nice place so rather than die permanently broken piñatas merely respawn as the black and white variety outside of your garden.

Whilst the standard way of keeping these antagonists away from your garden is by taming sour piñatas and using their special abilities to keep Dastardos distracted you can also buy special upgrades. The game’s in-game currency are, quite appropriately, chocolate coins which can be made by selling piñatas, building a mine and selling what you find within it or making and selling produce for profit. Chocolate coins can be put towards a huge variety of things such as garden items, fertilizer, piñata houses, special buildings, hirelings, fashion accessories for your piñatas, seeds, produce or special services like the doctor or the hunter who can capture piñatas for your garden. In order to keep track on everything that’s going on it’s useful to utilize the in-game journal which is there to not only provide backstory about the island and its residents but also to track your accomplishments and statistics such as whether you’ve achieved maximum growth for individual plants or how many piñatas you have in your garden. The journal brings to light several unofficial objectives as it lists each plant and each piñata with several checkboxes beside them all which are checked as you accomplish things such as finding each of the 3 variants for each piñata or romancing a species a certain number of times. A piñata variant occurs when you instruct your pinata to eat something and, after enough experimentation, you’ll find three different items that will change their colour into something else. Whilst this is of course simply aesthetic it’s a pleasant option to be able to discover more hidden elements within the game.

Part of what makes this game so enjoyable is not just the attention to detail and the open-ended, casual gameplay but also the charming personality of your piñatas themselves. It’s quite easy to form opinions on certain piñatas and pick out favourites as the way in which they interact with each other and the environment differs depending on the species. Syrupents, a snake type piñata, for example often start fights and can be quite stubborn to get rid of yet, if you perform special actions with them, can become entirely different creatures that are extremely useful. Many piñatas also enjoy wearing special accessories and, whilst some have the potential to enhance the piñata in some way or form, mostly it’s just to boost their happiness meter or to allow them to ‘romance’ one another. Swananas, for instance, enjoy wearing diamond collars and strutting about, honking snobbishly whilst Cinnamonkey’s are disturbingly human as they sidle about on two legs and who require a fez hat to allow them to breed. As an interesting addition you can also buy domesticated piñatas from one of the several shops as well as put down fencing to enclose them should they be something like chickens or sheep. Amongst all of this is the actual ability to send your piñatas to parties as, now and then, a crate will be given to you with the request for a certain type of piñata or just one of high worth. By packing your piñata off to a party you receive some ‘joy candy’ that makes piñatas happy in return but, what with everything else going on, this apparent ‘objective’ in the game is lost.

Graphics and audio

The artistic style of ‘Viva Piñata’ is both unique and extremely distinctive with its bold, colourful and patterned style. Whilst it may not be to everybody’s taste due to them appearing somewhat childlike it cannot be denied that, visually, ‘Viva Piñata’ is technically impressive and extremely advanced for the time it was brought out. There’s a very fine level of detail in the game that can only really be appreciate when you zoom right in as only then can you witness the growth of plants or admire the little augmentations strewn across buildings and clothing. Every blade of grass can be identified, the clouds roll by as the time ticks by in a well enforced day and night cycle and even your custom designed labels can be seen clearly on the bodies of your piñatas. Not one stone has been left unpolished and everything from the texture of the grass to the beautiful, vibrant scenery has been crafted to maintain that distinctive ‘Viva Piñata’ atmosphere. 

he music of the game is generally very soothing and not at all irritating though, for very long periods of play, it may start to grate a little. All of the Piñatas have their own individual sounds that tend to a little exaggerated such as a ‘peeping’ noise from worms or a strange, haughty honking noise from those uppity swans I mentioned earlier. The personality of the piñatas are all very well addressed in the sounds that they make but truly it’s the overall ambient noises from the gentle swishing of the wind, the hammering of the rain or the combined snuffling of your piñatas. Now and then there are some very abrasive noises such as when a sour piñata enters your garden or drops a poisoned candy but these simply serve as loud, audible warnings that something has happened and so in this sense are not particularly annoying.

Overall

Despite initial reservations ‘Viva Piñata’ is an undeniably good game with a great deal of personality and charm that’s simply hard to resist. With a very solid 30 hours or so playtime the game puts you in a position where you start caring passionately about taming all available piñatas and about making the perfect, piñata paradise. It’s an extremely casual game with some basic multiplayer support where up to four people control the same on-screen cursor and, whilst this is likely to not interest older games, is beneficial for parents and their children. Its very friendly demeanour makes it a great game for beginners with plenty of help at the beginning of the game whereas for those looking for more of a challenge I tell you this; just try and get a hold of a Dragon piñata, then tell me it’s not challenging.

The Good:

• Looks fantastic, very detailed, very vibrant
• Relaxing, casual gameplay 
• Deceptively challenging at later stages 
• Addictive and ‘collection’ orientated mentality of meeting all objectives 
• Fun for all ages 
• Unique and distinctive gameplay 
• Lovely audio and music 
• Multiple gardens a nice addition for allowing themed gardens 
• Piñatas are very charming, huge variety

The Bad:

• Co-op play limited to sharing the same cursor
• A lot less to do as you level up 
• Some autonomy happens as you employ staff making you feel a little redundant 
• Lacks any real storyline and objectives which could have given the game more structure

The Score: 8/10

Final thoughts: "This is quite possibly the best 'gardening' game I have ever played, despite there being an updated version of this game (trouble in paradise) I still find this one to be the most accessible."

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Lion Simulator - Full Review (MS-DOS game)

'Lion' is a type of life simulation game where you take on the role of a lion that may be either a solitary lion or one that is part of a larger group. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it’s like trying to survive as a lion in the African landscape then you’ll enjoy the highly realistic and highly enjoyable game that is 'Lion'.
 
Developer: Sanctuary Woods
Genre: Simulator
Release date: 1995
Platforms: PC, MS-DOS
ESRB: E - Everyone.  
 
Gameplay and game modes

Lion has two primary modes of play; a scenario mode and a simulation mode. There’s an additional mode that’s called ‘Safari’ which is actually just an educational resource about lions, presumably to make this game more attractive to parents who feared their children were just frivolously pretending to be big cats. The Safari mode is extremely extensive with voice overs, information and pictures in what is basically an interactive encyclopaedia. The scenario mode has objectives that you must complete and has a very strong roleplaying element as it also comes with background information on what has recently happened. Sometimes you are trying to find food for your three cubs who trail around behind you whilst you yourself struggle to keep going, other times you’ve been cornered by a group of hunters and must quietly slip away without being shot. The gameplay is varied due to these objectives and also pretty challenging. When you’re starving hungry, unable to find water anywhere and desperately need to sleep it’s extremely difficult to keep going and the sense of urgency that comes with it is highly immersive. 

The scenario mode and the simulation mode are both played from a birds eye view of the area which I prefer over ‘over the shoulder’ type cameras as this way you can see what’s happening around you at all times. The scenario mode’s use of objectives is really the only difference between that and the simulation mode as they require you to complete the objective before time runs out or the game ends. Simulation mode strips away these time constraints and you can just go about your business which generally means resting, drinking, eating, not being killed and living a prosperous lion life. Whilst simulation mode is generally where you’ll be advancing your social status or increasing the size of your pride you won’t have to do these things for the scenario mode, unless it’s the specific objective you have been set. 

Staying alive isn’t necessarily easy however as you live somewhere between the Masai tribes and the wilderness of the savannah. You could always try stealing the Masai cattle but it’s not recommended as they have spears and they want to keep their cows. Since the Masai don’t want to share their food with lions you need to either scavenge off of already dead carcasses or hunt down your own meals, though that requires a great deal of energy. Thankfully you don’t just have to rely on what you can immediately see on the screen; you have access to a plethora of lion senses to help you survive in this harsh wilderness of a landscape. These senses can be used via either keyboard hotkeys or by using the bar at the bottom of the screen that also includes your stats and a mini-map. By using the bar the game is automatically paused so you can click around and freely use your mouse without moving your lion who is usually controlled by the mouse, not the keyboard. Hearing and scent are extremely important as they will point you in the direction of valuable resources like food and water. Some animals are far too large for you to catch on your own and are more likely to crush you than nourish you. When you’re just a single, solitary, hungry lion you need to be a little selective about which animals are worth wasting your energy on. The easiest way to catch prey by far is to sneak up on them. By using your mouse you control how fast your lion is moving and you can also make them crouch so that rather than walking up to a giraffe you’re sneaking up to them, making use of the environment’s natural cover like trees and bushes. If your prey notices you then you’ll have to sprint, full pelt, and try to slash them as soon as you’re on top of them, this is no easy task as lions have fairly low stamina. The game also employs a tally for each lion, which is basically how many animals they’ve killed that’s broken down into individual species, meaning you can see which member of your pride isn’t pulling their weight. 

Of course, all that running to catch a zebra is going to tire you out and make you thirsty. Sleeping is easy, you can sit or lay down whenever you want to though you should make sure you’re in a safe area first or else have to groggily escape from a group of tribesmen or poachers. Water on the other hand is rare, we are in the savannah after all, and you can quite literally spend days trying to find a watering hole or river. It’s an incredibly realistic representation of the struggle that African animals have to go through and, when you finally find the water, the sight of dozens of other species of animal also quenching their thirst there is not only surprising but really quite lovely. Keeping yourself fed and watered as you try and complete your mission objectives sounds easy, but it’s not and it does require a bit of practice to realize just how far you can push yourself before you become too weak to survive. To make matters worse there’s also mankind to contend with. From time to time you will encounter hunters who, if they spot you, will most certainly shoot you. They’re incredibly dangerous but fairly slow moving so as long as you’re aware of where they are at all times you should be ok. 

The simulation mode has the exact same form of gameplay only without objectives or time restrictions. At the beginning of a simulation mode you can adjust the settings for each new game such as the weather, the density of prey, the number of poachers on the map and how long the game will run for which can be anywhere between six months to infinity. You then select which lions you’d like in your pride by looking through a number of female and male lions each with their own strengths and weaknesses in the fields of endurance, hunger and strength. These lions are all named and have backstories to make things a little more immersive. In simulation mode you have greater freedom and can try and improve your own social status if you like. That means for male lions starting your own pride or taking over a pre-existing one. You can find and then try and overthrow the leader of another pack before mating with others and having some cubs. You can then raise those cubs; keeping them safe, fed and watered so that they may grow up to be lions themselves and to keep your pride going strong. There are not many games that require you to take on the role of a hungry lion who is desperately trying to impress a lioness in order to mate with her, but then again there are not many games like Lion.

Overall

If you’ve ever fancied trying out what it’s like to be a lion for a bit then you may as well give this game a go. The graphics are reasonably attractive with highly detailed animals and some nice little features like vultures above carcasses and scrubby bushes. Whilst they are just normal VGA and nothing spectacular the game still looks fairly appealing, nicely coloured and detailed enough to do the job. The transition between day and night is brilliant with sunrises and sunsets whilst the change in weather adds a much need variation to the otherwise dry and yellowed landscape. Though I find the simulation mode a little boring due to the repetitiveness of gameplay I found the scenario mode interesting and varied enough to play through a couple of times. Since I kept dying I can only assume I’m either a terrible lion or the game is actually pretty challenging but it’s still a great game that you can get a few hours play out of before it loses its initial edge. Overall though this game is such an old gem that it’s instantly appealing for those who like a good simulation game or who just really like animals. 

The Good:

• An actual lion game! Where you're a lion!
• Varied objectives and levels
• Very customizable sandbox level
• Lovely, quaint graphics
• Suprisingly challenging
• Responsive, intelligent AI
• Scoring system adds in competetive play
• Very detailed use of lion senses

The Bad:

• A little difficult to control your lion
• Could do with a greater variety of sounds
• Sandbox mode becomes boring after a while

The Score: 7/10 

Last thoughts: "I never knew animal simulation games could be this well made, I wonder if Wolf is just as good..."

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Goat Simulator - Quick Review (PC game)

Before I begin, let me ask you a question; have you ever wanted to know what it's like to be a goat? Of course you have, everybody has, so you'll be pleased to know that this game is a goat simulator; simulating the everyday life of a goat. But not just any goat, this goat is a super speedy, super destructive, super 'what the actual hell is going o- OHMYGOD' goat. 

I think it's tongue is coming out of its nose, is that normal for goats?

Goat simulator is by no means a serious game so for those of you hoping to be munching grass and scratching your ears I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. This goat simulator is designed to play as an extremely broken, surreal and glitchy game and you'll very quickly notice the intensely rag doll animations and overtly exaggerated gameplay. In this game you can bounce off trampolines and air vents, perform flips and tricks, glitch your way to the top of a construction site, ram your head through supposedly solid objects and lick passing humans with an ultra sticky tongue, allowing you to drag them around like deflated jellyfish.

The unfortunate reality of owning your own trampoline.

The game has numerous areas where the core aim is to rack up as many points as possible by destroying as much as possible. The goat has rag doll like physics meaning you can send him flying in every which direction with not much adherence to little things like gravity or bones. If anything it’s pretty similar to an old Tony Hawk game as, whilst catapulting through the air, you can perform tricks to earn even more points.  The best way of getting points though is by destroying things and almost everything can be demolished with your furry hide. Is there a point to this game? Not really, it's very much a sandbox game and it's designed purely to maximize fun without any real objectives or constraints. The game plays like a sandbox game because you can basically do anything and go anywhere you want, no matter what the obstacle. Want to push people into the road so they get hit by trucks? Go ahead, climb up onto roofs then flip off them onto trampolines to string together a series of goat-style combo moves? Why the hell not. The freedom is really refreshing and I just love a game without boundries even if you have to suffer with extreme glitchy-ness to experience it.

Go wherever you want and pass out from sheer enjoyment.

In case you’re looking for meaning in this game there’s a lot of hidden collectibles dotted about throughout the levels which add a bit more depth to the game and which encourages you to explore all the areas. There are 'quests' though this is far from resembling any form of actual RPG game and also achievements for doing particularly impressive things. There’s something crazy awesome about finding a mask that summons up demons to help you in your destructive conquest. The only real drawbacks of the game has to be how glitchy and broken it is; though they may be partly the point as a lot of glitches can be exploited to make everything even more unbelievably funny. The graphics are fairly realistic and a cross between the latest Sims and an older GTA game with great urban environments nestled in amongst the farmyard ones. The animations are coupled with tinkling fairground type music that adds a whole new level of surreal to this quirky, senseless game.

Everything the light touches, you can go to. And also the shadowed bits. Generally it's open world.

Overall, I’d say this game is well worth the modest price they’re asking for as it’s a great laugh to motor around in a goat that feels more like a skateboard. You’ll get plenty of laughs out of this one and I’m pretty sure this is going to become a staple of Let’s Plays everywhere as it’s not only awesome but memorable too. If you're still not convinced, check out the trailer below, I'm sure this'll answer any lasting reservations you may have.

Score: 7/10

To discover more of my PC game reviews, check out this page here.

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Zoo Tycoon 1 - Quick Review (PC game)

This game is Zoo tycoon the way it should have remained; good, simple fun. If you read my review of the latest Zoo Tycoon game for the Xbox consoles, found here, you'll know I hated it with a passion due to its lack of customization options. In this original game, that's one of the best features.Though everything may not be extensively detailed and with 3D interaction it’s still a fantastic and addictive game. This classic tycoon game is about building up a zoo and managing it to success, there is no limit on what you can build and the animals you can keep so you can fill your park right up. It’s all shot in an isometric view which makes it easy to see what’s going on and, despite the camera being fairly limiting on how much detail you can see it’s still enough to know where everything is at any given time. The graphics were, for its time, really good and even though they’re dated now they still look pleasant enough and is very similar in style to simulation games like Rollercoaster tycoon 1 and 2. Despite some graphical drawbacks the game is still nice and detailed and every animal looks just like the real thing. Guests differ from each other in only in their shirt colour and generally they just meander around and make gasping and ooh’ing noises at the animals.   

Not only fine looking but fun and educational. If you don't want to be educated, just ignore it.

Money isn’t a problem in this game as there are plenty of cheats to bolster your funds but if you want to play the game as it was intended then there are plenty of campaigns to keep you occupied, many of which are genuinely challenging. The campaigns often revolve around a theme such as conservation or trying to breed extremely rare and exotic animals like pandas or panthers. The variety of animals is immense and you very quickly unlock more, along with different kinds of foliage, buildings, exhibit features and decoration as time progresses. The addition of the expansion packs makes everything that much better and allows you to keep dinosaurs in immensely robust enclosures or, if you have the marine expansion pack, keep aquatic creatures like dolphins, sharks and whales. You can fund research into developing new, special things like additional shows for animal houses, rare animals and foliage, staff improvements and special toys for your animals that are necessary to keep them happy and occupied.

The game is surprisingly educational and you will most definitely learn a lot about animals from playing this, though it’s not in your face informative so it doesn’t feel like you’re being bombarded with facts about things. All in all, the educational aspect of it is optional as most information is contained in a separate tab. Keeping your animals and guests happy can be a bit of a struggle if you’re not used to this type of gameplay though as they often require very specific conditions. The happiness of the animals depends on the suitability of their exhibit and often requires an exact amount of foliage, terrain level, rocks, terrain types, animal house and a toy if they’re a playful sort of animal. To help you build the exhibit you will see the animal approve or disapprove of things you add to the exhibit and you can add and remove until it’s satisfied. It can be quite hard to get an exhibit perfect for particular animals who seem designed to be ultra-fussy, especially the mountainous creatures.

Unintrusive menu system, lovely isometric camera, fashionably dressed guests.

Guests are pretty easy to manage; they get hungry, thirsty, tired and bored by walking around in the park for long periods of time. You can keep them entertained with restaurants, fancy scenery, gift shops and interactive buildings like a petting zoo or elephant ride. All guests have a favourite animal, which is a nice addition, so they’ll be extra excited to see if you’ve got one of those in your zoo. There’s so, so many different items you can put in the park and you can very easily set themes across your zoo with special items and buildings for styles such as Japanese, snowy, jungle ruins, Mexican and desert. There’s something nice about being able to put down Aztec style temple restaurants and flaming torches among your Jaguars and Orang-utans.

Choosing where to put your own paths, what a revolutionary idea!

Overall this game has aged brilliantly and is as much fun now as it was when it was first released. It plays great on newer operating systems so there’s no worry about compatibility. Though the graphics and ability to interact directly with the animals is not present in this original version it just goes to show that you can strip away all the fluff and still be left with a game that is fun to its very core; no frills, just a great game. If you like simulation games that include animals or a system of management
then you’ll likely enjoy this retro pc game.

Score – 8/10

If you're currently playing Zoo Tycoon (Complete Collection or otherwise) then you may want to check out my list of cheats, codes and unlockables found here. 

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Dog's Life - Game Review (PS2 game)

I think it’s safe to say there’s no game quite like Dog’s Life . It’s such a weird and original game that takes a fairly common idea; play an animal, and somehow makes it great fun with surprisingly varied gameplay.  It admittedly consists of a lot of mini-games but they’re manageable in number, quite diverse and fun to play so I don’t mind them at all. The game itself is childish but fun and though aimed at young children I’m still enjoying it now, at 22 years old. Whether that’s down to the game or my own immaturity is yet to be decided.

Yeah, you wish the graphics looked this good.

The main plot is surprisingly gruesome for a children’s game; you’re a farm dog called Jake who’s used to living a fairly comfortable life but who has failed to grab the romantic attention of neighbouring female dog, Daisy.  One morning, Daisy is then suddenly captured by a couple of dog snatchers. Jake attempts to save her and finds himself captured along with her and shoved in a cage in the back of a van. There’s a moment of sad realisation as the two captive dogs stare out at each other through the bars of their cages then, as the van goes over a bump, Jake is thrown from the van and the cage breaks open, allowing him his freedom. Unfortunately, Daisy wasn’t so lucky and she is driven off to some unknown location whilst Jake nurses his, most likely permanent, head injury. As Jake regains consciousness he vows to find Daisy and bring her back to the farm, Jake doesn’t know it yet but Daisy’s fate is… spoilers… to be turned into cat food by a dog-hating business owner called ‘Miss Peaches’. Think, the farmer’s wife from Chicken Run or… Mom from Futurama. Only this one turns pet dogs into cat food, which is kind of worse than the Chicken Run premise if you think about it. You’ll be playing Jake as he journeys to find out where Daisy’s been taken and to rescue her from her grisly fate.

Gameplay

Storyline aside, now that you’re a dog you get to do lots of new, dog related things. If you were unable to this would be a pretty rubbish game so it’s great to see that the developers went overboard with the dog activities. You can dig holes, beg for food, bark at cats and chickens, mark your territory, use your snout to track down things, knock over bins to snuffle about for any scraps, play tug of war with other dogs… there’s a fair bit to do and it’s a great laugh to bumble around like an idiot mongrel. There is, of course, stuff to do to progress with the storyline and it generally revolves around bones, pretty appropriate for a dog I guess. Despite there being only three main places you’ll visit; the rural place, the ski resort and the city there’s a lot more to explore than that. Each of these three places are divided up into smaller areas and each of these smaller areas have missions, mini-games and its own local dog that comes with its own special ability. Local dogs are important; you’ll compete against them and you’ll also need to befriend them by impressing them with your doggy skills. Take a rural area that consists of a lake and a lumberjack’s home; he owns a Dalmatian dog that is remarkably good at swimming, living by a lake and all that. By befriending this Dalmatian you get to possess him and nab yourself a bone that only Speckles can retrieve. 

Now this is more like it.

Collecting bones isn’t just about your own personal gluttony, it’s actually an essential gameplay component because you need an increasingly higher number of the meaty treats to access new areas and thus progress through the storyline. As you enter different areas the local dogs will also have a greater number of bones, meaning that they’re stronger than you and will not only be harder to beat in challenges but will be un-controllable until you have more than them. You can grab bones by completing mini-games that consist of stuff like territory capture, tug of war, races, pursuit challenges and other things like that. Another way of earning bones is by helping out humans as you progress through the game, each area has two or three humans that need help with something or other.  The missions are all fairly different from one another though retrieving something is a pretty common theme such as filling a basket with eggs scared from chickens so some local kids can pelt a butcher, fetching someone’s runaway kittens whilst trying not to let the other ones escape and finding a lost axe by following the scent footprints of the lumberjack. Sometimes bones are found hidden in special places or are buried underground and to find them you’re best off using your nose.

Dog’s Life features a pretty cool feature where you can go into first person perspective and see the world as different coloured scents on an otherwise muted background. This is appropriately called ‘Smello-O-Vision.’ Some scents are hovering about in the air where the colour of the scent means it’s for a different purpose. For instance, collecting four red ones will start a ‘simon says’ type mini-game whereas collecting all 50 purple scents of an area will give you another precious bone.  Smello-O-Vision also shows up the footprints of dogs and humans which are useful for following where they have recently gone.

Totally realistic representation of what dog vision.

 Each area has around 8 or 9 bones to collect, four scent related challenges, a couple of hidden ones and the rest will be set by missions. Everything is all fairly manageable and you won’t feel swamped with the task of completing everything since you can easily bypass several tasks if you want to just get into a new area. This is especially useful if you find one of the challenges particularly difficult as you can usually skip over it and just make up your bone numbers elsewhere, so no big deal. You can keep progress of how many bones you’ve collected in one area and how many are left to collect by checking in the main menu, which features a scrap book of areas along with everything you need to know.

Despite it not being difficult you’re not free to do whatever you feel like at no danger to yourself, Jake can take damage. If you’ve taken damage you’ll know about it because Jake will plod about slowly with his ears down and his whole body slumped, he’ll be unable to jump effectively which makes continuing on in this fashion basically impossible. If you can’t be assed to beg for food you can usually find more by knocking over bins and boxes or stealing it off meat counters in the town and city regions. In these more built up regions there are these weird little salons where you can undergo a fairly intensive grooming session so Jake looks all clean and shiny. By running about so much you get a lot of mud and dirt up you so sometimes it’s nice to freshen up and get a new collar design. In the rural areas you can chase chickens and, if you’re feeling particularly barbaric, pick them up and shake them until their feathers fall off and they drop a dog treat (no, I don’t know why either). You save the game by sleeping in a dog house that also conveniently comes with a bowl of dog food beside it that you can munch on if your earlier scrounging activities didn’t produce anything to eat. Overall, there are a lot of dog related interactivity bits included in the game but the core portion of gameplay is the mini-games and the collection of bones.

Controls

Though the game is, by no means, hard, that’s not to say it isn’t without it’s difficulties. Dog’s Life is one of those games where you need a very fine hand on otherwise awkward to manage controls, when you’ve only just started playing you’ll find that the camera has a mind of its own and you’re your movements are less than smooth. Jumping from ledge to ledge a bloody nightmare and it’s very easy to overshoot, causing Jake to fall off and get hurt. The camera is diabolical and seems to have a mind of its own. It can be operated by the right analog stick and looking up and down is pretty extreme; straight up at the sky or down into the mud but you do get used to it after you’ve spent enough time in the initial area.  You’ll probably find that the easiest way to manoeuvre certain parts of the game, especially tightly confined areas, is to just go into Smell-O-Vision since it offers you a first person perspective.

Jake jumps like he’s drugged and runs like a drunken maniac so, combining the two, does make for some very interesting situations. When you’re trying to do all this, when it’s timed, during a race, you may find yourself getting frustrated at Jake’s sluggish and sporadic movements. Admittedly though, it is a fairly realistic representation of a dog’s movements if my pet Labrador is anything to go by. The controls are otherwise easy to manage though; button taps for interactive things and the D-pad for things like sitting, laying down, performing tricks and relieving yourself. The multiple of tricks you can learn are all listed for you in the menu so you don’t have to remember them all which does make things easier.

Graphics and environment

So let’s talk graphics, it’s a PS2 game so the graphics aren’t exactly beautiful to look at but, baring in mind this came out in 2003, they’re fairly reasonable. Around the time there were better graphics available for PS2 and this one is just slightly above the level that PS1 was working at but, frankly, the graphics aren’t terrible and they get the job done. The game looks bright and fun, it’s a very vibrant and colourful game and the dogs are really well designed so you can tell the different between the breeds really easily. There’s quite a lot going on in the areas so the game doesn’t feel at all bare, every area has features that are appropriate to it and, overall, everything is quite detailed.

I mean that's not too bad is it?

It can’t be ignored though that everything is a choppy, non-textured and straight edged and that the humans in the game look hideously blocky and malformed.  For what it is however, the graphics are adequate and there are nice efforts made in certain areas like deep snow, fish jumping and visibly swimming in a lake and little critters running about between the trees. Overall, the graphics are reasonably suited to the kind of game this is and you probably won’t care that the people look like they’re made out of cardboard and the grass looks like cheap carpet. 

Oh my GOD. I take it back!

So as I've mentioned the game consists of three main areas; Clarksville, Lake Minniwahwah and Boom City. Lake Minniwahwah is a ski resort, Clarksville is a rural area  and Boom City is just that; a city. Each of these three main areas are divided up into smaller areas like districts and farms and this makes the environments genuinely different and interesting. Lake Minniwahwah has plenty of snowy areas with icy lakes and terrain that is both frustrating and painful, especially when you have a time limit on collecting scents on a huge, very icy, lake. 

Music and audio

The dialogue in this game is reasonably funny, if you’re not taking the game too seriously. There’s quite a lot of toilet humour since it’s aimed at younger kids and since dogs are filthy creatures. If you’re not into that then you can easily bypass it as it’s not a constant in your face type deal, just now and then there are some pretty gross things going on. The game has funny bits of audio that often have underlying adult themes, for example a sleeping grandpa will wake up when you bark at him exclaiming various things like, “no officer I found her like that, dressed up in this shiny tight red… oh, hello Jakey...” Jake often breaks through the fourth wall as well, exclaiming things to the player like “I lost? Are you playing with oven gloves on?” which keeps the tone light and humoured, if anything this isn’t a game that takes itself too seriously.

You can gamble! Not really, this isn't a Rockstar game you know.

The voices could be a lot better; Jake’s voice doesn’t suit him in the slightest and the voice acting is pretty bad but, after a while, you get so used to it you stop noticing. The dialogue is generally pretty cheesy and sometimes repetitive and annoying but usually people have a multitude of different lines so unless you hover around them for long periods of time, you won’t notice the receptiveness. Everyone has a voice though, if that’s a good thing, and even the average Joe in the street has something to say. Though they’re only really voiced to respond to your actions like whether you’re pissing on their leg or pawing at them for food. As a point of interest, a voice actor has literally got the record for the most characters voiced by one person; 32 characters were voiced by Kerry Shale so in that sense it kind of makes sense why some of them sound so… unusual.

The music itself is quite pleasant and offers a nice background buzz that’s non-intrusive and varies from area to area. The music is always well suited and pleasant as a backdrop to the gameplay and tends to have a happy, carefree vibe to it that’s appreciable during play.

Overall

This game is genuinely fun and quirky to play and can give you a surprising number of hours’ worth of play if you do everything and don’t bomb through the storyline. It’s a great game for younger players as it provides reasonably challenging and diverse gameplay with the unique feature that you’re a dog, able to do dog related things. The storyline is reasonably engaging and the ending is worth seeing, given the grotesque nature of Daisy’s fate should you give up halfway through the game. Although the mini-games sometimes repeat on themselves it somehow doesn’t get repetitive and boring but instead manages to maintain originality by mixing things up a bit in new environments and with new challenges. The audio could be a lot better and the graphics are a bit dire but if those things don’t mean the world to you then you’ll manage just fine with them the way they are. Nowadays this game is super affordable to buy and is really worth the money if you fancy a jaunt about in this weird little game. If anything, it’s a great way to relieve stress and frankly, just talking about it makes me want to play it some more. 

Score – 6/10  

Gumball before you leave?

If you're playing this game or thinking of playing it then maybe you'd like to use the cheats or hints available for Dog's Life, found here.

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