DS Review: Imagine: Animal Doctor

Having enjoyed Imagine: Master Chef as much as I did, I had quite high expectations for this game to be more of the same. Lord, I couldn't have been more wrong on this one.

The vast differences can be seen immediately upon starting the game. Whereas Master Chef had an adorably cartoonish feel to its animation style, this game tried too hard to go in the opposite direction to jump the 3-D bandwagon...and failed miserably. All the animals look relatively the same aside from coloring (which, might I add that I had issues with the idea of a bunny having bright blue eyes?), and the humans in the game look downright pitiful. HOW was this made by the same designers? It doesn't even look remotely similar! That was my first strike I held against the game.


My next issue with this game is that it is devoid of pretty much any plot, other than you have opened a veterinary clinic on your grandparents' land. Grandfather never leaves the shed and his only purpose is to build your animal pens; your cousin Eric lives and adores cleaning up after the animals (what a sad, sad existence...), and Grandmother.... Well, I'm not entirely sure why she's there. Seemingly her only purpose is to help you dye your hair.


You will notice almost immediately just how awkward the controls in this game are. I found it easier to rely on the keypads rather than the stylus to move around the map, but this doesn't particularly help you in caring for or diagnosing your animals. Another strike against the game.

You will progress through 5 different types of animals: cats, dogs, rabbits, horses, and pigs. Yes, that's right, pigs. As in, what bacon comes from. This seemed a little odd to me, all things considered, but then again... You DO appear to be living on a farm in this game, so I guess pigs aren't so strange. (The sheer volume of pigs that come in to be treated is mind-boggling though.) What I wonder is, if they can have barnyard animals like pigs and horses, why not go the whole nine yards and include cows and chickens too? Add a little dimension to the game! But no, you're limited to these five, and with a very unfair pricing system at that of how much you get paid per treatment. Cats are worth $1000 each, dogs are $2000, rabbits are $3000, pigs are (I think) $5000 and horses are $7000. Let me let you in on a little something, as if it weren't already obvious....This is nowhere NEAR the prices of treatment for real animals of each of these species. Not even the horses (and I would know - I'm privileged enough to live on a ranch). While we're on the subject of horses, may I also point out that I don't think the creators of this game have ever so much as really ever brushed a horse? This made itself obvious to me in two ways: One, they listed the brush as a toy (and a sugar cube was the other). Second, the style in which you're forced to brush the horses in (if you want it to do any good, anyway) is not even CLOSE to how you would brush a real horse. This annoyed me greatly.

The actual veterinary scenes in the game are unfortunately too brief and don't do a very good job of representing the actual diagnostic process. Yes, I can see where a parent might be concerned about too much realism in this area, but I've seen many other similar titles over the years handle this quite gracefully; they allowed you to choose which tests to conduct to help make a proper diagnosis, and they also gave a little overview into what each tool does - therefore making this an educational experience as well. Apparently, that's wishful thinking in this game, as it only gives you your set tests you're going to conduct on each pet, doesn't explain at all what the tools are or what they're doing to each pet, and to make things even more confusing? The tests that do get conducted don't even necessarily have a thing to do with the ailments these pets have. Add this on top of the actual conducting of quite a few of these tests being very awkwardly controlled (I never did quite manage to figure out how to successfully master the heart chart, and had great difficulties with focusing the microscope), and the vet part of the game becomes downright dreaded.

So then you move on to what you would assume to be the treatment phase. Guess what? There's NO treatment you administer here. None. Instead, you spend easily 90% of your game time in this game feeding, watering, petting, and cleaning up after each animal. And...that's it. Literally. There is nothing else. The pet eventually heals, you send it home, you get your money, and then the cycle restarts with a new pet. Does this sound dull? Perhaps that's because it is. You can buy two toys for each animal, but as they don't even help your pet heal, they're a complete waste of time - something that you'll be very tight on once you get rolling and have all your pens open with the demands of each pen. It is EXTREMELY repetitive, almost to the point of becoming maddening after a while (especially with the same sound effects going off every few seconds...BUT you need to leave the sound on so you can hear the reception bell!) and ends up making the whole game feel like a chore. I can understand the makers wanting to instill a sense of responsibility, but in the approach they took with it, they also took pretty much all the fun out of it. It loses its appeal VERY quickly.

You also get to purchase items to decorate your house and office, but since you neither get to arrange this new furniture nor use it for anything, it seems pretty much like a huge waste of time. Then again, pretty much the whole game is, because - SPOILER ALERT! - there is no real ending to the game. Once you hit a 100% reputation rating, you've done everything you can in the game. You can continue to treat animals anyway just "for fun", but what's the point? It took me about a day to reach 100%... Let's put it this way: I think you might feel more accomplished with dumping out a box of toothpicks and counting every last one than completing this game. I almost have to wonder, given the other titles in this series... Did they make this game so boring to make young girls shy away from a "real" job to pursue one of the more stereotypically female jobs presented in the series? It's probably a coincidence, but it is something to think about.

My verdict on this one is just to skip it. There's a TON of vet and animal games out on the DS market; this is just one of the lesser quality ones. Which I must say is a disappointment, given this is a game from Imagine. This title gets 3 out of 10 balls of yarn.