When you first boot up 101 DinoPets 3D you're greeted with an introduction that sees you finding an abandoned dinosaur hatchling on your front porch. If you're anything like us, this will fill you with excitement about how much potential for fun this concept has. Then again if you're anything like us that excitement will soon disappear due to mindless repetition and oppressive tedium.
First things first: the 101 in the title refers to the total number of possible combinations of traits you can assign your dinosaur. In practice there are only five different types of dino to choose from, and the differences between them are entirely cosmetic. You can then choose a colour for your pet, give it some claws, and so on, but the actual pet creation process makes the game feel far more limited than its title suggests; you can also give your dinosaur a name, and that's it as far as customisation goes. You can have three separate dinos (due to three save slots)... a far cry from 101.
The game itself is a very simple pet sim. Your dinosaur will slug aimlessly around the house, with a set of icons letting you know that he's hungry, sick, tired, and so on. When he's any of these things you'll tap the appropriate icon on the touch screen to address the issue. There are some unlockable variants — such as different types of food to feed your pet, or different clothes for it to wear — but the experience of interacting with your pet never changes, and it gets dull pretty quickly.
The key to an engaging pet sim is that the pets actually have personality. Nintendogs understood this, but 101 DinoPets 3D seems to think that sticking a T-Rex in a sailor suit while it hobbles about a low-polygon kitchen is good enough. Without personality it's impossible to feel any sort of connection to your pet, and once you realise that you're bound to wonder why you're bothering to hang around until it needs to go to the toilet.
There are a few additional activities you can perform with your pet, such as entering it in talent competitions to show off the tricks you've taught it. Sadly the tricks consist of simple lines you draw on the touch screen, and the antics your pet performs as a result don't seem to have any connection at all to what you've drawn, making the exercise feel rather arbitrary. You can also play a series of minigames, such as jigsaw puzzles and matching games, that have genuinely nothing to do with your pet and feel like stray code from an unrelated release.
All of this would be fine — perhaps not particularly impressive, but fine — if it weren't for the presence of one serious bug: it's possible for your items, such as food, to enter the negative numbers. Once that happens, you may be trapped.
For instance, you may have one unit of food remaining. Your dinosaur is hungry, so you tap the food icon, and it ambles over to its dish. However if you tap the icon twice, it's possible that the game will interpret that as two feedings, even though you don't have enough food for that. The amount of food remaining will therefore be displayed as "-1," the dinosaur will never stop eating, and you may have to start fresh and create a whole new pet. If the lack of personality didn't destroy all engagement you'd have had with your dinosaur, having to start all over with a new one due to a glitch certainly will.
The 3D effect is nice, but isn't really necessary for a game like this, especially when your dinosaur just slowly zig zags around the room like a living screen saver. The graphics are unimpressive and the music is as devoid of character as anything else in the game. In fact, for all the promise that the word "DinoPet" brings to mind, in practice it just seems like a mess of barely connected ideas without any regard for what makes the genre work in the first place.
If someone leaves this rotten egg on your porch, just sweep it into the trash.
Conclusion
101 DinoPets 3D isn't egregiously bad — one game-breaking glitch aside — but the experience it provides ranges from dull to muddled. Unrelated and pointless minigames, silly costumes and a complete lack of momentum betray a product that tries to pass off its disconnectedness as quirkiness. Those dying for an eShop pet sim might be more forgiving, but anyone seeking a more solid and engaging experience would be wise to look elsewhere.
Comments 22
Di-no-way I'm buying this hunk of trash.
Anyone want to be friends on 3ds my friend code is 4511-0525-6845
Someone needs to make a game based on the old Dinosaurs TV show. I'd play the hell outta that!
Not the mama! Not the mama!!!
If a game title starts with '101' then you can be almost certain that it'll be pretty bad. Teyon have made a few games that are potentially crap but turned out alright, but this was never going to be one of them.
This game is pretty much extinct to me.
Theres good and then theres bad. well..... this ones bad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=733O0xJDx8o
I think I had this game for PC, which came for free in a cereal box. I never played it, and I guess that was the best thing to do...
Honestly, I was actually kinda hoping this would have been good.
Why is that a bad game? These dinosaurs are so cutes.
Those dinosaurs seem all cute and stuff, but once they grow, you will have no way of controlling them, you will have to feed them even more food, and clean up bigger messes, and if your dinosaur decides that he's gonna wreck it like Ralph downtown, and by that, I mean step on buildings and cause damage to everything, then everybody will then blame you for this, and you will have to pay for all the damage that he makes............. actually, that sounds like that could have a great potential for a pet-sim game right there.
This got a 5 star rating on the eshop...
@undead_terror Maybe one person gave it that rating
@undead_terror Everything has a 5-star rating on the eShop. I could make a game about anything tapping the screen at random times and it wouldn't get lower that 3.
@undead_terror That's because 1) you have to play the game for an hour and 2) you have to be interested in it in the first place to be able to rate it.
Most people that aren't interested in the game won't buy it, and most people that buy it and don't like it will not play it for an hour. So all that's left are the people that somehow enjoy it, and therefore give it a high score.
Some people seem to think that this system is superior to critical reviews, but some people are nuts. The rating system on the eShop is utterly useless as a gauge for quality.
I'm surprised that they didn't use a "z" in the title. Hell has indeed frozen over.
Still downloading it
@Morphtroid I hope that's a joke....right??
@Marakuto HA!
"They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think whether or not they should."
Jurassic Park
@Kirababy35 I added you. Mine is 2277-6707-0066
I wouldn't have bought it without reading the review. Not a big fan of pet sims. Especially not crappy ones like this.
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