Eyepet & Friends - Move Required (PS3)

When Eyepet, from Sony, first appeared back in 2010 we were instantly hooked. The on-screen little fur ball was great fun - being one of those games that you need a camera for. The game saw you interacting with your own eyepet and what was a fresh and compelling idea was only enhanced by making a Move version. We loved Eyepet, and spent, as a family, many a happy hour playing with our virtual pal, unlocking challenges and generally marvelling in the wonder of technology. When, at the end of last year Sony released a new title "Eyepet and Friends" we were first in the queue to pre-order online. The five year old was beside herself with excitement and told every Father Christmas within a five mile radius how another Eyepet was on her list. Having enjoyed the original the premise of playing with two on-screen pals at once could only add to the enjoyment, interest and fun, right? Wrong. This game is, quite simply one big disappointment from start to finish.

The original game saw you hatching and nurturing one pet. Here along the same lines, but with the addition of a rather too talkative narrator, you get two eggs. This is where the frustration starts, play together and inadvertently swap over controllers and nothing happens, the game from the off is slow to load and prone to falling over for no obvious reason and when you do play it's really not at all obvious what the actual purpose of the game is. Where, previously, there were day to day challenges to unlock and things to do, the new game sees you trying to find your way through a maze of menus working out what the point of the whole thing is. Any concept about the original game that was good has been removed and so you find yourself pottering around the game, earning random tokens for random things and getting more frustrated and, actually bored the longer you play because what was a simple game for children to play seems to have been transformed into a poor Tamagotchi clone which fundamentally misunderstands what children enjoy, and makes the bits that they may actually enjoy really hard to find within a mass of pointless activities.

Instead of growing food we get making a soft play circuit using the move controller as a mouse - tedious and bewildering. Where previously playing sports or with the toys was fun, now we have to earn tokens to buy toys and when you do so it's not clear why you would really want to, unless for some reason uploading pictures of your pet onto the web is what you really want to be doing. The basic things you have to do to keep your Eyepet happy, like feeding them and washing them are now over complex and - the Move controller is not used to full advantage either, using it as a laser pointer to "train" your pet by making eg circular movements so he rolls over is unintuitive and tedious. Somehow amongst this mess of a game where before you could forgive the inadequacies of the Eye camera and the rather grainy picture of you playing with the pet that was always inevitable, when this is coupled with far too frequent freezing and just downright pointlessness even the most devoted to Eyepet five year old (that would be my daughter) is going to get disillusioned and frustrated. Gaming really should be more fun than this.

Yes this game does provide two pets, (assuming you have two Move controllers of course) but two near identical pets with added clothes options but a highly increased likelihood of crashing, freezing and just generally being annoying. This game really is not an improvement on the first one despite the increased ability to draw and create cards and your own toys, there are just too many aspects that are less good. That the price of this game has plummeted is I suppose telling. Where before my kids loved this game and could play happily by themselves, now they need supervision and help and are not sure what they are supposed to do - I'd like to be able to tell them but in all honesty I find it all pretty pointless and frustrating myself. Not recommended on any level - buy the first game instead.

We have lived with the original EyePet Game (PS3) for nearly 2 years and we couldn't wait to get the sequel of this amusing game enjoyed by all family members (though the interactive gaming is appropriately left to the young ones!).

The EyePet this time comes with friends and this enhances the fun even more -- noting that it's already a great game even as a single pet. The [slight] frustration with the Magic Card is gone as this new game is built around Playstation Move Controller. Worth noting that the old EyePet game was also redesigned at a later stage with PS3 Move Controller - as Eyepet: Move Edition - so if you want to get hold of the original game, then you shouldn't be put off by the Magic Card problem that existed with EyePet - with Camera and Magic Card (PS3).

If you do not have already, you need to invest in Playstation Move Controller to play this game, ideally two perhaps more (depending on number of players as required for other PS3 Move games) and on the downside they don't come that cheap (although on the plus side they are not limited to this game but used with any PS3 Move games).

An excellent game with resounding 5-star as rated by our young children and the grown-ups second this rating.

Both myself and my daughter loved the 1st eyepet game(move edition)and was eagerly looking forward to this sequel, but what a disappointment! Lots of slowdown during 2 player games, long loading times between each chosen task and numerous crashes. Giant leap backwards for me, not nearly as much fun. My daughter summed up the gane by saying 'dad can we play with the old eyepet'. Buy the first game for a much better experience.