EyePet Review

Oh God, it's the evil one from Gremlins...

This winning charm extends to almost every area of the game. The motion controls are usually pretty responsive, but it's the accompanying plethora of nice ideas that really make them work. For example, when you're starting out for the first time you'll have to help your new pet to hatch out of his egg. First you rock the egg from side to side to wake him up, then when he starts to tap at the shell's insides you'll get to play a brief little pattern matching game. It's a minor touch, a little diversion before the game properly begins, but it's endearing all the same.

After you've mastered the basics, there's a whole range of japes to enjoy with your pet. There are a total of 60 challenges to play through, most of them involving a special plastic card that comes bundled with the game. When you hold this token up to the camera, it'll turn into some form of tool or toy, depending on the challenge at hand. If you're washing your animal, it can be used as a showerhead, a shampoo bottle or a hairdryer; if you're doing a spot of gardening, it turns into a watering can. There are loads of things to do with your Pet, from 10 pin bowling to play fights to games of Snap, and at any given moment you can take pics or videos of your high jinks using the in-built camera tool. Each challenge has three goals to meet, and you'll unlock new prizes for your pet as you meet them - my Pet Speshulbrew is currently wearing a leather jacket and flying goggles. As you work through the tasks you'll unlock new ones, but Sony has wisely stuck a limit on how many you can open up in the course of a day - so it'll take players some time to see everything the game has to offer.

If I were going to be critical, I could point out that quite a few of the games are simply variations on stuff that you've already done. Some of the challenges can be a little fiddly to work, too: while the EyePet's technology works brilliantly for the majority of the time, it does stumble a bit from time to time - particularly on the occasions when the game asks you to sing at your pet. Then again, I'm a lousy singer - so perhaps this wasn't the game's fault after all. In any case, the drawing-based mini-games have a far greater wow-factor: here the player doodles on an A4 pad with a felt tip pen and then holds their creation up to the camera. The EyePet then grabs a pen of its own and sets about re-creating your sketch in surprising detail. On top of this, there's also the option to draw vehicles for your Pet - cars, planes and spacecraft - which then magically pop out of the paper to become drivable 3D objects. You could easily spend a couple of hours just messing around with these options, and if you have a crude mind the entire system is ripe for abuse - but since this is a family-focused review, I'll refrain from mentioning VideoGamer's ruder creations.

To an extent, the EyePet still has the same problem that the Petz series had, in that its longevity is reliant entirely upon your compassion for an animal that doesn't really exist. It's a doll, not a game, and if you get bored of the doll there's no real reason to stick around. However, it's easy to see that the EyePet is the best virtual pet that anyone has ever created. It's cute, it can do lots of neat tricks, and it puts motion controls to great use. The EyePet is probably going to sell like hotcakes this Christmas, and its success will be richly deserved.

EyePet will be available from October 23 priced £19.99. The game will also be offered in a bundle with a PlayStation Eye camera for around £34.99.