The graphics in Pet Pals: Animal Doctor look pretty much like the PC version of this same game, just shrunk down to fit the DS' smaller landscape. That being said, they are basic and no-frills. Your environments include the Waiting Room, where you'll see owners sitting and waiting with their pets, the Recovery Room, which has a series of double-stacked cages that sometimes house animals, and the Treatment Rooms. The pets that you treat look as they should and their weird owners look appropriate as well. If an owner says he noticed a weird swelling on his iguana's head or that something is wrong with his cat's mouth, than you can visually spot the problem, although it's certainly not always as obvious or as easy as that. However, the storylines and the owners and what they say are completely annoying.

One problem I had, which seemed to be due to the smaller screen, was the fact that at times, I had to perform a certain task such as taking a dog's temperature, but I couldn't seem to get to the proper area; at least where it would be logically found, because the left pop-up navigation bar with the tools and treatments would get in the way while I was clicking close to it. It was somewhat frustrating.

Sound effects include the standard mews and whimpers you would expect when caring for animals and sticking them with needles. Basically, if you are screwing up in your diagnosis and doing a bunch of unnecessary procedures, then the animal will provide agitated sound effects in kind. There's music playing in the background, but to be honest, it's hardly noticeable. Based on my memories of the PC game and the audio lines spoken by the owners, I am thankful it's only text-based here.

I played and reviewed Pet Pals: Animal Doctor on the PC and not much has changed to improve the game. In fact, in some ways, it has taken a step backwards. You play as a new vet at the clinic. Initially, you begin the game on Easy and you are spoon-fed what to do. In your Waiting Room are a selection of owners and their pets and clicking once on them allows you to see what the patient's general complaint is and decide in which order to see patients. From what I could tell, who you treated first had no bearing on anything, whereas in real life, obviously you'd treat the emergency patients first.

Your first order of business is to ask the stupid owners questions about the pet and its problems. There are 5 questions from which to select and you must choose the correct 3. They are things like, "Have you noticed anything usual about Fido lately" (which would be a correct question) or perhaps, "Does Fido like to wear ribbons in his hair?" or something equally as inane. Normally, the answers are of little to no help anyway, so it felt more like a step I had to do rather than finding out info to help with my diagnosis. You next step is generally to start with the magnifying glass and look at the area that the owner is complaining about. Then depending on what you find, you may progress to checking the heart rate by palpating the hind leg, or checking the chest with the stethoscope. Again, depending on your findings, you may draw blood, administer I.V. liquids, give shots and even withdraw urine from the abdomen.

You have many tools at your disposal, but they are all somewhat small and at times, it's hard to distinguish one injection from the other. As you go through all of the necessary steps to procure a hopefully correct diagnosis, text will appear on the top screen, further discussing your findings. You may have to scroll up and down to see it all using the D-pad. Sometimes these comments tell you where to go next, but more often than not, you have to proceed on your own unless you are on the Easy difficulty, in which case you are told what to do next. One thing I did find highly annoying was the fact that you could not proceed to a different step, even if it was logical. If you already realized what the pet was suffering from, you could not take its temp out of the order that the game wanted you to do things in. Also, the fact that the cases were all the same from the PC game was kind of a bummer. I had to suffer through this game once and I at least hoped I'd have some new info to work through. Alas, no.

From time to time, you will be summoned to the Recovery Room with an emergency. You can choose to ignore this emergency, but it will hurt your score. However, as many times as I have gone there, the task is always the exact same thing. Take the old bandage off, replace the bandage, bathe, rinse and dry off the pet, feed it, invariably spilling food all over the floor since there doesn't seem to be a way to get it to the bowl without spilling it, then clean the mess you made, plus the mess the pet made, then finally, play with the pet. You can earn anywhere from 0 to 5 paw prints and this increases your score. Honestly, I don't see how you could score lowly on this exercise unless you simply ignored the tasks. I saw exactly two different types of animals in the Recovery Room, a dog and a cat. The lack of variety really hurt this portion of the game.

By clicking on the PC at the front desk of the waiting room, you can access some mini-games to pass the time. Memory is a basic game where you flip two tiles over at a time and match them up. Trivia Quiz is a multiple choice quiz where you select the correct answer to match the trivia question. Finally, Jigsaw Puzzle has you rearranging the pieces of a puzzle to get it back to its correct order. However, you can't remove the pieces, but merely slide them around, so it's tougher (and less fun) than it sounds.

Hmmm, well there are three different levels of difficulty from which to choose: Easy, Normal and Hard. Easy hands you everything by highlighting the type of tool you need, then highlighting that specific tool, then telling you what to do with it. So if you really don't want to think, then this is your best option. However, quite frankly, since to me the steps you are forced to take and their order didn't necessarily make perfect sense, this might be the best option so you keep the frustration level down. By switching to Medium difficulty, you can get a hint whenever you need one, so you have that security blankie, but your tools are not highlighted for you. When you make an incorrect choice, your animal's comfort level drops. On Hard, however, when you do an incorrect step, your patient's comfort level drops at a much quicker pace. I'm not sure what happens when you do so poorly that your animal's comfort level drops to zip because I couldn't bring myself to do it, being the animal lover that I am. I imagine the Head Vet will simply remove the pet from your care, because this is what happens if you don't high-tail it to the Recovery Room when you are summoned.

There were a few things in Pet Pals: Animal Doctor that really bothered me. Giving injections makes sense, because you are presented with the top of a syringe and you drag the stylus down, thus injecting the medicine into the pet. However, when drawing blood, you do the same thing and the syringe fills up with blood. Huh? It should be the other way to draw blood up into the syringe. Attention to detail was not a factor here. When using a stethoscope, you see circles that will disappear if you do not rapidly tap them. Has your doctor ever listened to your breathing by popping you in the chest with a stethoscope over and over again very quickly? No, I think not. A similar problem comes up with palpation. Palpating a hind leg or an abdomen is a delicate process, not a tapping session akin to Whack-A-Mole, which is what this feels like. Taking x-rays is handled in an interesting manner and sort of makes sense. You select the x-ray machine, then select the area you need to x-ray. A bar comes up and a part scrolls back and forth like a Cylon's eye. When it passes the green mark in the center, if you tap it at the right moment, it snaps the x-ray. Hitting it at the wrong time costs you points and makes the animal uncomfortable. Similarly, you'll use the same mechanic when checking the temp in an animal's rear end, along with several other procedures.

One mechanic that I hated and that I recall being different from the PC version occurs when you have to clean an area before making an incision, etc. In the PC version, you wiped the cotton swab back and forth over the area to cleanse it. This seems like a perfect mechanic for the DS, however they instead opted to use the tap here and there method used for palpation. I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty leery of a vet that merely spot-cleansed my animal prior to incision. Additionally, when you have to either give oral medications or apply an oxygen mask to a pet, instead if simply selecting the area, you will see a circle with a cross-hair in the center that moves around the area you are working on. Your goal is to keep your stylus tip inside of that circle until the green bar fills up. Man, if you have ever given oral medication to a rabbit, you know there is nothing serene about it and simply having to keep a stylus centrally located is not the least bit true to life. It's more like "push the meds down their throat and pray they don't bite you or lacerate your forearms with their vicious toenails."

Basically, in short, Pet Pals: Animal Doctor is less fun than the PC version and that's really saying something. I can't really recommend this game, even to aspiring vets. It's just really low on the fun factor scale. If you are jonesin' for a medical sim DS game, you'd do better to go with Trauma Center and the like.