EyePet Review - PSP

3

Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 2
Audio: 3
Innovation: 6

EyePet is Sony’s first in-house camera game for the PlayStation Portable. With the fairly well received EyePet on PS3, gamers of the portable kind get to experience what it’s like to have a virtual pet in the real world.

Gameplay

EyePet requires the use of the PSP Camera, which attaches to the top of the PSP. Once you’ve got everything hooked up and ready to go, the game takes you through its initial processes which are basically identical to the PS3 version. You’re given an egg which you have to hatch, and then your EyePet is born. You’re given a placecard in the packaging as well which is used to let your EyePet know where to go when you want to teach it tricks. The game is very well set up for kids around the age of 10-12. Any younger and it would be too hard, any older and it would be too babyish. With such a tight target audience, the EyePet franchise struggles to appeal compared to the more established Nintendogs, and Microsoft’s new and beautiful Kinectimals on Kinect.

Your EyePet is very customisable which you soon learn as you’re constantly unlocking new items. Unfortunately however, the menu system isn’t laid out very well, and you have to scroll through all the locked items just to find that one unlocked item you want to use. That’s about as in-depth as the game gets as well, as there’s no big story to concern yourself with. A few minigames suffice for the bored gamer, but really we found EyePet one of the most boring titles on the PlayStation Portable console.

Another problem with the game is the lighting and quality of the PlayStation Portable Camera. If you don’t have sufficient (and we mean sufficient) lighting, it can be hard to play the game as it’s meant to. The EyePet card has to always be on the screen somewhere, and it’s quite difficult to keep it on-screen while enjoying playing with your pet. Also, due to the camera’s low quality, it can barely keep up with your hands, and so your EyePet ends up doing the wrong tricks or no trick at all. The game is simply a mess, and probably works quite well in one of those big white labs where everything is lit like the sun, but for an average person’s bedroom or computer desk, we say good luck.

Graphics

The graphics look about as good as you’d want them to be on the PSP, and generally it depends on your surroundings more than anything. The animations are fairly well done, and the young kids will get to love their EyePet if they play the game for long enough, but all in all if you’re after a virtual pet game that looks good, you should grab its PS3 counterpart. EyePet PS3 looks and handles much better, and the game is definitely better suited in the confines of your lounge room as opposed to the great outdoors.

Sound

There’s nothing special about the sound in EyePet PSP. The funniest ...

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