Thursday 30 May 2019

Little Friends: Dogs & Cats (Nintendo Switch) - Review

Usually my daughter is pretty unimpressed by the games I am reviewing. She likes gaming and loves her Nintendo Switch with a passion but her favourite games on it include a game where you make towers from cake. She's 7 so I'm letting her off, for now.

So it's a rare thing that I get to impress her with a review. She was quite excited by Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2 - until she actually played it with me and realised that I am the head chef from hell.

When I got the opportunity to receive a code for Little Friends: Dogs & Cats on Switch I knew I had to take it. My son gets to reap the benefits of my reviewing a lot more than she does and I had an inkling she'd love this game.

Little Friends: Dogs & Cats is basically Nintendogs for Switch and I'm sure we can all admit that we loved those games at some point, even I did when I was a teen with much more spare time than I have now at my disposal.

My daughter let out a squeal when I showed her what had downloaded whilst she was at school and immediately opened the game. The game opens and you can pick which dog you want. She went for a Chihuaha and called it Sofia and spent the rest of the evening lovingly tending to it's every need.

Once you reach level 15 you can adopt more pets from the Friends Plaza and each one will have a favourite food. You level up your friendship level with your pets by playing with them, petting them and feeding them.

You can also unlock achievement stamps for doing certain tasks - like walking a certain distance, petting your little friends and teaching your pets tricks. There are also different levels of competitive frisbee games where you can earn a little money, and an opportunity to practice your skills in the park.

My daughters favourite thing about this game is that you can dress up your pets. The clothing shop is full to the brim of ...err...interesting things you can dress your animals in. My daughter delighted in picking out outfits for her dog and two cats, (Rosie and Elsa) as you can see by the pictures below!


You also get to personalise your home in game with new furniture, wallpapers and flooring. This is the bit I prefer - I don't really like dressing up the animals with reindeer horns like my daughter does and would much rather make the house look nice. Luckily we both have separate saves so we didn't have to argue about it! For me, there's just something really weird about putting clothes on an animal, fake or real. My daughter has no such qualms and has delighted in buying her animals an array of crazy outfits.

At the time of writing this review my daughter has spent more than 25 hours playing this game. I can't claim to have spent anywhere near that much time on it. As much as I can see the appeal of this game for young and old alike I'd rather spend my precious game time on something a little more involved. The joy it has brought to my daughter is well worth the price of admission though, and if you have a child (or adult) who would love nothing more than to have a house full of pets they can dress up to their hearts content then this game is a no brainer.

I asked my daughter if there was anything she didn't like about this game. Her answer:

'You have to clean the toilet and that's just a bit weird.'

Spoiler alert kiddo, the toilet in real life doesn't clean itself either.

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