In a nutshell…

A Tamagotchi for the 21st century.

What’s it good for?

Training up your caring, sharing side. And not much else, sadly.

Judgement time…

Since its inception a few years ago, EA’s Sims series has proved to be one of the most popular gaming franchises of all time – generally because its laid-back, undemanding gameplay appealed to an audience turned off by the lightning-paced kill ‘em ups and stat-heavy strategy titles usually seen on the PC.

So here we have the first Sims game for the burgeoning N-Gage platform, and we’re surprised to report that it’s chock full of violence, sex and dialogue that would make a navvy blush. Only joking, folks: it’s actually a game where you look after a dog. And er, that’s it.

What we have here is basically one of those early 1990s Tamagotchi games with jazzed-up visuals and sound effects and a big brand name slapped on. You start off with an untrained puppy (you can select from a handful of breeds and colours) that knows no tricks aside from scratching up the carpet and weeing on the kitchen floor.

Your job is to keep your pup happy and healthy (stroke it; feed it; bathe it; make sure it gets its beauty sleep) while teaching it tricks and curbing its less appealing habits. A line-up of gauges indicates what you need to do, and most tasks are performed by moving the cursor to copy the on-screen prompts, plus pressing the middle button occasionally to scold/praise your pooch. As games (even mobile phone games) go, it’s as demanding as a Daniel O’Donnell album – and just about as bland and unexciting.

I’m probably not the target market for this sort of thing, but it’s difficult to see how anyone would want to spend more than half an hour playing it. Obviously your pet will become a more impressive beast as the days progress, but the process of training it and keeping it happy is so dull that it feels like a chore – one that you have to shell out £8.00 for the pleasure of experiencing. We’ll stick to killing aliens and driving cars, thanks.