Animal Hospital – Review

Having recently graduated, you receive a letter from your grandmother with a key to an abandoned Veterinary clinic, turning up you just so happen to bump into staff who have been having an extended lunch break for the last few years, but it’s up to you to get the clinic up to scratch by treating various animals as you raise the funds to upgrade your facilities.

At the start of the game, you’ll have a single treatment room with the capability to remove a few ticks, shampoo away fleas and treat a couple of bruises. For each ailment you treat you’ll receive coins which can be used to make your facilities more comfortable or expand to treat a wider variety of animals and their symptoms.

You’re given a few objectives, such as treating a handful of animals or raising enough funds to open treatment rooms to allow you to house pets needing an extended stay. There’s a variety of extra rooms to build such as a laboratory or staff room, besides expanding your facilities, you’ll also have to upgrade them, such as making rooms more comfortable or adding scenery items such as rugs and tables to increase the overall appeal of your clinic.

Whichever route you explore first, progression is limited by your overall level, completing the tasks will raise your level which will open more opportunities for expansion, but you’re free to spend your funds on comfort which becomes increasingly important the longer animals are in your care.
Take for instance the first wolf you house, who will need an extended treatment of antibiotics, because of his stay with you, the overall payment when treatment is complete will depend on a few factors, not just the cost of the treatment, but also the comfort of your patient.

Actual treatment is pretty straightforward, and rests with the mobile-game roots of the franchise, turn the camera to view the problem area, select the required treatment and drag it into place, and then follow the on screan actions such as injecting a vaccination, rubbing in shampoo or manouvering a tick away from the skin.
For animals staying in your care for an extended period, you can head to the treatment room, to feed, water and pet the aninimal as well as washing the room to keep the comfort and condition as high as possible. You can also upgrade your treatment rooms, which will give a much larger boost when getting paid, but these upgrades are often expensive so might be worth saving until you’ve worked through a few levels.

While gameplay is increidbly simplistic, this makes it ideal for younger gamers, everything is clearly marked, and veers much more towards fantasty and simplicity rathet than realism, for every trip I’ve made to a vet in real life, I’ve never once seen them putting a normal plaster (band-aid) on a furry animal after rubbing cream on a mosquito bite the size of a mole hill.

Graphically there’s a family friendly cartoon look to all animals and their ailments, so you won’t bee seeing any gory details, with some jagged edges the game feels firmly fixed with it’s mobile routes, but it’s definitely had a decent makeover to sharpen things up for home consoles on the big screen, regardless of whether you spend the time solely treating animals and discovering various conditions, or earning money solely to beautify your clinic, everything looks fairly good, but don;t expect anythign truly next-generation because despite being optised for Xbox Series X|S it’s sadly nowhere near the standard of current gen hardware.

Sound shares similar peaks and troughs, the overall audio presentation isn’t bad at all, but it’s just not upto the standards of next-gen gaming. The actual quality of animal sound effects sin’t bad, but it’s all a little too simple, from the yelps for joy when you’ve cured an animal to the whimpers when they’re sat with an unsightly bruise on their leg, everything just a little below the level we hope for especially when you take into account the price.

The price and resulting value is where the real problem lies, at £34.99 it doesn’t initially sound like poor value, but it’s far from a simulation or business management title, instead more a play-by-numbers mobile app which is so simplified it sucks alot of the enjoyment out of the game. To get some context we need to look as something like Pet World: My Animal Hospital on mobile devices, which is essentially the exact same game with a few less fancy visual bells and whistles.
Pet World: Animal Hospital is Free 2 Play, but for anyone prefering a more complete experience there’s a few “Pet World” titles available for less than £15, and I just can’t recommend paying more than twice as much for the console version.

Sure, head over to the mobile store of choice, and search for Pet World: My Animal Hospital, maybe download it and give it a try, but despite improved graphics, Animal Hospital is very much a mobile port, which makes £34.99 feel pretty high for what you’re getting.

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