3.5/5 ★ – jdraco's review of The Dog Island.

Never in my life did I expect this to be one of the last games that I played in 2024 But I guess this is the direction that life took me and I’m just along for the ride That being said, though, this actually is a pretty good game I mean, it’s no masterpiece or anything, because at the end of the day, it is a kids game But it was surprisingly good, and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would Maybe primarily because I played it with my girlfriend, and we both gave different voices to all of the dogs, which was definitely the most fun that I had with the whole game But as it stands by itself, this game is still pretty solid The gameplay, though, is nothing special by any means I mean, the gameplay loop just consists of you sniffing around a certain area to try and find an item, over and over and over and over and over… That’s seriously how almost every mission goes: a character tells you that they need something, they tell you what area to find it in, you learn the scent of that certain thing, and then you go to that area, sniff around till you find it, and then go back to that character and give them the item It is so damn repetitive, and I really wish that they just did other things Probably the best missions in the game are the Victory Gang missions because you’re given something else to do Like in one of them you go fishing, in another one you catch a bug, and then in another one you play a sledding minigame, and then in the last one you have a race And these are all pretty fun because they aren’t just the same mission copy and pasted over and over again And I mean, these missions aren’t the fucking holy grail of gameplay; some of them are janky as hell, especially the sledding one, but they’re unique, and that’s what matters most Speaking of unique, though, one thing that I actually do really like about this game, which I touched on briefly, is all the different characters (dogs) There are a lot of different dogs in this game, with most of them having their own distinct jobs and personalities and bills to pay to support their nagging wives and their 3 ungrateful bastard children Again, there are just a lot of different dogs Some of my favorites of them being Noble, who’s the leader of Pupsville and who wears a fedora and a monocle. Then there’s his dumbass son named Peter who’s extremely horny for one of the other dogs in the village. There’s El Dorado, who’s a pirate dog; there’s a dog named Dougal who collects fish; there’s a healer dog that lives in the woods named Obaba (who my girlfriend and I referred to as Obama and gave a Barack Obama voice to); there’s a Chinese dog named Yi Lu who teaches you about sniffing; and then there’s also a musician dog named Mid The best dog of all of them, though, is Boris He’s a dalmatian who wears a hat, and talking to him lets you fast travel anywhere I love Boris And, again, I also loved just giving voices to all of these characters with my girlfriend and watching the story of the game unfold as well The story of the game goes in some crazy-ass places, and it gets surprisingly dark at some points as well I mean, at the beginning of the game, your brother/sister comes down with a terminal illness. And then the doctor in Pupsville’s wife also dies of a terminal illness, and at one point in the story you catch the doctor visiting her grave And then also at one point one of the dogs drops the word “suicide” just out of the blue Which it’s actually really funny to think about a kid playing this game for the first time, seeing that word, and then asking their mom or dad what that means I don’t know; the thought of that is just funny as hell to me But yeah, anything that wasn’t the gameplay, I was 100% behind that; it all pretty much worked for me Especially the music, which at some points goes absolutely crazy and makes the mundane-ass gameplay actually seem kind of exciting sometimes It’s definitely not enough to save the gameplay, though, not by any means And I didn’t even bring up the “combat” yet, which, I mean, is just laughable The combat consists of you having to sneak up behind an enemy and bark at them, which temporarily stuns them Which is just pathetic and doesn’t even work most of the time because the enemies are almost always vigilant and moving around, especially towards the end of the game, which, at that point I pretty much just stopped even trying to stun enemies Because it just wasn't worth it The one part of the gameplay that I actually do kind of enjoy, though, is the fishing And that was probably just because I really like fishing in real life and in video games as well, but I don’t care; the fishing gameplay is fun enough, and anytime there was an opportunity to fish in the game, I took it Which really annoyed my girlfriend because she kept wanting me to continue on with the story, and I would just keep taking 10-minute fishing breaks But yeah, I think I pretty much covered everything that I wanted to say about this game Again, it’s good, but it definitely is lacking in some parts That being said, though, again, it is a kids game at the end of the day, so I can give it a little bit of slack And even with it being a kids game, I’d still say that I definitely did enjoy most of my time with the game I will say, though, almost all of that enjoyment probably did come from the fact that I played it with my girlfriend I think if I were to play it by myself, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it nearly as much But I didn’t play it by myself (thank god) And you know what? I’m feeling generous today So I’m going to give The Dog Island, a 3.5/5 *Boris for President 2028*