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IGN Review of Paws & Claws: Pet Resort
Considering how many Paws & Claws games have come out for the Nintendo DS and PC, it's surprising to see that Paws & Claws: Pet Resort is the first version to hit the Nintendo Wii. Given the quality of the previous couple titles in the series, it's not surprising at all to find that Pet Resort is a boring, tedious, and dare I say, hideous looking Wii game.
Pet Resort puts you in control of the new pet care place located on the grounds of Cuddle Manor, on the outskirts of Cutesville. Okay I'm going to stop right there. Really guys? Hearing someone introduce themselves as the mayor of Cutesville is only appropriate if their office is made of candy and it's a city in the clouds connected by rainbow highways, and even then it's pretty lame. Making your game saccharine doesn't mean it's a good kids title.
By the way, nothing is cute about the town. The whole thing looks awful. The characters are stiff and robotic. Everything looks gloomy like the game is set in the arctic tundra, which explains why the whole place is a ghost town. There are three people in this town, and two of them are hiding indoors. At various points in the game the mayor orders a fireworks display in your honor, and you're the only one that shows up to it.
Pet Resort starts you off slow, by putting you in charge of rodents. Sure the box talks about dogs, cats, and horses, and the opening cinematic shows lots of those animals (and plenty of people), but for the first few hours of this game you get a guinea pig.
You can do all the basic pet things like feed, pet, and clean. And apparently rabbits love playing the shell game (with the three cups and the ball). Maybe they're secretly learning to be street con men. All the tasks are performed with the Wii remote, and most of the time the controls are unresponsive or overly sensitive. Petting the animals requires precise movements that seem to be totally arbitrary. Half of the time it won't register at all, and other times the pet will actually yelp like you struck it. It makes every task an absolute chore because you have to do it eight times instead of just once.
On top of that these animals are the neediest creatures on the planet. I've taken care of hamsters and birds. You do not need to feed them four times a day. They don't need a bath every time you visit them. These virtual pets are more work than real pets, and they're not even nearly as cute.
The mayor will send you messages occasionally and ask you to speak with her. These are always a treat because the voice acting for this game is so incredibly bad that it becomes the most entertaining portion. The sentences are so disjointed by weird emphasis and just generally poor acting. And all the kid characters are obviously adults trying (and failing) to sound 30 years younger. The mayor is the best though as she comes off like a stroke victim, and looks like a lady whose office should be filled with feral cats she found behind the Cutseville McDonalds. She gives you tasks to perform so that you can progress through the game, and for the first few hours it's pretty basic tasks that have to do with taking care of the pets. Most of the time the task is something you've already been doing for the past hour, like "stroke a rodent" or "teach the rabbit a trick." I already did those things, can't I just have a Dalmatian now? It's like the video game equivalent of overly restrictive parents that make you prove you can handle a real pet by giving you a series of lesser pets that you never really wanted in the first place. I'm surprised the game didn't start me off with a gold fish or a Tamagotchi.
There's an extra horseriding minigame on the main menu that lets you go through a forest path and collect stars. Typing that sentence out took longer than playing the mode and honestly it was just as much fun.
©2009-01-22, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Pet Resort puts you in control of the new pet care place located on the grounds of Cuddle Manor, on the outskirts of Cutesville. Okay I'm going to stop right there. Really guys? Hearing someone introduce themselves as the mayor of Cutesville is only appropriate if their office is made of candy and it's a city in the clouds connected by rainbow highways, and even then it's pretty lame. Making your game saccharine doesn't mean it's a good kids title.
By the way, nothing is cute about the town. The whole thing looks awful. The characters are stiff and robotic. Everything looks gloomy like the game is set in the arctic tundra, which explains why the whole place is a ghost town. There are three people in this town, and two of them are hiding indoors. At various points in the game the mayor orders a fireworks display in your honor, and you're the only one that shows up to it.
Pet Resort starts you off slow, by putting you in charge of rodents. Sure the box talks about dogs, cats, and horses, and the opening cinematic shows lots of those animals (and plenty of people), but for the first few hours of this game you get a guinea pig.
You can do all the basic pet things like feed, pet, and clean. And apparently rabbits love playing the shell game (with the three cups and the ball). Maybe they're secretly learning to be street con men. All the tasks are performed with the Wii remote, and most of the time the controls are unresponsive or overly sensitive. Petting the animals requires precise movements that seem to be totally arbitrary. Half of the time it won't register at all, and other times the pet will actually yelp like you struck it. It makes every task an absolute chore because you have to do it eight times instead of just once.
On top of that these animals are the neediest creatures on the planet. I've taken care of hamsters and birds. You do not need to feed them four times a day. They don't need a bath every time you visit them. These virtual pets are more work than real pets, and they're not even nearly as cute.
The mayor will send you messages occasionally and ask you to speak with her. These are always a treat because the voice acting for this game is so incredibly bad that it becomes the most entertaining portion. The sentences are so disjointed by weird emphasis and just generally poor acting. And all the kid characters are obviously adults trying (and failing) to sound 30 years younger. The mayor is the best though as she comes off like a stroke victim, and looks like a lady whose office should be filled with feral cats she found behind the Cutseville McDonalds. She gives you tasks to perform so that you can progress through the game, and for the first few hours it's pretty basic tasks that have to do with taking care of the pets. Most of the time the task is something you've already been doing for the past hour, like "stroke a rodent" or "teach the rabbit a trick." I already did those things, can't I just have a Dalmatian now? It's like the video game equivalent of overly restrictive parents that make you prove you can handle a real pet by giving you a series of lesser pets that you never really wanted in the first place. I'm surprised the game didn't start me off with a gold fish or a Tamagotchi.
There's an extra horseriding minigame on the main menu that lets you go through a forest path and collect stars. Typing that sentence out took longer than playing the mode and honestly it was just as much fun.
©2009-01-22, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved