My Mini Review: There's a lot of PlayStation Network games that never see much, if any limelight to show off their potential and possibly prove to be more worth your time than a game that's on a disc. Having heard little about this title before its release, I was pretty skeptical about risking the waste of money by purchasing it, especially since it was without a demo version. However, I knew that a game about animals couldn't possibly be that bad. Fortunately I wasn't all that disappointed, in fact, I hardly was!


Game Play/Story: In the future, Japanese scientists conducted experiments that inevitably ended in a catastrophic failure, as ripples in time and space distorted the earth's balance, causing deadly mass outbreaks that slowly brought about the extinction of the human race. This, however, did not stop the animals to thrive, as zoo animals were able to escape and fend for themselves. Many former pets such as cats or dogs were also forced to become feral and fight to stay alive. With the humans gone, animals broke out into an all out war in order to keep their generation alive before they too become extinct.

In this survival based game, you play as an animal of your choice that must stay alive for as long as you can. You travel between different parts of Tokyo city in search of food and spots to make your territory for mating in order to multiply and continue the generation, while increasing the numbers in your selected animal's pack. The choices unfortunately start off very small as you are only able to play as a Pomeranian. The longer your breed of animal survives by eating, in addition to how many missions you accomplish will be converted into points that can be used later on to unlocked new animals for your leisurely use. Eventually you'll accumulate and unlock a plethora of furry animals, which surprisingly turns out to be more than you could probably name off the top of your head. It even includes different breeds and gender selection for certain animals such as dogs, hyenas, or bears, which gives you a nice variety to pick from.



Choosing what animal you want to use will affect how you'll play in order to survive in the game. Whether you pick a carnivore or herbivore is purely based on the your personal playing style. Carnivores usually have more opportunity to find other animals to kill and consume, but lack defense or health when it comes to fighting other animals as well as slower running speed, (with the exception of obvious animals like the Cheetah.) Herbivores, on the other hand are capable of running much faster, have more defense, are able to double jump, and can usually have more babies when mated. However, they lack attacking power which means they can become easy kills when spotted by larger carnivorous beasts such as lions or tigers (or bears, oh my!) Because of this, you're reduced to attempt sneaking past larger meat eaters by hiding in tall grasses to avoid being seen.



A humorous and fun perk while playing survival mode is finding bits of clothing for your animal to wear. The clothes generally offer boosts in their stats and even some additional effects to help you while you play. From bows and hats, to jackets and gym shoes, the more you collect, the more you can practically create full outfits for your animal. The clothing, however, is disposable and will go away after an animal strikes you enough times. Luckily, finding more pieces of new clothes, as well as purchasing pieces using your points easily makes up for this disadvantage.



While survival mode is the centerpiece of the game, you can also unlock scenarios to play in story mode that slowly follows the events of how certain animals had to adjust to the harsh changes in their life, how animals had to fight to gain superiority of their territory, and even how the humans attempt to bring themselves back with the reliance of a highly intelligent dog-shaped cyborg.


One of the down sides of this game is the tedious process of running back and forth to areas that have more food than others. You'll always find yourself constantly moving to avoid natural occurrences such as droughts and increased levels of toxicity in the air; problems that will continue to be more of an annoyance the longer you stay alive. The duration of game outweighs the pain of repeating once you've gotten pretty far, since once you die you have to start all over again despite how many years you lasted. Thankfully the missions usually stop after a certain amount of years have passed, so continuing on at that point is really at your own discretion. Unfortunately due to the fact that japan had access to this game before US, all of the animals scores have been maxed out online anyway, leaving little to no purpose in trying to stay alive besides collecting points to use for more animals and clothes to wear. In spite of all those negatives, the biggest would have to be the inability to save at will while in survival mode. You can only save once you've claimed a section of Tokyo, a process that can be rather inconvenient when you have to leave right away.


Controls: A simple set up to easily understand and get right into. You would have no trouble playing as the controls for each animal remain the same with the exception of a few different commands.

My Final Thoughts:[SIZE=2][FONT=Trebuchet MS] For all it's worth, it's not a bad game. One could probably find themselves playing this longer then they originally thought they would. After all, trying to play as different animals and simply unlocking the trophies can be a good enough reason to play it, that is if you're not completely bored of it after a good hour or less.


My Rating: 7.0, and if you liked this review then I'd recommend looking more into it or even trying it out. There's tons of DLC including different animals and pieces of clothing that you can't normally unlock in-game, so that adds a little more excitement and is possibly worth the money if you're interested.

So Princess Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser (must be monday), and Mario and Luigi goes out to save her. Until a new villain named Count Bleck takes all of Bowser's forces, along with Bowser himself, Peach, and Luigi. Mario on the other hand gets sent to Flipside, where their universe (honestly that part was kind of vague, they never really said what it is.) is going to be engulfed by a void. Because Count Bleck has forced Bowser and Peach to be married, because a tome known as the Dark Prognosticus foretold that the Chaos Heart will be summoned once a couple has been married and that's exactly what happens. However, A Light Prognosticus foretells that a hero will bring 8 pure hearts to flipside and stop destruction from happening, and Mario is chosen as the hero. Later on, it's revealed that 3 more heroes will assist Mario with his quest, so Peach, Bowser, and even Luigi much later in the game. Throughout the game we see some flashbacks (not exactly see, it's literally all dialogue and no visuals.) about a couple named Timpani and Blumiere who his father banished Timpani to other dimensions and eventually it's revealed that the couple might be among each other.

So what don't I like about the story? Well, this game seems to hammer in the fact that Mario is the Chosen One, when he has barely any development or even impact on the story, yes he collected all of those Pure Hearts, but any hero in their own story could've done that. He's like Ash Ketchum from Pokemon the Movie 2000, he claims to be a hero yet he foreshadows the true main characters story arc, in SPM's case, it's Tippi and Count Bleck. It's like the chosen one thing was just thrown in, because hey kidnapping the Princess is cliche, but we can't change the premise in the main games, let's get a different story cliche here. But I will say this about Tippi and Count Bleck's character arc, in the end when they reunite is a satisfying reunion. The emotion they bring, the farewells they bring, and the redemption from Count Bleck is done well. It brings in some sad stuff, but keeps it bittersweet, because of the hope that the couple will come back. But in the end the story is a bit unfocused.

Also here's a quick summary on the characters (How some of the will play is for later), there's Mario, Peach, and Bowser who to be honest don't have an impact on the story, there's Luigi, who gets possessed and turns into Mr. L which I have to admit was kind of cool. But then you got Dimentio who is actually the best part, even to fans of the game for good reason. Just the fact that he still keeps his calm throughout the game just gives me his charm. The other characters are kind of forgettable and really not much to talk about.