Pet Vet 3D: Wild Animal Hospital
© 2007 Viva Media
With a look and feel like the Sims, this vet simulator lets you take control of a vet, a young women, as she tries to supervise an animal hospital in an African National Park. With three levels of difficulty, an informative starting tutorial and strong 3D graphics, this game has a lot going for it. But you'll also want to note that the program didn't run correctly on a Windows Vista laptop, perhaps due to an inadequate graphics card. On older XP computers, it worked fine. You have two tasks: treat animals and upgrade your hospital, in order to improve your reputation. Using menus that look a lot like the Sims, you help your vet eat, sleep and manage the center by monitoring incoming phone messages. At random intervals, a patient might enter the center with a sick animal. Using the instruments, you try to make the correct diagnosis. If you succeed, the animal is treated and you are paid. If an animal must stay at the hospital, you must provide for its basic needs. Money is used to build cages, buy food and upgrade the hospital. You can purchase more instruments (well written definitions are provided); or purchase books with animal facts to increase your knowledge; materials to build pens appropriate for each species; and pet food and toys. You maintain accurate bookkeeping files to track supplies, past animal treatments, and awards received. Features include music, speech and sound effects volume control. This is nice as the music can quickly overshadow the scene setting sound effects. There is the ability to save and reload games. The animal facts provided are interesting and delve deep. One unrealistic trait noticed is that exotic animals are not likely to play games with you or allow you close enough to pet them - at least not safely. For children who can read and who enjoy animals, this game is packed with information, fun activities, and cool graphics.
$25, Windows
Teaches: health, logic, mathematics, planning, problem solving, economics, money
CTR Rating: 92%