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Pet Pals: Animal Doctor
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Graphics & Sound:
I decided to review Pet Pals: Animal Doctor myself because I love animals, always wanted to be a vet, and consider myself pretty handy with caring for animals' medical emergencies, of which I have had too many personal experiences. So I was really looking forward to checking out Animal Doctor and seeing what it offered. Unfortunately, it was not everything I had hoped for.
In the presentation department, the characters aren't too bad graphically. Animals look like they should and people are okay. However, the pet owners are completely annoying. Maybe this is intentional? Animal Doctor's cases were written by real life vets, so is this how my vet sees me, I wonder? A blithering idiot who shouldn't be allowed to care for a box of macaroni and cheese, much less a living creature dependant on me? I hope not. These pet owners were so annoying, I wanted to get them on the table and go at them with the scalpel. From the stereotypical Latin lover-man who insisted on hitting on one of the vet techs... and asking about her every time he called and left a message on my answering machine, to the white girl who could barely speak above a whisper and was unsure of everything she said or did, to the arrogant black female doctor who insisted on calling herself a "real" doctor and tried to diagnose her pets' illnesses on her own. At least the first time she came in.
As if the characters and what they say weren't annoying enough, their voices are really grating. Again, animals sounded appropriate, but not as responsive as I would have liked. I know my cat or dog is never happy when they get a wound cleaned or they get a shot and there's usually an audible cue to go along with that in real life. But not necessarily here. The pets just whimper or mew from time to time. Background music is decidedly Muzak/elevator inspired, but was adequate and got the job done. After all, I don't recall hearing any hip hop in my vet's waiting room, come to think of it.
Now, back to the pet owners - these people were stupid and annoying and you'll want to turn the volume down. Unfortunately, you are forced to ask them silly questions and listen to their answers. And even if the problem is fairly well evident when the patient presents to the clinic, you are docked points in your "evaluation" if you do not run through the appropriate questions. But more on that in Gameplay.
Pet Pals: Animal Doctor does try to create the ambiance of an actual vet's office. In your waiting room, patients are sitting with their respective animals while music tinkles in the background. At the front desk, you can opt to check your answering machine as pet owners call with updates, however no matter how many I listened to, they were never more than kudos for my good care.
You can zoom in on pretty much everything in the waiting room, like the paintings on the walls. There is activity going on outside of the glass door of the facility, but unfortunately, it's the same guy in jogging shorts that passes every few minutes, followed by the same tan van. Ugh. |
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Gameplay:
You begin the game as a new vet in this clinic. The administrator makes it clear that they are glad to have you, but will be evaluating your every case. This is how you are scored in the game. You start in the Waiting Room with a group of patients to choose from. Initially, there's a tutorial, but you can skip it and get right to work, should you choose. As you hover over each possible patient, their name and problem is listed. I always chose to address them in the order of severity of the problem, but I don't think it really matters. As you complete that group, more patients come, so its not like there is any "order" to who came first as there would be in a real vet's office. From time to time, the odd "emergency" case comes in and you must drop what you are doing and address that pet immediately, then go back to the prior case when you are done.
Your first order of business is to ask the appropriate questions. You are given a list of possible choices and you must ask the 3 correct questions, having 4 tries to do so. The questions are pretty obvious like "Have you noticed anything unusual about Fluffy lately?" as opposed to "Does Fluffy like to wear clothes?" and the like. Then you can jump right in and start assessing the patient or use the hint system. You'll progress through different evaluation tactics, from palpating the animal's different body parts, to checking their temperature, to x-rays and so on. Then you'll administer the appropriate treatment. Afterwards, you are graded on your performance and whether or not you selected the appropriate methods of evaluation and treatment.
When playing on Easy, I was spoon-fed what to do next and it was actually kind of enjoyable, although I never really felt like I was doing much other than going through the motions. But still, it was mindless and pleasant. However, on Medium or Hard, what really bothered me was the fact that I never felt like I was getting the answer on my own. I found sometimes that things didn't make logical sense to me and the answer would appear as a hint if you choose to use the hint system, but it wasn't a logical progression. Then, when you've diagnosed the pet and informed the owner, you'd send the pet home after medicating them with the issue unresolved. Perhaps, as you dig deeper into the game, the animal comes back for further surgery, but maybe I didn't get that far.
When you go into the Computer located on the desk in the Waiting Room hub, you can play different games like Memory and such. You can also look at your log and see the patients you have already treated. You can also go into the kennel area and select an animal to groom, but its merely moving the mouse over the pet to soap them, then moving the mouse over them to brush the soap away. There are several pets to choose from, however once you select and groom one, the group to choose from changes. There's no sense of completion here. |
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Difficulty:
The game has three levels of difficulty, Easy, Medium and Hard. As I mentioned earlier, on Easy, you are guided every step of the way on what to do and it doesn't require any real evaluation skill. On Medium and Hard, however, things ramp up a good bit. You can opt to use the hint system, and the hints do help, but again, I never really "got" why you would opt to medicate an animal using oral medication as opposed to I.V. or syringe. The HUD would tell you the type of medications you just gave the pet, but again, you personally had nothing to do with specifically what meds the pet was given. Only the method by which they are administered. I just felt more like a puppet than a vet, I suppose.
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Game Mechanics:
In Pet Pals: Animal Doctor, basically you'll simply use your mouse to select the tool to use and then click on different areas of the animal to select where to use the device. I did find that in certain circumstances, I had to pixel hunt and even then it wouldn't work. Take, for instance, having to shave an animal to prep them for surgery. I selected the shaver and shaved the animal in the appropriate area. The interface still requested that I shave the animal. The hint system also said the same thing. No matter how many times I shaved the poor animal bald, the system still didn't recognize that I had done it. I finally just performed the surgery as I knew what to do next and consequently, I lost points. This was very frustrating and it happened on numerous occasions, always with the shaving selection.
The other bothersome thing were the incredibly long load times to get into a game and to switch between patients. The graphics aren't system-pushing, so I just didn't understand the ridiculously long load times.
Overall, the game does provide some interesting knowledge on animals. Recently, my dog wasn't feeling well, so I attempted to check his pulse using the method I learned. I couldn't detect his pulse with my hand. I checked his capillary refill and that did work. Finally, he decided to perk up and leave the room as he had his fill of mommy playing vet. So I guess I did gain some knowledge. I just felt, overall, that the game perhaps skipped some steps somewhere in the diagnoses, evaluation and treatment of the animals such that the layperson maybe didn't understand why by checking an animal's pulse, you would automatically administer some certain type of drug and why that drug would be intravenous and not oral. If you are really interested in a glimpse of the veterinary world, perhaps this simulation is for you. As for me, I just didn't get enough of a real sense of accomplishment from treating the pets. |
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-Psibabe, GameVortex Communications AKA Ashley Perkins |
Minimum System Requirements:
PIII/AMD Athlon 450 MHz or equivalent, 128 MB Ram, 16 MB video card, DirectX 7 or higher, Quicktime 8.0 or higher, 1.4 GB free hard drive space |
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Test System:
P4 1.8 GHz, 480 MB Ram, Integrated Sound and Video |
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