Hoy folks, Spartan here with another one of my mini game reviews. These are games that I won’t be subjecting Mr. Cosmia to play, due to them being bad, too out there, or too short to be viable for the game trade. In this case, it’s the second option. This time on the reviews, it’s Petz Rescue: Wildlife Vet.

Full disclosure, I own this game, I’ve had it ever since it came out and I got it for Christmas one year. I remember seeing advertisements for it on TV and in National Geographic Kids magazines. Growing up I was very interested in animals, and like many kids that interest shaped my environment. I subscribed to ZooBooks and Weird n Wild Creature cards, eagerly awaiting when they would come in the mail every month. My room was plastered with elephants and all manner of wildlife (who the hell am I kidding, my room still looks like that!), and at school non-fiction books on animals were what I always chose during silent reading. Of course this fascination eventually led to me getting a degree in General Biology with most of my electives being zoology or vertebrate paleontology. I was an animal kid through and through, and of course, that interest lent itself to video games.

The PetZ series of games was developed by Ubisoft, and seemed to be their way of competing with Nintendo’s wildly popular Nintendogs, itself a game marketed towards young children whose parents either couldn’t afford a pet or didn’t trust little Joshua with anything living (you know who you are). After all, why get a pet that you have to clean up after and eventually lose to a myriad of potential fates when you can have one that never dies and is never not interested in you? Free will is an illusion and blind obedience makes money damn it! Where was I? oh, right the PetZ Rescue series.

This is a series where they tried to be educational and show kids some aspects of animal husbandry if they were interested in that as a potential career path. Do they succeed in this endeavor? Or do they fail? Let’s find out.

The Beginning

Starting out, we’ve got a pretty basic panorama view of what I think is the house/office, and then we choose our name. Now I could just call my character Spartan as I usually do, but I feel like that’d be wrong for some reason. Random name generator, what’ve you got?

Smuckles eh? you’ll do.

Wait, the guy’s name is Wilson? I thought I was naming him! What the heck? He even looks like a Smuckle. Oh well, I guess in game I’m Smuckles, hooray for my dumb idea. He explains the basic premise of the game: He moved into his grandparent’s home in Sunrise Creek recently as there apparently weren’t any veterinarians living here until he arrived. Given that everyone and their great grandmother has pets, this feels like it should be a bigger issue than he makes it out to be, but of course he can say all of this with a smile as the sicker the animal population, the more cash he ends up getting in his pocket.

Basic tutorials begin with us having to find Wilson’s grandmother. Personally I don’t think anyone should be that forward to introduce their elderly relative seeing as this implied to be our first ever interaction, but whatever, that’s just how things happen in Sunrise Creek. According to Wilson’s grandmother, he has a guest waiting for him in the living room, and ends the conversation with these cryptic sentences:

Normally, when I hear those words I instinctively think that whatever’s nearby is dangerous and potentially lethal, and I’m proven right in this case. When we arrive in the living room, we’re greeted with a tiger cub, an animal that is not only dangerous but also illegal to possess in the U.S. according to the Big Cat Public Safety Act as of 2022. If you’re a public institution (such as an accredited zoo or wildlife rescue) that’s a different story, but Wilson here JUST opened a veterinary clinic in a small town of what I presume has a population under 30 people (and I’m being generous).

But what does it matter? His grandparents were planning on getting him a pet anyways to celebrate the clinic being opened, so it’s all good in the end apparently, the local G.R.O. organization sends a rep to check in on the tiger cub, claiming that their vets are currently inundated and ask us to care for the cub. Wilson accepts this totally legal exchange of goods and the game truly begins.

Almost immediately, you’re given your first ever client, who brings in a cat for treatment. You’re not told their name, the pet’s name, whether they have insurance or not or any other important information upon which a doctor-patient confidentiality can be built upon. Other than the line “I’m here because of my pet, He hasn’t been well for some days now”, (a line you will be VERY familiar with as the game goes on) you’re expected to solve the issue with your tools and know how alone. Rarely though, clients will come to have their pets receive vaccines or be microchipped but that happens a lot less than you’d think.

After treating the cat, you notice that he has black patches on him that won’t go away, so you ask the owner to borrow him for a few days for treatment, which he accepts.

And so begins the long climb towards the ending, where patients are brought in through a revolving door, Wilson is of course eager to treat them as they come in every 10 seconds 24/7, 365. With his grandmother forced into a secretary position after retiring from working as a clerk at the grocery store (the game is unclear what she did in her profession, but given the fact that this town is so damn small and few places of employment are present, I’m 99% sure of this) and his grandfather working as a carpenter to endlessly toil away in his workshop constructing houses for pets, the race to solve the black patch epidemic is on!

The Gameplay

Owing to the DS’s touch screen, this game relies heavily on the second screen to play. You’ll be using it to hold things to animal’s noses, rub shampoo, pluck ticks and more to take care of whatever animal you’re working with. But you’d best be quick about it, because you’re working against the clock. For whatever reason, you’re given a time limit of 90 seconds to care for the animal, and if you fail, Wilson throws up his hands and claims that he couldn’t cure it. Of course this game is intended for young children, so you’re not explicitly told that the pet went to the farm upstate (which considering the fact there were no vets in this town, let’s be real: a LOT of pets went to that farm) but it doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines on this one. Success in all the minigames leads to Wilson diagnosing very basic “illnesses” such as fleas and indigestion without proper medical terminology, and after all of that you’re given a paycheck with varying amounts of money on it. You’re paid in…. gold? Pirate doubloons? Leprechaun gold? What the hell kind of denomination is that? What’s the exchange rate? How good is the stock market? All of these are questions that you’re never given an answer to, so let’s move on.

It should also be noted that you’ll be doing a LOT of checkups on animals in this game, so much so that you’ll be doing it every 3 minutes. There’s a bell in the upper right hand corner that will ring with another customer at the door waiting to be seen. Like this guy with his cat.

Wait, aren’t you the same guy from before?

After going through the processes, you’ll either clear the problem or you’ll take the animal in under observation till they are fully healed. And this is a good segue to the next segment of gameplay, caring for animals. In each of their enclosures, the animals have bars on the top screen indicating food, water and contact. These all have to be filled for the animal to be returned to the owner, and have their own methods of being filled.

• Water is the easiest, as it is free. If the pet wants water, drag the water glass over to the water dish and the pet will rush over to it.
• Food of course, ISN’T free, as each costs 20 gold and you can’t mass purchase them as far as I can see. So it’s a lot of trips to Mildred’s grocery store for that.
• Contact is simple, just rub the pet with the stylus. You have to keep the hand on the pet though for a while, otherwise it doesn’t count.

If you understand all of that, then that’s the gameplay. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum at your leisure. Oh look, we even have another customer!

Didn’t you already have two cats before?

The Story

The PR series has very simple plots that revolve around certain real world environmental issues that are meant to stimulate the next generation into taking action against the threats for a better world. The mileage may vary, but to the right person this can be very impactful, it certainly was for me at least. In Wildlife Vet’s case, we’re dealing with pollution.

Very early in Wilson’s career he starts to notice black patches appearing on the various animals he treats, and nothing he has will cure them. Now, initially I imagined this is some form of cancer that affects animals, targeting dogs, cats and rabbits indiscriminately but evidently it can even spread to exotic wildlife such as lions, tigers and bears. He of course, doesn’t know this yet but has to build up to working with them. Starting out you’re dealing with common animals you’d expect to see at a vet, such as dogs, cats and rabbits but eventually you’re tasked with caring for even larger animals like horses and donkeys. I actually like this, it shows how much sway he’s built up in this community, particularly the farmers that undoubtedly till the land on the outskirts of Sunrise Creek and then that gets him to be able to work on wild animals.

After quite some time of treating various animals, Wilson realizes that they all have one thing in common: Their owners took them down to the nearby lake. Liz warns us that there might be some contaminants in the area, and advise us to purchase and wear hazmat equipment to get a sample. Jokes on her though, the hazmat suit is available at the grocery store for some reason and is available for a mere 800 gold (what a steal), so Wilson drives over and gets his sample, sending it through mail to be analyzed. After a few hours (or in this game’s case, treating more animals, the contaminant is identified as an agent used alongside ammonia in the making of ink and dyes.

Robert, a former policeman turned mailman identifies the likely culprit as one Mr. Jones, owner of a textile factory that has been illegally dumping the agents into the water.

Wilson’s friend states that he’ll be the one to go after him, as he apparently has a score to settle, As Liz and Wilson stand outside G.R.O, he recieves a call from his acquaintance, who drops this little bit of info with a smile.

But he assures us that Jones is locked up behind bars and the textile mill is shuttered, the day is saved and everyone rejoices. Liz then asks Wilson an important question:

Wilson thinks about this for a moment, his face locked in a state of heavy contemplation. He envisions a future where he takes the tiger and some lady (I believe it’s his female counterpart if you don’t choose him, but I’m choosing to imagine it as someone he’s trying to impress for a booty call) where they round the corner into a room with a sea turtle on the operating table.

And then that’s it, the credits roll with a bad PNG of the tiger above them. Can’t say I ever expected that ending as a kid. I never beat this game until now, and I have to say even back when I was the target demographic I would’ve been disappointed.

Honestly, as far as endings go, this one sucks. We’re never told anything about Mr. Jones until the very end of the game, and even then we’re given a rushed backstory on him that amounts to “the cops were aware of him, but chose to do nothing”. Hell, we never even meet the guy in the first place, so why is it that this story even need a villain? What, it couldn’t have been the collective ignorance of Sunrise Creek that led to the water being polluted, it had to be Mr. Jones, a man so blatantly evil that he wouldn’t make it as a Saturday morning cartoon villain. And really? Mr. Jones? Talk about the most generic villain name ever. If anyone reading this is a guy with the last name of Jones, know that the Petz rescue series has declared that your ass is grass and they’re going to mow you down. The sea turtle at the end is a clear easter egg to their next venture, which I’ll get to. But once the game is done, you can continue to treat animals for the rest of time. Like this guy’s horse.

Wait a minute…. Wait a damn MINUTE! THIS IS THE SAME GUY THAT HAD THE CATS AND RABBIT EARLIER. How many pets does this guy have? No, better yet how many pets does EVERYONE have? Throughout this game’s story, I kept track of who came through the clinic with screenshots and there’s only a handful of people in the town. Here’s proof:

They either are all clones of an individual or the same person coming in over and over through the revolving door. There’s no way, absolutely no way that they can reasonably have that many pets without being a hoarder.  And that’s just it, these folks are hoarders, the entire goddamn town is a hoarder’s hovel, laced with more than enough pets to fill 20 pet stores. It just makes too much sense, because they all have cats, dogs, and rabbits, animals known (rabbits ESPECIALLY) to have a high fecundity of offspring. That’s why they feed Wilson the same line over and over and over again and don’t bother giving him their name, otherwise he’ll keep track. He’d have a paper trail towards their cruel mistreatment of the “beloved pets” that they claim to have trouble sleeping without.

And what of the pets that receive treatment beyond the usual tick removal? What of the ones that are microchipped or vaccinated? Well those are the ones added into the mix to keep up the façade, meant to mislead Wilson and believe they are responsible pet owners when in fact they are absolute scum. And one thing that I’ve been keenly observant of, with all of the things that these clients come in with, not one, not a SINGLE ONE came in to ask for their pet to be spayed/neutered. Because why would they want that? Doing so removes the chance for even more animals to be made. And I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of overlap with the portraits, some of the clients come in to the clinic directly and call Wilson’s phone for a house call. Which means they live on farms and ranches, places where there’s a lot of space for animals to roam around, or to be kept in cages.

You all might know where I’m going with this, these people are running animal mills.

How else does this make any sense in the narrative? The PetZ brand prides itself on being a grounded, down to earth series of games focused on animals, but in doing that they let slip some of humanities most deplorable atrocities. For the rest of this series this will be the dystopia aspect, where I point out the game’s underlying tones to a true issue that the hero cannot fix, as it is ingratiated at the heart of the setting, a festering fungus that corrodes and distorts the true meaning of the game. Smuckles is not a mere observer of Wilson’s rise to fame amongst Sunrise Creek, he is the spectator to a war against a tiny town laden with animal hoarders and mill operators. He has no stake in this fight, and Wilson’s only allies in his fight are his fossilized grandparents and a grocery store clerk. It’s him against a town, but he need not despair, for he has the most formidable weapon in his arsenal: A tiger cub.

Final Thoughts

As a game from my childhood, you’d think I’d have nicer things to say about it, but I don’t. Aside from the obvious cash grab that this was, the game just felt like a job simulator, but in the worst way possible. Veterinarians have difficult jobs, not every one of their patients is going to walk away with their owners, and not every case can be easily solved. To paint the job of a vet as one where it’s just a matter of diagnosing a problem and then sending the animal on its way does a disservice to the children playing it. I can’t recommend this game, I won’t recommend this game for anyone. One of the main reasons I make this mini game reviews is to reflect on games that I know I won’t subject Mr. Cosmia to, for various reasons. I doubt he’d find much enjoyment out of this either. 5/10, I can go lower. here’s a photo of Liz’s pet seal I guess.

And of course, I flubbed the last photo of her calling it her pet. Go figure.