72 out of 72 people found this review helpful.
Take care of your very own puppy
Date of Review: Feb 9, 2007
The Bottom Line: If you like cute puppies, you've got to try this game.
My kids love animals, so when they came out with Nintendogs for DS, they all wanted it. One of the ones we picked up was Nintendogs: Dachshund & Friends.
Story
The story is basically you adopt a puppy and take care of it by feeding, playing and training it. It gives you an idea of what it takes to take care of a real dog. It can help teach responsibility to a child in preparation because you will have to play it every day to at least give the puppy food and water. If you forget about your puppy for a long time, it will run away. My son found this out after he didn't play for about two weeks and when he went to play again, the puppy had run away.
Gameplay
When you first start the game, you will have the option to adopt one of six different breeds of puppies. As you progress through the game you can unlock other breeds. The starting breeds in this one are Miniature Dachshund, Golden Retriever, Beagle, Pug, Siberian Husky, and Shih Tzu.
Once you get your puppy, you'll have to teach it his/her name by using the microphone. You have to make sure you speak clearly and in the same tone every time to get the puppies to listen to you.
You'll start out with some food and water and will have the opportunity to buy more things for your puppy, not just food items, but decorations for your house and toys.
When you do things with your puppy, you gain trainer points and this is how you basically level up. When you hit certain levels in your trainer points, it will unlock other puppies in the game.
Walks
You can take your puppy for walks (short walks in the beginning, longer ones when your trainer points and bond with the puppy grow). One thing to remember when you take your puppy for a walk is to clean up after him/her, yes they will do their business along the way and you have to tap it with the stylus to clean it up. How realistic is that? Also on walks you'll come across other trainers and their puppies and your puppy just might find a present along the way. The length of your walks will be able to get longer with each walk and then you can go to places like the discount shop, park and the training area.
Tricks
You'll be able to teach your puppy tricks like sit, spin, beg, rollover and many more. Your puppy will be able to learn 14 tricks, if you want them to learn more, you have to make them forget a trick to be able to add another one.
Cleaning
You won't really be giving your puppy a bath in a bathtub, but you will have to clean and brush your puppy to keep him/her nice and clean. You'll need to buy shampoo for either long or short hair puppies and you'll use that, a sponge and a showerhead to clean your puppy.
Contests
You can even enter your puppy in contests, they have a disc competition, dog obedience and agility trials. I like the agility trials the best and I think the obedience contests are the hardest, especially when you move on to the higher levels of the obedience contests. You'll only be able to enter three contests in a day so you don't wear out your puppy.
Bark Mode
Bark Mode is where you and a friend can go to the park together with your puppies via the wifi connection. You can even bring a present for your friend and their puppy if you want. While at the park, each of you will be able to play with both puppies separately. If your friend has a different version of Nintendogs, the puppy they brought with them in Bark Mode will become available on your game the next time you want to adopt a puppy.
Puppy Hotel
They have the puppy hotel because you are allowed to have 8 puppies at a time, but only 3 can be with you in the house, the other 5 will have to be put in the hotel and it does cost you money to have your puppies there. I really don't recommend having more than two puppies at a time anyways, it's not that easy to take care of more than that.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics are pretty darn good for a DS game, the puppies look almost realistic, the backgrounds and such aren't that spectacular, but they did a great job on the puppies. Sounds are good too, at least the puppy barks and just like some barks in real life are annoying, they are on here too, so if you don't like the "yap-yap" dogs like my husband likes to call them, you might find them annoying on here too. The rest of the sounds are ok, but can get annoying at times, that's when I just turn the volume down as long as I'm not training the puppy.
Controlls
As I mentioned before, you'll be using the microphone for voice commands and the stylus for everything else, from buying things, petting your puppy, throwing them toys, etc. I was surprised that the stylus play works very well and the voice commands do good too as long as you keep the same tone of voice when giving commands to your puppy.
Conclusion
If you like puppies or just want to help teach a child some responsibility for a puppy ahead of purchasing one, this is a good game to teach them to care for a puppy and I definitely recommend it. It's a cute game, but you will have to remember to interact with your puppy once a day to at least give him/her food and water. If you plan on not being able to play for a while and you don't want to have to start over, put your puppy in the hotel and he/she will be taken care of while you're away.
Whether you want to help teach some responsibility or just want to have fun playing a cute game, I definitely recommend you give this one a try.
