DS Review: Purr Pals

Back in August of 2005, Nintendo released Nintendogs, a dog-caring sim for the DS which proved to be a massive success with many types of gamers and non-gamers alike. Since then, a steady stream of pet sims have been released to try to cash in, most of the time copying Nintendogs and ending up doing a bad job of it. Cat fans were disappointed with the low quality of the game Catz. And since then they have waited for another cat-caring sim to put their cash on. Unfortunately, Purr Pals is no better than Catz, being yet another cheap copycat of Nintendogs (pun intended). Continue reading to find out why we think this cat should have been left in the bag, and why this game is not the highest point in the Nintendo DS back cat-a-logue [OK, that's enough with the cat jokes! Here, look at this cute macro -- ed. ]

The basic premise of the game is to adopt a kitten and take care of it. Over 40 breeds are available, which resemble their real-life representations pretty well, except for the fact that instead of kittens it seems that you’re adopting a grown-up cat. You can change your cat’s fur, eyes, and even whiskers color (yes, you can have a blue-whiskered Scottish Fold). After you select a gender and a name for your cat, you take it home. You can pet your cat, brush it, feed it, or play with it using different toys, every action performed using the stylus on the touch screen. As you do these activities, your cat’s needs decrease, and the lower you keep them the higher your daily allowance will be.

Rawwwwwwr!

Petting and brushing your cat is simple; just rub your cat until it’s happy and clean. The feeding process requires you to select a bag of food and dragging it up and down until all the contents reach your cat’s bowl. You can play with your cat using a variety of toys, such as a ball, a string, and even a toy truck. Unfortunately there are only six toys, and all of them become boring after a few tries, making the playing process tedious and very repetitive. In fact, the whole game is boring and repetitive; your cat’s needs increase extremely quickly, forcing you to pet or brush your cat over and over many times a day and making you buy many bags of food, taking away time from the mini-games included.

Not that you would want to play the mini-games that much anyway. There are only four of them; a ‘cat karaoke’ music game, a ‘Simon Says’ game of memorization, a heart-shooting game, and a basketball game. All of the games are very repetitive and not that fun, except perhaps for the music game, which involves you tapping different circles as they get near the bottom of the touch screen as cats on the top screen meow-sing classical tunes such as Toreador and London Bridge. This music game is the fastest way to get money in the game, while the other mini-games give you very low profits for playing them.

If you actually have the patience to take care of your virtual cat, you can enroll your pet in shows, which judge how well you have cared for your kitten for the last couple of days, giving you the opportunity to score well and get some quick cash. You can use money to buy food and dress-up accessories for your cat, such as hats and glasses, or use it to buy decorations for your home in the form of new rugs and walls. Your home consists of a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a front yard, and you can take your kitten to these different locations to play in different environments. You can also buy new cats to play with, but you can only play with one kitten at a time, which is a very lazy decision by the developers. The game apparently features voice commands that use the DS microphone, but the available actions (‘Here kitty’ to call your cat, ‘Bad kitty’ to discipline it using a water gun, and ‘Meow meow’ to make your pet meow) are very irresponsive. There is also no clear motivational factor to keep you playing; no matter what you do and how much time you spend trying to have fun with this game, there is nothing to unlock – nothing at all.

The game’s sound is decent; there is very little music in the game besides the hilariously-weird meow karaoke sessions, but the game’s sound effects are good. Graphically the game is poorly designed with weird cat body movements that make the game feel less realistic. There are also a variety of glitches, including game freezing or lagging and irresponsive controls during the feeding and playing parts of the game. Purr Pals includes a multiplayer mode which requires you to find a person with a copy of the game (good luck with that). This mode is very lacking, however, only giving you the option to adopt a kitten that is a mixture of your and your friend’s cat.

Purr Pals tries to copy Nintendogs and fails miserably, providing very repetitive gameplay that lacks fun and a motivation factor to keep you playing. With no unlockables, glitches, and boring gameplay, Purr Pals is hard to recommend to any DS owner. Cat lovers should wait for a cats version of Nintendogs to be released instead of wasting their money on this game which is nothing to purr for.

Things we liked:

● Good variety of breeds and decoration items
● Decent music mini-game

Things we didn’t like:

● Boring, repetitive gameplay
● No depth or motivation to play
● Frustrating glitches

Final Score: 4 / 10