Today we’re going to learn about animal behavioural specialists. Without these guys we’d have no chance in knowing when a rabid bear is about to strike or whether our pet dogs are really happy to see us or are just trying to disguise the fact that they’ve trailed mud all over the kitchen floor. So let’s raise a pooper scooper in salute to yet another demographic that deserves a game.
Cesar Millan, also known as The Dog Whisperer, has already got his own software out there, but it’s one of those mini-game things that supposedly teaches you dog-calming techniques in the real world. And it looks terribly boring. No, my approach is better. We’re going third person adventure game and traveling the Earth.
Alright, alright, fair play to Mr. Millan. He’s a successful dog trainer and seems like a nice enough guy, so we’ll pay some homage to him. You’re obviously not going to dive right into a foreign country and start throwing rocks at things, unless you want to end up looking like a crunched up Campino. So you start out as a humble dog trainer, mastering Cesar’s many tricks such as moving your leg out to increase your personal space, rollerblading around with them and using the legendary “Shh!” noise to scare the hounds into obedience. If this sounds strange, you’ve obviously not experienced the hilarity/horror that is The Dog Whisperer, but fear not as it’s only the tutorial.
After you’ve proven your worth dealing with smaller creatures, it’s up to you where you go and how you use your skills. It’s your job to become the foremost expert on animals in the world, and to do so there are a few different approaches. You might sneak around watching the beasts so you can work out what they’re up to and not disrupt their lives, or you can completely disregard nature and start taunting/hitting animals to work out how they react to things. Probably not very happily.
To help you work out how you’re doing there’s a morality meter of sorts. On one end of the scale you have David Attenborough, encouraging a calmer, more intelligent look at how animals act. To stay on this side the only contact with your subjects will generally be with domesticated ones, and it involves bunches of stealth sections so you don’t disturb any vital activities. On the other end of the scale you’re the one prompting most of said activities by channeling the spirit of the late great Steve Irwin. What would you rather be doing, reading books or riding around on bears while swinging snakes like lassos? Thought so.
What do you do when you rise to the top, though? When your knowledge has surpassed all others? Throughout the game others may choose to challenge your position of power in a bid to become the best animal expert, and how you defend your reputation depends very much on your affiliation. If you’re rolling with Attenborough, write tomes of knowledge to put down your foes by physically typing in all you know; but make sure it’s all truth, as the game will mark you down and spit you out if you get facts wrong. If you prefer to be like Irwin you just need to keep doing ever-crazier things so that nobody else is insane enough to try and best you. Or you could call upon the teachings of your mentor Cesar and do battle with rivals in real-time strategy style, commanding your ‘troops’ with a variety of shushes, hisses and pushes. Eat your heart out, Afrika.
Those wishing to play this in HD are going to be sorely disappointed, as the game would be tailored for Wii exclusively. The controls lend themselves perfectly to the experience: for petting the animals, pretending to ride on them and hurling things about with the motion; for typing out witty research papers or rounding your creatures up like Pikmin with the pointer. Cesar Millan’s existing game might teach you how to get a dog off a sofa, but can it show you how to coerce a crocodile into doing your bidding or allow you to watch a bat learning to love? I think not.
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