Awwwwww, adorables.
Try as I might, I could not resist the adorableness of my Eyepet. I gladly ploughed through the maximum number of challenges I could do each day and kind of looked forward to being able to continue the next day.
Eyepet uses the Playstation Eye video camera and requires the new Move controller. You aim the camera at the floor and pretty much need to sit on the ground in order to play the game. That’s where the immersion begins. All the action is happening right there on your floor, carpet, or rug. An egg is dropped onto your floor and you are tasked with coaxing your Eyepet to hatch. But first, the augmented reality effect used in conjunction with the Move controller is highlighted when the glowing orb at the end of the controller changes on your screen into a scanner. You move the scanner over the egg to check on how your little buddy is doing. That’s when the immersive experience of Eyepet takes things to another level.
After your pet is hatched and named, the wacky professor who sort of hosts the game (by giving you instruction and updates), sets out a schedule of four challenges each day over a fifteen-day period. The first days’ tasks focus on general upkeep of your pet: feeding and washing. After the initial challenges teach you how to perform these tasks, your pet will bring out his bowl when he is hungry and start to look dirty and fly-plagued when he needs to be washed. There do not appear to be any significant consequences to leaving your pet dirty and hungry, except his appearance and demeanor will change over time if you do not provide basic care to keep him happy. You are also given a set of basic toys very early in the game that you can use to play with your Eyepet.
However, Eyepet is not a hardcore pet simulator where the main goal is to keep your pet alive. The heart of the game is, instead, the sixty challenges. The fifteen-day time frame is a bit deceptive, because you can actually complete three days’ worth of challenges on the schedule each actual calendar day in the human realm. That means that you can complete all sixty challenges in five days, if you wish.
Sorry, Eyepet, but the game says I'm playing with you and not torturing you. That's good enough for me.
Many of the challenges consist of mini games using toys, like using a bowling ball launcher to shoot your Eyepet at bowling pins or coaxing your Eyepet to run around a certain distance in a period of time by shaking the Move controller or wiggling your fingers on the ground. Others require you to use the in-game camera system to dress your Eyepet in a particular outfit and place it in a particular scene or get it to perform a certain action while you take a picture. Still others involve either drawing on a piece of paper and holding it up to the Playstation Eye or using the Move controller to trace lines on the screen, which your Eyepet then copies to his drawing pad. Once the Eyepet finishes, whatever was drawn becomes a toy in the game that can then be used in challenges. For example, the toy car and plane that you create through drawings are used in various challenges to race your car or plane through a course or pop a certain number of balloons or gather a certain number of shooting starts in a specified period of time.
When you complete the challenges, you earn prizes, which could be new clothing, costumes, or toys for your Eyepet or could also be a new material you can use in the drawing challenges to create toys. Any challenge that is pass/fail (i.e. create a picture of Eyepet in a bee costume with a butterfly on his nose), grants you one prize. Any of the challenges that require you to do something a certain number of times before failing or within a specified time frame have three different medals that can be earned — bronze, silver, and gold — depending on how well you did on the challenge. As you are doing a challenge, the game informs you when you have reached the bronze level, which is the minimum level to complete the challenge, and then discloses the requirement for silver, and eventually gold if you earn silver. If you earn a bronze medal, you win only one prize, but if you earn silver or gold, you win two or three prizes, respectively.
Yes, I'm playing with my Eyepet in my robe. That's not illegal . . . I think.
Most of the challenges are fun, and many are quite immersive. The challenges where you hold a hoop through which your Eyepet jumps akin to a circus lion and get your eyepet to pull fish from the pond and throw them in the air so you can catch them in a net are among those that use both the Playstation Eye and the Move controller to pull you into the experience. It’s fun to go back and replay many of the challenges to try to get the gold medal, which gives the game a little bit of longevity after all of the challenges have been completed.
However, other challenges can be frustrating. Some have clunky controls, like the remote controlled robot and cars, that sap the fun out of some challenges. Pointing on the screen to where you want your car or robot to go is no substitute for an analog stick for accuracy. Others test your patience because the game does not give you quite enough information. For example, one challenge with the remote-controlled robot tells you to smash the watermelons and that you can pick up a bat and swing with the Move button. It took me awhile to figure out that you had to hold down the button for several seconds and charge up the swing before you released it. And it took several attempts of the challenge for me to figure out that you do not smash the watermelons on the ground or chase your Eyepet, who will pick up watermelons in his mouth and run around. The answer was that after you picked up the bat, your Eyepet would, after several seconds, position itself across from you and throw the watermelons at you, at which point you swing to smash the watermelons . . . but only if you actually stood still for a period of time. There could be no reason to withhold how you control the robot’s swing or how the actual challenge works.
Some of the camera challenges were flawed as well. For example, before you can use the Move controller to complete the drawing challenges, you first have to do a drawing on a real piece of paper and hold it up. However, it took me quite awhile to get the game to recognize my drawing and I actually initially gave up in frustration before coming back some time later and getting it to work. One of the photograph challenges sounded quite simple — get a picture of yourself smiling by your eyepet. I had to take about thirty pictures before the game accepted that I had completed the challenge, and that was only after I had the most exaggerated, ridiculous grin that made me look a bit psycho.
The immersive effect Eyepet creates is really great, and I found myself feeling attached to my Eyepet as the game progressed. For example, if you pet your Eyepet and get it to fall asleep, a dream bubble with video appears above his head as he remembers things you did with him. However, once I completed all of the challenges and got all the gold medals I strived to achieve, there is really nothing left for you in the game. You can continue to try to beat your high scores on challenges and you can wash, feed, and use toys to play with your Eyepet. But the game has provided no motiviation for you to do so. It would have been great if you could teach the Eyepet to talk or to do new tricks or mimic your behavior or something to keep you coming back and allow you to use your creativity.
Who's going to clean up this mess when the bubbles pop? Oh, Eyepetty . . .
The game does allow you to upload videos and photos of you and your Eyepet. You can also peruse what other people have uploaded and see which ones are more popular to help you sift through the library. There are theme upload tasks as motivation. For example, one theme was pirate day. It’s kind of fun to see the different kind of people that play the game and how over-the-top some people go for the photos, especially the themed ones. That being said, the amusement of perusing through others’ offerings only lasted a day or two.
Although the game is not as deep as I would have liked once you complete the challenges, this game is probably the best launch title for Move as far as demonstrating how the Playstation Eye and Move controller can be used in conjunction to create an immersive gaming experience where the game and your world merge. And, after all, it does offer more mini games than its colleague launch title, Start the Party. Too bad there’s no built-in multiplayer mode, though.
Rating: 
