Game Reviews

iGotchi

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iGotchi
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If you're old enough to remember the first Tamagotchi digital pets, you'll know they were simple affairs. Looking after your pet took frequent presses of the 'feed', 'play', and 'wash' buttons and it was extremely difficult to keep it alive for more than a week. There was very little else involved in 'playing' with an original Tamagotchi.

Thankfully, after a couple of versions it dawned on designers that virtual pets were incredibly boring. You had all the downsides of owning a real pet – the feeding and cleaning – but none of the real interaction and fun.

Sadly, iGotchi fails to learn from this hard lesson. As if stuck in some kind of time loop, iGotchi manages to take virtual pets back to the dark age.

Initial set up has you selecting a gender, name, and three fuzzy colours. Beautiful fur rendering really sets iGotchi apart from other virtual pets, but you won't be playing with them long enough for any of that to matter.

You can do three things with your pet: feed it, give it a drink, and 'play' with it. Providing food and water consists of topping of your pet's portions whenever they get low. It's hardly an exciting task, but an activity to undertake in a game without much to do.

Playing with your pet isn't nearly as exciting as it should be. You can tickle it using the touchscreen, which prompts a few giggles. You can occasionally catch it playing with a football, although you're not able to toss around the ball yourself. In other words, you get to watch while your pet plays with itself, putting you in the unusual position of glumly envying the game that's supposed to be giving you pleasure.

All of the above makes the next part of the iGotchi experience even more baffling. Not opening the application within a 24-hour period causes your pet to be removed from your ownership. You can simply press a button to have it returned, but rack up five negligent removals and you lose parenting rights totally. You're welcome to e-mail the developer a special code to have your pet returned, although it actually seems like a treat to be rid of the responsibility of caring for such a boring pet.

With all the unwanted responsibility of a pet without any of the pleasure, iGotchi is more likely to annoy and bore you than offer an entertaining virtual companion.

iGotchi

Fun for five minutes, iGotchi lacks any depth to keep you coming back for more
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