Littlest Pet Shop: Spring
Score: 88% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: EA Games Developer: Hasbro Interactive Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 - 4 Genre: Puzzle/ Family/ Simulation
Graphics & Sound: Littlest Pet Shop: Spring is the fifth in the Littlest Pet Shop series. Honestly, I have avoided them up until now. I assumed that they were a kids' game that really wouldn't appeal to anyone over 14. Fortunately, I was completely wrong. Littlest Pet Shop: Spring is surprisingly addictive. The pets and backgrounds look exactly like what I was expecting, but I wasn't expecting to see such a variety of locations and games. You start out with only one area available, so there's really not much to it there. But once you unlock the other worlds (which doesn't take long), you'll get to see all the changes in backgrounds. The Winter world even features a frozen river. Small details like that you might overlook, but overall, they show beautiful scenes for kids. The characters are completely adorable too. There are so many different species and even more different pets in those species. There are 20 pets, 120 accessories, 34 different playsets, and 2 toys for you to unlock. All of these things are quite unique in appearance, especially the accessories! The background music sounds about like most children's games. The games do have different music, which is nice. Sometimes it speeds up or slows down depending on what's going on it the game. Overall, the music aided the mini-games, so I'd recommend leaving it on. The pets make the cutest noises too.
Gameplay: Littlest Pet Shop: Spring is mainly made up of mini-games. When you start the game, you'll automatically adopt 3 pets, a puppy, a kitty, and a bunny. They all hop on a train to come with you to your pet shop (I have no clue why you adopt pets to take them to a pet shop, but we're going to ignore that). From then on out, every pet you buy a train ticket for will hop on the train and come to you automatically. Every time you get a pet, you will need to choose a name for it. I really wish there had been a random name generator just because those are fun, but as it is, you can use pretty long names. So now that you have your pets, you probably need to know what to do with them. Well, you need to feed them, give them attention, and play games with them. Not to mention you need to buy them playsets, toys, and accessories. These pets love to dress up! To buy all these things, you need kibbles. Luckily, you can get kibbles from playing the games, which will also keep your pets happy. That means that you can get both goals done at the same time. Speaking of goals, you will get goals throughout the game. There are 54 goals total. These goals are to keep you progressing in the game. Mostly, they are just telling you that you have new pets to buy or new items for the pets to play with to buy. They also use these goals at the beginning to teach you how to play without making you go through a boring tutorial.
Difficulty: Littlest Pet Shop: Spring is easy, but it's meant to be so. The game is geared for children. But all of the games can be played on Easy, Medium, or Hard. Granted, the games still aren't extraordinarily hard on Hard, but that all depends on what type of games you're good at. Some of them are mostly luck based, like the digging game where you have to find hidden Easter eggs. Quite a few of them are talent based though, like sorting the berries. The more you practice them, the better you will get at them. If you don't think the games are challenging enough as it is, you can play against your friends. Each person will need their own copy of the game. You can have up to 4 players in a multiplayer game. This way, if the game isn't hard enough to keep your attention, then maybe your friends playing with you will.
Game Mechanics: The game controls in Littlest Pet Shop: Spring are very easy to learn. For the most part, you will use the stylus. To move your pet, simply tap where you want it to go. Sometimes though, your pets will have a mind of their own. They don't always go right where you want them to, just like real life pets. When you want to go into a building, you just tap on it. Your pets will tell you what games they want to play. All you have to do is tap on their thought bubble to play that game. When you see a pet's face on the bottom right corner, you just tap on it to check on your pet's status. You need to make sure to go through all your pets every so often just to make sure they are ok. You can use the (B) button to cycle through all your pets at your current location. For the games that you play with your pets, you could use a variety of keys combined with the stylus and even the mic. But each of the games will tell you how to play them before you start, so you shouldn't ever be confused as to what to do. When you want to save your game, simply press (Start) and select Save. The game also autosaves periodically for you. You can have 3 different game saves on a single cartridge. As I said at the beginning, I have had a lot more fun playing Littlest Pet Shop: Spring than I thought I would. It is a great game for the whole family, and I can see it being a lot of fun for kids. If you're looking for cute mini-games or something to keep your kids entertained for hours, I definitely recommend you go pick up Littlest Pet Shop: Spring today.
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
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