I thoroughly enjoyed last year’s EyePet: Move Edition which was a well-crafted and fun Augmented Reality (AR) experience for the whole family. EyePet & Friends adds some new ingredients to the mix, including a fresh batch of mini-games and a greater emphasis on customisation. The biggest and best new feature, however, is the ability to rear two pets simultaneously using two Move controllers – either on your own or with a friend.

To play EyePet & Friends you’ll need to clear a large area (approximately 3m x 3m) in front of your TV and pivot your PlayStation Eye as far down as it will go. The camera’s target area then becomes the ‘frame’ which will be displayed on your TV, and the game’s visuals are rendered on top of it.

The next step is hatching your EyePet, and once the cute critter emerges from its shell it’s time to explore all that the game has to offer. The basic options at your disposal will feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s played a previous EyePet title, with a ton of content being recycled from EyePet: Move Edition. Although your pet cannot die, it still needs to be fed, washed and played with to remain in tip-top condition.

If you leave the game and come back to it after a couple of days, chances are your pet will have flies buzzing around it and will mournfully drag its food bowl towards you. Thankfully you can perform a health check on your pet at any stage to ascertain what work needs to be done to ensure you stay in its good books.

Every section of EyePet & Friends has a spoken tutorial so kids should get to grips with the game’s mechanics quickly. While this title is clearly aimed at children, there are some jarring design choices and technical issues that could easily put them off playing this game any further. My main gripe in this regard are the horrendous load times that separate each section of the game. This is the type of title where you’ll want to quickly cycle between activities but the long load times make doing so truly unpleasant. I can’t understand why the developers didn’t include an optional install to help alleviate this issue.

Another problematic area of the game is its ‘pet token’ system. These tokens are used to unlock new outfits and activities for your pet, and almost everything is locked away at the game’s outset. The issue here is that tokens are handed out in a miserly fashion relative to the price of items. For example, unlocking a new mini-game costs 1 000 tokens but you only earn about 150 tokens for successfully performing an activity – from teaching your pet a new trick to feeding it enough biscuits to satiate its appetite. This means you have to ‘grind’ – do activities just for the sake of earning tokens – to unlock new content. I personally think kids will be put off by this mechanic and quickly grow frustrated with the game’s meagre reward scheme.

To make matters worse, unlocking new mini-games is not much of an incentive for earning pet tokens as they’re generally dull and become tiresome after just a few rounds. The twelve challenges on offer are based around vehicles such as boats, rockets and UFOs and don’t make much use of the PlayStation Move’s considerable capabilities. Rather, they typically involve using the Move as a pointer and pressing the ‘Move’ or ‘T’ buttons at the right moment – hardly inspirational use of the controller.

Despite all these negatives, EyePet & Friends has a lot more to offer than its predecessor in the way of customisation and creativity. You can now build play areas for your pet in ‘soft play’ mode and save your creations for later use or share them with your friends online. It’s fun to create an obstacle course for your pet and see how they navigate the stairs, blocks and tunnels that you’ve strategically placed in their play area.

There’s also a huge variety of clothing items you can use to ‘decorate’ your pet, ranging from baseball trousers to fairy wings. If that wasn’t enough, you can now customise each article of clothing with stickers, glitter, stencils or marker pens to give your pet a look which reflects the interests (and creative ability) of its owner.

The presentation of EyePet & Friends is remarkably similar to EyePet: Move Edition, with recycled music, animations and visual effects prevalent throughout the game. That said, they are still excellent for an AR title and there are some wonderful new animations to take in when you have two pets interacting with each other on-screen.

It’s difficult to recommend EyePet & Friends over its predecessor as EyePet: Move Edition is the more enjoyable, rewarding experience. If you’ve already played that game to death, however, then EyePet & Friends should present a few interesting novelties along with a great outlet for all your pet-centric, creative ideas!

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