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.

Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2 (Nintendo Switch) - Review

I first played Cook, Serve, Delicious when it was an iPad game and I was hooked immediately. It was fast-paced and frantic and I loved that about it. Couple that with control over the menu and having to think about the "buzz" your restaurant received and I played nothing but that game for hours on end. It was basically all I used my iPad for.

So when Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2 came out on PC in 2017 I had to play it. Something didn't gel right with me though, and I spent nowhere near as much time with it as I thought I would. On paper it sounded right up my street - more food items, more challenges - but something just wasn't clicking. 

Fast forward to 2019 and it turns out the game is coming to Switch! Which has fast become my favourite console because it is actually accessible to a Mum of two game-obsessed kids who keep stealing my Xbox One. Not only is it coming to Switch, but it's coming to Switch on my birthday! I reached out to the developer with my fingers crossed and happily received a code. 

I downloaded it immediately and in the week prior to launch (and my birthday) I put in numerous hours of burger-flipping and latte making. I work in a school and the code happily coincided with my two week Easter break so I played it A LOT. I even played it whilst I re-watched Game of Thrones from the beginning ready for the new season. I am hooked. 

I don't understand why I didn't feel so positively about the PC version of this game after playing it on my Switch for the last fortnight. In 2017 I (mistakenly) believed that the original iPad game was the best version of the game and that the sequel had not managed to come anywhere near as close. Playing it again, two years later on a console I adore has completely changed that for me. And I haven't even been using the touch screen controls that have since been added. The button controls work really well. I mean, yeah it can be stressful to try and find the right button fast - especially when you also play Xbox and the X and Y buttons are switched which leads to much confusion - but it only adds to the pleasure of the game. 

There is so much content here too. The new console releases are up-to-date with the current PC build which is fantastic. There are so many different restaurants you can work in in the tower to unlock things for inside your own restaurant that, honestly, I don't know how anyone could get bored. All of the different restaurants offer different cuisines, which in turn, offer new ways to cook. 

The game also offers a co-op mode which is perfect for the Switch. Though be warned, it could quite easily lead to domestics. I played it with my son and ended up delegating him to just the chores. I couldn't handle watching him slowly read the ingredients and take an age to press the corresponding button. Hey, nobody is perfect. I'm working on it. 

Yes you don't just get to cook gorgeous looking meals in this game. As in real life a food prep station comes with chores. Take the trash out, do the dishes and flush the loo that your customer can't quite seem to get the hang of. Typing it like that it sounds a lot like my actual life with the tiny humans I've spawned. Luckily I don't have to set many mice traps in real life though. 

I am having so much fun with this game and honestly don't see myself getting bored. At just £12.99 this game is a steal for how much content there is and I can't see how anybody at all could say they didn't have fun playing it. The Switch is the perfect home for it, but for you guys who haven't yet bought one Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2 is also out on Xbox One and I'm sure it will provide just as much fun. And that version will have achievements! I'm fairly sure I'll end up double-dipping and if that's not telling you how fantastic this game is, I'm not sure what will. 

Millie (Switch) - Review

Millie is available now on the Nintendo Switch and is priced at £4.49.

There are a lot of games on the Nintendo Switch eShop that started life as a mobile game. Millie was originally released on mobile and Steam a few years back for a little less money up front but a fair few micro transactions once you got stuck in.

I hadn't really heard of it until it came to the Switch store. I was intrigued. I'm almost 30 and so I spent much of my teen years playing Snake on my Nokia 3310. No phone since has ever been as loved. Millie looked enough like Snake to pique my interest, so I fired off an email and got to playing it the minute the code came through.

Millie isn't a Snake clone. It's actually more like what would happen if Snake and Pac-Man had a baby in that you do grow as you eat pellets but the pellets are spread around a maze-like level a la Pac-Man. And these maze-like levels can be incredibly tough to get around when you get bigger every time you eat.

There are 100 levels that are spread through three environments and the first few left me feeling pretty confident. I was doing alright. But then the levels suddenly seemed to get a lot bigger and it was a hell of a lot tougher to not keep smacking Millie's head into her butt. I had to give up on my perfectionist preferences pretty soon. Until then I had been getting every last pellet and not bumping Millie into herself at all, but I soon began moving to the exit the minute it became open and after I had quit out a couple of times because I had made Millie headbutt herself, again, I gave up on that too and accepted the time penalty that came with it humbly. Ish.

You do get some items that will help you along the way, but I tried to stay away from them for as long as possible. It's not possible to for long though. Well, I guess it probably is, but I don't know how much fun you'd have. As I mentioned before, the mobile version had micro-transactions built in. These micro-transactions included things like scissors that cut a little bit off Millie (ouch!), and clocks that allow you to rewind slightly after you've got yourself into yet another pickle. Luckily for us Switch players these are bought with the stars you earn in game, rather than real money. I did find it annoying though that after using some of them in a level only to have to restart it anyway, I lost what I had used. I was kinda expecting that you'd get them back if you failed the level after using them.

Millie is a fun little game, but wow does it test your patience. It would have even the most seasoned of gamers moaning with frustration, especially in the later levels. Kids might enjoy the first few levels they would definitely tire of how tough it is a little later on.