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Game Title: Animal Hospital
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Neopica
Publisher: Bigben Interactive
Genre: Virtual Life
Age Rating: PEGI: 3+
Release Date: 27th September 2013 (EU Physical), 24th September 2013 (EU Digital)
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Game Score: 6.0/10
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Summery:
It is great to be able to treat various animals but the game is simplistic and should be played by children how love animals and video games.
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Animal Hospital for Nintendo 3DS is a game where you get to treat various animals like Hamsters, Cats, Dogs and even Horses that are either suffer with illness or has injuries that need to be treated. Their illness could be that an animal either has high temperature or one hasn't been able to eat it's food. It's the kind of game where you actually get to treat sick animals in the virtual world, however this is game made specifically for kids.
In the game you mainly take part in simple challenges to treating an animal, these include balancing the weight, checking it's temperature and heartbeat, injecting it with vaccine, stroking it or using an ointment to calm it's pain and so on. You do this by using the touch screen to do some dragging and dropping, placing a thermometer on a pet's bottom to get it's temperature or by swiping the screen to either use the ointment, hands and tapping on a spot to heal one of it's wounds. Sometimes you might have to put in multiple injections using the right colour injection fluids or with ointments and you will need to use the circle pad to turn the camera around to reveal where the parts you need to patch up are but it's easy as long as you are not colour blind, unlike me. It's basically simple stuff to learn regardless when doing the various operations you need to do to an animal. Successful completion of an operation will reward you with money which you can spend on animal food and cleaning products. You can get other buildings which allows you to have more operation options with other kinds of animals you'll encounter later on in the game and for the most part the game does a great job of capturing the animal hospitalizing feel which makes you feel that you are doing something for each of the different kinds of animals. When you do get the additional buildings you will be able to do additional operations on an animal to finish treating it's wounds, plus you get to feed it, stroke it and with cats and dogs you can play fetch with them which makes them relaxed and happy. You also got to clean up the mess that is left around your building which again is simple stuff but you might end wondering how did all that mess get there in the first place.
What I really have to say that the animal behaviour is the major highlight of the game. The animals are modelled quite well but their animations are really good from the way each animal moves and lays down to rest to the way they make a twitch when they are idle. The game's only areas aren't too bad but the characters are only shown during cutscenes and they look rather bland and the effect isn't really much to talk or complain about. The character dialogue sound can be annoying and the music is rather lacking.
What isn't good about the game besides the fact that the game forces you to do the same routines over and over again and also that the operations are really easy to do. There are mechanics like plastering the wounds and preparing the food for the animals which don't work well at all. Plastering requires you to time where it should be placed on the wound and it just jiggles all the time and you have no control over it's movement. Placing in the food into a bowl is like trying to pour in an actual drink only that you are drunk because the camera sways around making pouring rather difficult. You'll properly forgiving it because the game gives you more then plenty of time to complete each operation and each of them are really to complete and again you will be doing many of the same operations over and over again which does make the game reptitive.
Other then those issues it's pretty much a simple game that is designed for children who like the idea of helping animals in a video game but Nintendogs plus also the one with cats to raise as well are much better choices. This is because their activities are more enjoyable and you get to do things like put hats on them or play fetch with them. You can always check out the demo to see if this is a pet game that's right up your alley otherwise it's better to skip this game because there is just very little on offer here, at least it's a cheap game to download on EShop.
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The Good Points:
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1. Nice animal animations
2. Some minigames have the right gestures
The Bad Points:
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1. You do the same routines over and over and they are very easy to complete
2. Some mechanics don't work all that well
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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