Fantastic Pets Review
Developer Blitz Games
Publisher THQ
Platform Kinect only
Release date Out Now
Fantastic Pets is THQ’s entry into the virtual pet simulators, released as a Kinect only game it is the first title to seize upon the Augmented Reality feature. The game itself is simple enough you care for pets by feeding them grooming them and training them. It’s a game definitely for the kids.
Much like my look at Rio I’ve approached this game from the “it’s a kids game” point of view and as such will go easy on it. The premise is that the player can create a virtual pet, this pet is not bound by reality like Kinectimals was as you can have all sorts of pets from Unicorns to domestic sized Tiger Cats to Robot dogs.
The pets can be upgraded by spending gems you have collected throughout the game. You then send your doctor friend to the furthest reaches of the globe to pick up new pets or new additions to your original pet.
The main selling point is the Augmented Reality feature. This puts the player into the game a allows them to interact with the pet, it can be weird looking at a screen and stroking an invisible pet but small kids will get a great laugh out of seeing themselves on screen.
Beyond that there are a number of mini games to play while training your pets, most are very basic such as smashing things by waving your hands, ducking and diving to avoid obstacles or my favourite is the mini game where you sent your pet on a rampage through a fake city.
The visuals on the pets themselves are quite nice with the animals all being nice big eyed cute creatures but the back grounds could be a bit better. It is really kid orientated and beyond the 10-12 year old bracket I can’t see many others finding this too engrossing.
Overall : Fantastic animals is aimed at kids and as such it is a nice simple game. It teaches children to care for and train a pet while letting their imaginations run wild and create their own fantastic pet. The Kinect features for the most part work but yet again as not a lot more than waving arms. The augmented reality while penned as new is not that much better than what the eye toy did.
SCORE “D” Good Game.
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