Games with dogs (pets)

[TheLastBaron]

Are there any games that are about having a pet and what it feels like to have a pet?  I don't mean something like Nintendogs, but I guess like trying to convey what it's like having one.  I can't explain it very well so I'm going to give some back-story.  I have two dogs both of whom I like a lot and one who is probably my best friend.  In the past four years the majority of my friends have moved away for school and while I still talk to them all the time on a day to day basis I don't really hang out with them all that much (relative to before).  On the other hand I hang out with my dog all the time.  If I'm watching TV he's usually on the sofa next to me and if I get up he'll follow me so at any given point in the day when I'm home chances are that he's within ten feet of me (he also sleeps in a big leather recliner next to me).  The majority of the episodes of the podcast I've listened to while taking him for his walks.  So basically when I say he's probably my best friend I don't mean it in a cheesy/ stupid way.  Are there any games with pets that actually do a good job of representing what a pet is actually like?  All the things I can think of are just like Dragon Age where you have a party member who is your dog, or horses in games like Zelda or Shadow of the Colossus.

[sclpls]

I like the pets in NetHack.

[tegan]

I'm going to take the typical dumb Tegan nobody-else-gives-a-shit-about-Pokémon approach and say that I'll bet a lot of people had an attachment to their starter Pokémon as kids, even though the activities involved aren't really traditionally pet-like. I know I cared enough to keep porting my Charizard over from game to game after I cleared LeafGreen.

[Twig]

Call of Duty: Ghosts!

 

Fable II had a dog. I actually really liked that dog. U:

[TychoCelchuuu]

Sam and Max.

[Iosef Stalin]

Dogmeat in Fallout 3 was a pretty cool bro. And you do walk a lot in that game.

[SecretAsianMan]

I had a Tamagotchi when I was a kid.  Then I dropped it and the buttons stopped working so it died because I couldn't feed it or give it medicine.

 

Some of the Sonic games had little creatures called Chao you could raise.

 

Also Viva Piñata comes to mind.

 

None of those are realistic though.

 

Here's Wikipedia's List of artifical pet games

[Zeusthecat]

I had a giga pet in middle school. A blue one with a fucking monkey to take care of. That monkey pooped a lot but one flush of the giga pet toilet washed it all away.

[Roderick]

I think in a weird way, maybe Animal Crossing? Even though your neighbours aren't strictly pets, the idea of that game is that you come back to it every day over an extended period of time, and it'll always be there for you, without all too much of a gameplay goal beyond that.

[Colourful Stuff]

  On 5/22/2013 at 7:18 AM, Rodi said:

I think in a weird way, maybe Animal Crossing? Even though your neighbours aren't strictly pets, the idea of that game is that you come back to it every day over an extended period of time, and it'll always be there for you, without all too much of a gameplay goal beyond that.

Characterising your neighbours as pets is terrifying, you should be locked up.

I think it's hard to think of examples because pets aren't very functional in the real world. When animals are put into games they are usually given some utility beyond companionship, making them more like pack animals or livestock. That said horses are usually the easiest video game animal to become attached to. Red Dead in particular did it well by making you invest time and effort into finding and breaking the horse before riding it.

[Thrik]

  On 5/22/2013 at 12:00 PM, Colourful Stuff said:

Characterising your neighbours as pets is terrifying, you should be locked up.

I think it's hard to think of examples because pets aren't very functional in the real world. When animals are put into games they are usually given some utility beyond companionship, making them more like pack animals or livestock. That said horses are usually the easiest video game animal to become attached to. Red Dead in particular did it well by making you invest time and effort into finding and breaking the horse before riding it.

 

... which is why I was totally not amused the first time I accidentally jumped off a huge hill with mine and he immediately died from the fall, throwing me off in the process. This being the first time it'd happened I desperately tried to revive him by interacting with him, which caused me to fucking skin him. 

[Roderick]

Then, sweating profusely from the act, you looked into the camera and the picture that is your avatar was taken.

[feelthedarkness]

Shadow Dancer, the more difficult sequel to Revenge of Shinobi. He had a big white dog that you could send to chomp on guards and prevent them from shooting. 

[I_smell]

I think the best companion in pretty much any game is the horse from Shadow of Collossus. It felt like the most natural independant animal, and never spun around on a pivot, or blended to a new animation too quickly, or revealed that it was just a polygonal Video game asset.

 

Can't really think of anything that really does feel like a pet, but then that's because I only ever see my dog when I'm sitting around the house doing nothing, and not many games are about that. They're usually about going out and doing something active.

 

Actually my Xbox dashboard avatar felt the most like a pet, back when I used to pay attention to it. Kind of a dumb, smiley companion who waves at me whenever I turn my Xbox on, and sometimes I'd spend half an hour messing about with it before switching to an actual game.

[SecretAsianMan]

Haunting Ground features a dog pretty prominently.  I never played it because it's a survival horror game and I'm a baby, so here's what Wikipedia says:

 

  Quote

As well as controlling Fiona, the player also controls Hewie. Using the right analog stick, the player can order Hewie to stay, follow, attack, fetch and shake hands.  In order to maintain a good relationship with Hewie (which can affect the ending of the game), Fiona must issue commands, and then praise or scold him depending on whether or not he obeys. Praising or healing him when he becomes injured increases Hewie's friendship level.  If not given enough attention, Hewie will ignore Fiona's commands and wander off, and if he is repeatedly mistreated he will turn on and attack her.

[syntheticgerbil]

Dogz.

 

But only the first one. They completely muddied up the whole concept after that.

[Gormongous]

Why the hell do people still ban hotlinking? Does a fifty-kilobyte file break the bank like it did when dial-up was king?

[syntheticgerbil]

It sucks because that was the only screenshot I could find of that shitty game. Oh well.

[Tanukitsune]

I remember having Catz which the cat version of Dogz, it's was like Nintendogs before Nintendogs and it they were one of those screen saver pets, right?

[Ucantalas]

I had...I think it was Dogz 2, maybe? Fun times. I remember there was a frisbee you could grab and throw across the screen. ...I wasted way too much time throwing virtual frisbees, when I should have been throwing real ones.

[Colourful Stuff]

Have dogs been added to DayZ yet? I know they were promised a while ago. The loneliness and desperation of the typical life in that game could really help build a bond with a living thing that doesn't hate you. 

[miffy495]

They're waiting until August to capitalize on the headline "The Dog DayZ of Summer".

[elmuerte]

Zombie dogs? or zombie hunting as a dog?

[Colourful Stuff]

Neither, but the Arma group ShackTac sometimes run an interesting zombie survival scenario in which one person plays as a dog. Their abilities are limited to barking, biting zombies and mild night vision, making them about as useful as a real dog. 

 

[TheLastBaron]

  On 5/23/2013 at 11:57 PM, Colourful Stuff said:

Neither, but the Arma group ShackTac sometimes run an interesting zombie survival scenario in which one person plays as a dog. Their abilities are limited to barking, biting zombies and mild night vision, making them about as useful as a real dog. 

 

Do they have super hearing and super smell? Those would actually be really useful.