DS Review: Littlest Pet Shop: Spring

Despite my known disdain for the new style Littlest Pet Shop toys, I have to admit...I did squee a little when I not only saw this title, but that there's an entire series of these games. This was the newest one, so I decided what the hell...I'll try it out. Why not? I have memories of hours upon hours of playing with the original toys over at my cousins' houses when I was little (I was SO envious of the fact that they both owned complete collections of these and had ALL the accessory packs), and I got warm fuzzies just thinking about it.

I spent more time than I probably should have playing this game, but I must admit, it was a pretty nice distraction from the god-awful stomach bug I caught the same day. Alright, I'll get it out of the way right off the bat: The music isn't bad, and the animation style is actually pretty nice. If you don't like things that are 'sickeningly cute', chances are this game is NOT for you. For those of you who are, stick around. You'll enjoy this immensely. (The huge oversized eyes definitely help.)

Basically, the premise of this game is to grow and own the biggest, best pet shop ever. You begin the game with three pets; all of whom you must keep fed, happy, and played with. (There's no cleaning up after these pets. Whoopie!) As the game progresses, you unlock more games, pets, and worlds in which to keep your pets. With the coins you find and earn through games, you can purchase more pets, outfits (yes, you're encouraged to dress them), and playsets for your pets. The majority of the game is spent playing the mini-games... And for once, I must say, I'm very impressed with the assortment presented to us - both by the wide selection and for the fact that most of them actually are somewhat challenging!

• Hide and Seek - Exactly what it sounds like.
• Ball Juggling - Closer to a game of kickball than juggling
  
• Super Scratch - I'm not quite sure how exactly this is a game, but the animal tells you a part of its body to scratch (head, neck, or cheek), and you have to scratch it until the meter is filled.
• Balloon Burst - You press the buttons displayed on the top screen and blow into the microphone to inflate the balloon on the bottom screen until it pops. The aim is to create the largest balloon possible.
• Coloring Craze - Just as it sounds. It's a virtual coloring book.
• Beats n Bops - Sort of a poor man's DDR. You click the sides as they light up in beat to the music.
• Dash N Dig - Once you master this, it's one of the best coin--er, kibble--earners in the entire game. You follow the hints the arrows give you and dig as fast as possible to try and find the hidden Easter eggs.
• Skyride Collection - Wheel your pet up and down to collect coins on the skyrider!
• Whirl N Twirl - Spin the pet wheel as fast as you can to sail the furthest way down the hill possible!
• Swing N Spring - Press the correct sequence of buttons quickly to swing higher and higher before leaping off. Sounds MUCH easier than it is! You need a fair amount of coordination to get it perfect.
  
• Nutfest - Crack the walnuts before they land on your pets heads and knock them out.
• Toss N Pop - A typical dart throwing game
• Bubble Bounce - Blow bubbles in the fountain to keep the coins from falling in the water! The longer you keep each one bouncing, the more points you get!
• Pet Sets - Typical card flipping memory game.
• Furry Feast - Scoop the correct fruits into the right chutes before they get sucked into the wrong ones! Fair warning - this game is misleadingly simple when it starts, but as it speeds up, it gets very hard!
  
• Steady Spin - Do your best to keep your pet balanced on top of the ball - don't let them fall!
• Fruit Fling - Use your slingshot to hit the pet carrying the same fruit in your slingshot.
  
• Remember Me - Another memory game. You have a few seconds to memorize which cards are where, and then a pet will run across the top screen. Find the card that matches that pet.
• Snack Sort - Guide the blueberries and strawberries into the correct baskets.
• Volley Paws - A very cute volleyball game

Upon bringing all the pets to your pet shop, they will throw a huge party in the middle of the pet shop; complete with fireworks and all. There's no mention anywhere in the game of anybody actually, y'know, adopting any of these pets, but I guess that's neither here nor there. Being majorly OCD about such things as these, I couldn't help but notice that, since there's lists of all the unlockables and how many you currently have away from the total, I wouldn't have *truly* finished the game until I collected them all. So even after I finished getting all the pets, I continued to play until the TRUE completion of the game, just to see if anything special would happen. Unfortunately for me, I got stuck after completing all the goals - no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to unlock the last few accessories. Oh well. If anyone knows what - if anything - happens upon collecting everything, let me know.

My one main gripe with this game is how much of a pain in the neck it is to have to go back and forth between the different worlds pretty much constantly to check on your pets and to complete goals. It's not *difficult* to do, but it's a pain in the ass to have to do it ALL the time. And believe me...you DO have to. Sometimes you do it because you receive orders that you need to take a pet from one world to another to complete a goal; sometimes you have to do it to check on your various pets; sometimes you have to do it to access different buildings. Regardless, there's plenty of ways this could have been improved upon, but granted that this is my biggest issue in the game, that's really not all that bad at all, considering.

Overall though? This is a pretty decent game, I gotta admit. You can keep just about anybody you hand this game to occupied and amused for hours on end. Go ahead, try it! I'm rating this game a 7 1/2 pets out of 10. A fairly glowing review, if I do say so myself. :)

DS Review: Madagascar

Unsurprisingly, here we have another game inspired by a film. I'm not going to knock it for the reason alone because hey, there are some pretty decent games out there based on movies! This one, however, I'll have to say is pretty mediocre at best.

The plot of the game follows the film (big surprise). As such, with each level, your map is more or less a globe upon which you're running all the way around. It's not terrible or anything, but I will tell you one thing: If you want to go back to a specific level to try and collect all the unlockables? It can be a pain in the neck to find *that* particular level.

Map aside, let's talk about the graphics. Let me say here that I'm actually very impressed with the 3D here! For a DS game of all things, this is definitely one of the better 3D games I've seen yet. The font used throughout isn't the greatest - I sure wouldn't have used it if I were the designer - but it's not horrible either. It's legible, so I really don't have much room in which to complain here. I don't think a kid would ever complain about it, and as this is for ages 3 and up, I'm going to just move on here.

I would also like to say that it was refreshing to see a good old fashioned side-scroller game again! This seems to be becoming a lost art form as far as video games go, so it was refreshing to see making even a small comeback. Anyway, you play as not one, but all of the main characters. You'll be switching between a lion, a zebra, a hippo, and a giraffe. You'll be switching between characters in pretty much every level, as every character has different abilities. For instance, the lion can claw and roar (not to mention, scale walls towards the very end of the game). He's my favorite. The zebra can run very fast and squeeze through very tight spaces that nobody can fit through. The hippo can easily crush things with her weight and swim. And then, the poor gawky giraffe, Melman, pretty much got the shit end of the stick in the abilities department. (I actually HATED him at first until I discovered how invaluable his abilities actually are.) He can duck his head in the sand/rocks (which can either protect him from bees - I promised myself I WOULD NOT make an Eddie Izzard joke here!) and break through loose rocks on the ground, and he can sneeze at enemies. If you sneeze during a jump, he basically rocket launches himself skywards. There are SO many levels you cannot complete without this poor sneezy fellow. There are also a handful of levels where you play as the penguin brigade, and I personally loved those! (Then again, I also felt the penguins were the highlight of the whole film, so, I think I'm a little biased. ;))

However, I did not like the sneak scenes, where you had to creep around and try not to get caught. I know I'm overly sensitive to such things, but I was pretty much borderline having panic attacks every time I had to complete such a level. I'm sure other people liked them much more than I did, but it definitely was not for me.

The final level, where you're expected to beat the foosa, is VERY difficult...especially if you're not the most coordinated of people. You see, you must control 2 characters at the same time with seperate key sets. It's VERY confusing, and I'd imagine frustrating for a little kid. The multiplayer functionality only plays this mode, and if you haven't reached that level in the game yet to begin with, chances are you'll have an even harder time of it...as will your gaming partner.

I'm feeling generous today. I'm going to go ahead and rate this game a 7 out of 10 foosas. The game should probably be quite enjoyable if you have a child that's about 10 or under who enjoyed the Madagascar film.