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IGN Review of Petz: Horsez Club
Right off the bat, you're in the middle of a race. Riding through winding mountain paths, high astride your trusty steed, trying to figure out how to control the whole thing. And then the game tells you how to control the whole thing, with explanatory text and pop-up graphics illustrating exactly what to do. Within thirty seconds, you've got it down -- and you've finished your first race. What a gutsy way to kick off a game.
Petz Horse Club gets things started quickly, just like that, by not even offering any preamble past the title screen -- you just find yourself flung into the middle of that tutorial race, charging forward toward the finish line. It's unexpected, and refreshing. And it's an early indicator that this title's going to be home to a few more pleasant surprises.
Lily is the name of our heroine here, a girl whose natural abilities of animal empathy have made her a valuable asset at the Wildmountain Reserve, a protected park populated with wild mustangs. Petz Horse Club follows Lily's adventures at the reserve, as you explore the park befriending the horses that live there, take care of tamed animals back at the ranch, and compete in jumping, cross-country and steeplechase equestrian events.
It's a nice mix of different things to do, and helps Petz Horse Club feel more varied than some other horse-focused virtual pet designs in the past. Sure, fans of this kind of game probably want to brush, feed and pet their horses -- but if that's all a game has, things get boring quick. Here, story-driven missions keep the action moving.
The control scheme is unique when you're riding a horse, as it attempts a simulation of holding an actual set of reigns by using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. The Remote is your right reign, so twisting it turns your horse to the right. The Nunchuk is the left, so it turns the horse left. Whipping both forward at the same time increases the horse's speed, and pulling back on both slows it down.
If you've ever ridden a real horse before, it should feel natural to you -- it's a good approximation. If you haven't, though, you'll probably find it to be awkward. It's not as accessible for the uninitiated as riding Epona in Twilight Princess, for example. But there's no alternate control option available, so you'll have to adapt to continue the adventure.
That's why the abruptness of that opening tutorial is especially nice -- it takes what could be one of the more frustrating aspects of the design and gets learning it out of the way early.
The Wii Remote is also employed in most other areas of Horse Club's design, too. Washing your horse with a shampooed glove calls for circular motions with the controller. Spraying off the suds with a hose requires pointing at the screen and pressing B to unleash the water. Attempting to befriend a wild mustang you come across while out exploring the Wildmountain Reserve plays out through motion-copying -- an icon on the screen will illustrate a specific Remote movement, and you have to replicate it yourself within a few seconds. Succeed, and you'll make a new friend. Fail, and the horse will get scared and run away.
The control works fairly well overall, with the exception of the pointing and aiming parts -- there, the cursor never seems to sync well with your movements. And, tellingly, none of the game's menu screens use the Remote's IR pointing functionality at all -- you just navigate them with the Remote's D-Pad or the Nunchuk's Control Stick. It seems the Horse Club development team might have had some trouble getting a handle on the whole pointing thing.
Some other areas of the game fall a little short, too, like the overall visual style. It's attractive for the most part, and characters both human and horse are animated well. But the game just has too soft a tone to it. Its environments are just a bit too blurry, like they're slightly out of focus around the edges. The official screenshots display crisp, clean models with well-defined edges -- in action on the Wii, though, things aren't nearly so sharp.
©2009-01-15, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Petz Horse Club gets things started quickly, just like that, by not even offering any preamble past the title screen -- you just find yourself flung into the middle of that tutorial race, charging forward toward the finish line. It's unexpected, and refreshing. And it's an early indicator that this title's going to be home to a few more pleasant surprises.
Lily is the name of our heroine here, a girl whose natural abilities of animal empathy have made her a valuable asset at the Wildmountain Reserve, a protected park populated with wild mustangs. Petz Horse Club follows Lily's adventures at the reserve, as you explore the park befriending the horses that live there, take care of tamed animals back at the ranch, and compete in jumping, cross-country and steeplechase equestrian events.
It's a nice mix of different things to do, and helps Petz Horse Club feel more varied than some other horse-focused virtual pet designs in the past. Sure, fans of this kind of game probably want to brush, feed and pet their horses -- but if that's all a game has, things get boring quick. Here, story-driven missions keep the action moving.
The control scheme is unique when you're riding a horse, as it attempts a simulation of holding an actual set of reigns by using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. The Remote is your right reign, so twisting it turns your horse to the right. The Nunchuk is the left, so it turns the horse left. Whipping both forward at the same time increases the horse's speed, and pulling back on both slows it down.
If you've ever ridden a real horse before, it should feel natural to you -- it's a good approximation. If you haven't, though, you'll probably find it to be awkward. It's not as accessible for the uninitiated as riding Epona in Twilight Princess, for example. But there's no alternate control option available, so you'll have to adapt to continue the adventure.
That's why the abruptness of that opening tutorial is especially nice -- it takes what could be one of the more frustrating aspects of the design and gets learning it out of the way early.
The Wii Remote is also employed in most other areas of Horse Club's design, too. Washing your horse with a shampooed glove calls for circular motions with the controller. Spraying off the suds with a hose requires pointing at the screen and pressing B to unleash the water. Attempting to befriend a wild mustang you come across while out exploring the Wildmountain Reserve plays out through motion-copying -- an icon on the screen will illustrate a specific Remote movement, and you have to replicate it yourself within a few seconds. Succeed, and you'll make a new friend. Fail, and the horse will get scared and run away.
The control works fairly well overall, with the exception of the pointing and aiming parts -- there, the cursor never seems to sync well with your movements. And, tellingly, none of the game's menu screens use the Remote's IR pointing functionality at all -- you just navigate them with the Remote's D-Pad or the Nunchuk's Control Stick. It seems the Horse Club development team might have had some trouble getting a handle on the whole pointing thing.
Some other areas of the game fall a little short, too, like the overall visual style. It's attractive for the most part, and characters both human and horse are animated well. But the game just has too soft a tone to it. Its environments are just a bit too blurry, like they're slightly out of focus around the edges. The official screenshots display crisp, clean models with well-defined edges -- in action on the Wii, though, things aren't nearly so sharp.
©2009-01-15, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved