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Eye Pet on Playstation 3 Review.

If Eye Pet is a sneak peak at the future of Sony’s motion control plans, consider us very, very excited indeed. Despite primarily targeting a younger audience, Eye Pet’s forward-thinking technology, interesting gameplay mechanics and nauseatingly cute presentation should please anyone with a pulse.

What’s It All About?

The latest Eye Toy title from Studio London, Eye Pet is an evolution of Nintendogs, Tamagotchi and all those dodgy “Petz” games on the Nintendo systems. Giving you the tools and environment to interact with an on-screen monkey-cat thing, Eye Pet is less about repetitive care challenges (although this does play a role) and more about interaction. You interact via the Playstation Eye camera, which is pointed towards the ground, giving your pet an area to move. Interaction is achieved in numerous ways, be it by the movement of your hand and body, or the use of a printed card that is included with the game. The card’s unique printing is identified by the Playstation Eye, and as such becomes the method for using “held” objects, such as hair-dryers. The Playstation Eye is able to swap out the card with polygonal objects in a similar way as was demonstrated in Sony’s Playstation Motion Controller demo at E3. The result is a thoroughly engaging virtual pet like experience that stamps all over much of the competition.

Eye Pet’s main gameplay draw are the Pet Programme challenges, which see you earning gold medals by completing increasingly difficult challenges over a 14 day period. Of course, interaction with Eye Pet doesn’t end there, as you can also teach him songs, drawings and send him for check-ups. For children, the appeal is indefinite. For adults, we’d hate to tag an hour mark on the experience, but we expect it would be around 5-8 hours before you’ve seen everything.

What We Liked:

• It works. The problem Playstation Eye based motion control games have had is that they’ve not worked especially well in the past. Eye Pet works brilliantly. Sure there are some setup problems and issues in low-light, but on the whole, Eye Pet is very intuitive. Your pet responds astoundingly well to the actions you complete on-screen, staggering to leap towards your fingers as you waggle them in the air, before pouncing across the ground when you move your arm down. It’s real futuristic stuff. If it wasn’t for the lack of physical feedback from the pet, children could easily mistake the polygonal animal on screen as a magical being. Holding the included card and having the game swap out objects in its place is also quite astounding – sure it’s been being done in PC webcams for a while, but here it feels right, and it genuinely enhances the experience.
• The pet feels real. Aside from the work that’s gone into getting the motion controls feel right with the Playstation Eye; it’s obvious Studio London have spent a lot of time making the Eye Pet feel real. Sharing the characteristics of many household animals, Eye Pet is believable. You want to reach into the screen and tickle him because you know he’ll appreciate it, purring loudly and arching his back before rolling on the floor and smiling wildly. You’ll fall in love with your pet as you watch him develop a personality all of his own. Anyone who has ever owned real-life pets before will know that those opening few months where you get to know your animal’s characteristics result in an unbelievably strong bond between man and animal. Eye Pet achieves that relationship before the tutorial’s even finished.
• Genuine “wow” moments. Without wanting to dive into spoiler territory, there are moments in Eye Pet that will blow you away from a technological stance. For example, the first time you send your Eye Pet to sleep – by rhythmically tickling his tummy – you’ll notice that he starts to dream about some of his favourite moments from his relatively short life. Now it might be days since you cracked open the game, but Eye Pet is constantly storing that footage and keeping it to one side. Watching yourself interact with your pet from days previous, when you didn’t even know that Playstation was storing that stuff, is in many ways mind blowing. We literally sat jaw dropped the first time we saw our pet’s dreams. And this wasn’t the first time in the game, but we don’t want to spoil that stuff for you.
• Minigames are genuinely fun. They’re not going to change the world, but playing bowling, bouncing your pet on a trampoline, popping balloons and driving cars that your pet has drawn are all genuinely enjoyable mini games. Eye Pet is packed with fun little interactive tid-bits of gameplay, that’ll make it enjoyable to more “game” centric folks, aswell as bored kids. The general interaction with the pet is the star of the show here, but the minigames certainly do not hurt.
• Always feels fresh. Eye Pet is one of those games that constantly rewards. Everytime you do something well you’ll win a new costume to dress your pet in. Everytime you complete a section of the Pet Programme you’ll earn a new object. By the time you’re done with all the sections of the Pet Programme you’ll have a host of objects, toys and costumes to play with, extending the experience even further while you try everything out.
• Fantastic presentation. Who said graphics don’t matter? Stand Eye Pet up against Nintendo’s closest Wii counterpart and we’re certain everyone will rush to Eye Pet. The animation of the animal is breathtaking at worst, mimicking the subtle nuances of real-life pets and rendered in full HD. The fur of the animal sticks and flops when wet, before being blown realistically by the air of a hair-dryer. The music is also fantastic, opting for child-like, hummable tunes that are subtle enough not to grate but addictive enough to stick.

What We Didn’t Like:

• The perfect living room. Eye Pet kind of assumes you have the perfect living room. It wants a perfect amount of space, great lighting and just the right TV cabinet to place the Playstation Eye on. Don’t worry if you think it won’t work in your house, after some perseverance you’ll likely find a setup that totally works for you. It can just be a bit of pain finding it.
• Get lots of paper ready. Obviously not a genuine criticism, more a cynical nit-pick in jest — Eye Pet has used up about half a pad of our paper already. The game has you drawing objects and then scanning them into the Playstation Eye for your Eye Pet to copy (and in some instances bring to life). The demand on using a thick pen means you’ll likely only get one side out of your paper (our Sharpie seeped through) so have a big block of scrap A4 ready.