Publisher: Legacy Interactive
Developer: Legacy Interactive
System: PC
Minimum requirements: Windows XP/Vista; CD ROM drive or Internet connection
Genre: Sim
Release date: Available now
Review by: Andrew Clark

Did you know that Peter Ostrum, known better to all as Charlie Bucket from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, is a veterinarian? That’s right; the luckiest kid on Earth left acting immediately after filming was done and turned his attentions to animal husbandry and medicine. I guess some people have such an undeniable attraction to animals that they give up promising acting careers for them. Me, I like video games, so rather than dropping the controller and devoting myself to the animal kingdom, I can pick up Legacy Games’ Pet Pals: New Leash on Life, and simulate the Doctor Doolittle experience at home.

In New Leash, you assume the role of a rookie vet who’s put in charge of treating abused and abandoned animals at a rescue shelter. This medical practice spans 30 real-life cases, ranging from treating a cute little kitty with explosive diarrhea to amputating an iguana’s toe after a nasty infection. You start by asking the appropriate questions about the animal, and then you choose from more than 45 medical tools to palpate, prod and shave the ailing pet for a perfect point score. Beware, though, as triage comes into play; while your current patient might be in dire need of attention, a dog that has fallen into anaphylaxis might be a little more important at the moment.

After successful treatment come enrichment duties, in which you socialize, groom, train and find an adoptive family for Mittens or Rover. This section of the game, although part of an animal shelter’s functions, reveals itself as nothing more than a series of minigames in which you match tiles and scrub the mouse over your animal to illicit a response. I found myself more interested in the actual medicine part, so when forced into a training session, my patience waned quicker than listening to a parrot with a knack for John Denver covers. When you have a spare moment between cases, you can access your office computer, which contains animal-related distractions such as jigsaw puzzles, a word search and trivia, plus a reference glossary for animals and tools. Aside from the glossary, which is quite educational, these diversions caused one of the more horrendous PC crashes I’ve had in a year.

Visually, New Leash is a historical romp through the late 1990’s, with poorly looped animations, shoddy textures and modeling, and a windowed screen resolution that most PC owners stopped using a decade ago. There’s no way to adjust this beyond your own desktop settings, so if you’re at 1280 x 1024 like I am, you might want to break out the magnifying glass. Voice acting is serviceable, although a little overdone in certain areas, but your fellow vet techs do a great job of supplying positive reinforcement, even if your attempts at medicine fall on the ugly side. Who cares if Princess got a few more sutures than she needed? Give it another shot, she’ll be fine!

What’s not fine about New Leash is the overall gameplay. Cases are varied, but diagnosis and treatment challenges are lacking; everything you need to do is handed to you on a stainless-steel platter. The only time I felt any contest at all was when I had to answer a multiple-choice question concerning medicine doses. The interface was a bit unresponsive, too, ignoring my clicks and randomly executing moments later. Progress in some cases was difficult because the graphical attributes are so static; emerging with a decent score was equally tough.

Pet Pals: New Leash on Life is far from a good game, although I commend Legacy Interactive for its educational value and for donating a portion of the proceeds to the Humane Society. From my perspective, though, I say let sleeping dogs lie.