Dog’s Life

Life

1 April 2005

Dog’s Life is an unusual game in which the player controls a dog called Jack whose canine lady friend, Daisy, has been abducted by mysterious villains. Jack must trek across the USA encountering both rural and urban environments in search of his one true love.

Like any good dog, Jake is aided greatly by his sense of smell. The olfactory sense is represented in Dog’s Life by a first person view called ‘smellovision’. In this view, various odours are represented by differently coloured puffs of smoke. Jake can use these vapour trails to track down people and objects.

Jake will frequently encounter other dogs on his travels. Meeting with another canine generally indicates that a mini challenge is about to commence. These mini-games can be highly entertaining and vary from sprinting races, to digging contests and even include tests to see which dog can mark the most territory. When Jake wins one of these mini-games, the player will gain control over Jake’s opponent for a short time. Usually, these dogs will have a skill that Jake does not, or will be of a size that will allow them to access an area that Jake cannot enter.

Throughout the game, Jake must acquire bones so that he can increase his skills – in Jake’s universe a dog’s wealth and talent is measured by the amount of bones it has collected.

The animators have done a fine job in accurately capturing and representing the way a dog looks and moves. The humans in this game are rendered a lot more crudely, but by and large this doesn’t let the game down too badly as most of the focus is on the dogs.
Dog’s Life is definitely a title for the younger gamer. The cuteness and frequent use of crude toilet humour will definitely engage and delight a pre-adolescent, but will quite quickly irritate adults – a little bit like having a young pup around the house!

Dog’s Life
Specs
Rating: 83%
Requirements: PlayStation2 games console
Price: EUR49.99
Contact: GameStop +353 (0)1-8724305

24/11/2003

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