Short, but fun game, worth a rental or picking up cheap.

User Rating: 7.1 | Dog's Life PS2
Well, what I said above pretty much covers it. It's a fun little game that has you complete relatively simple tasks along a fairly linear plot line. I played it in about 11-12 hours, collecting every possible bone, despite its claim to 40 hours of gameplay. I could not conceive of anybody needing 40 hours to complete this game. In fact, I'd say I completed the main story line in about 8 hours. However, the obsessive collector in me that had to get EVERY bone spent at least 2 hours wandering around in smell-o-vision looking for the last few elusive scents to collect the last of the purple smells. (HINT: the one extant game guide does not give their locations)

The graphics are less than thrilling, but the dogs move quite smoothly, and in very breed-appropriate fashions (I'm a vet, so take my word on this one). My favorite was the Miniature Pinscher, Pixie Fru-fru, who darted around just like min-pins do. The audio was pleasant, and not too annoying (but I only had to listen to it for 12 hours..). I wasn't humming it the next day or anything though, and even now have trouble remembering it.

The game play involves quite a bit of pee-ing on things and various fart jokes, but dogs fart and pee on things in a rather unapologetic fashion in real life, so that didn't bother me. In fact, the pee races were probably the most challenging of the mini-games, and took a bit of time to master. The concept of smell-o-vision was pretty clever, I think, and again quite appropriate to how dogs probably experience the world. I was a little disconcerted about the fate the main villain at the end of the story, and I think changing that one thing could have opened the game up to a larger audience. This was probably the source of the teen rating in my book.

So if you're looking for something to while away your free time one weekend, and don't want anything too challenging, and like dogs, this game is just the ticket!