Customer Reviews

Paws & Claws Pet Vet 2: Healing Hands

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I'm writing this review on the strength of my kids' experience playing the version 1 of Pet Vet at a friends house one weekend, and then coming home and installing a one-hour preview of this Version 2 release. My kids liked the Version 1 release (it's just called Pet Vet), but they disliked this Version 2 release (called Pet Vet 2: Healing Hands). Why? Because the mouse action was terribly slow and delayed, unlike any other game I've seen. It's not the hardware -- they're running on a fast 2.6Ghz Pentium 4 laptop with 512MB RAM and plenty of disk space. No other game is slow like this one, and by slow, I mean the mouse action is slow and terribly unresponsive. I can't see anything that would be a set-up issue, so I'm presuming it's just lousy $20 kid software written by an independent developer and marketed by some company called ValuSoft. Because the mouse response was so poor, my kids really didn't like the game, so we're not going to buy it. My advice is simple: try the preview version by downloading from the the Internet (not from the Valusoft website -- strangely, they don't offer the download for Version 2, just Version 1), and if you like, then pull the trigger and buy the game (from Amazon -- it's cheaper than from ValuSoft directly). You might be better off buying the Version 1 release, which is what we're currently pondering.

We initially had trouble getting this game to work as it required a video card with a "pixel shader", which was not supported by our onboard video adapter on a brand new PC. After installing an inexpensive Nvidia 8400GS video card, the game works perfectly. Any basic gaming video card should work for this game. It was a bit surprising that a game for 8 year olds required a more advanced video card, but now that we are past that hurdle, my daughter has really enjoyed the game. She has said that Pet Vet 2 is better than Pet Vet 1 on Nintendo DS or Pet Vet 1 for PC. I find this game fairly entertaining to play with my daughter and aside from the having fun, it does have some good aspects around planning and budgeting to grow your vet practice.

The game idea is a lot of fun. However, the game itself crashes back to the desktop sporadically. Very frustrating. I'm running it on a 2.5 GHz desktop with Vista, a GeForce 8300 GS graphics card, dual-core processor, etc. Fast computer handles Sims2 and ALL the expansion packs, Zoo Tycoon latest versions, Roller Coaster Tycoon, all expansions. No problems with any of these, but this Valusoft game won't work properly!
Healing the animals is fun, building up your "estate" is fun. But the constant crashing is a pain in the rear-end.
I updated my video drivers, uninstalled and re-installed the game and it worked fine for one day. When I rebooted the computer, BOOM, it started crashing again.
My advice, save your money and stay away from valusoft games. That's what I plan to do from now on.

Pet vet 2 is fairly fun game. Here is a basic overview: you start out with a small amount of money and your clinic, which you can pay to expand. (expand as in add after-care areas, ultra sound machines, stables and so on.) You can also take classes for a fee in the academy, which is in town. The classes basicaly consist of three questions on the type of animal you selected. If you corectly answer the questions, you can treat that type of animal in your clinic. Customers will bring animals into the clinic to be treated about every five minutes. as time goes on, assuming you treated the animals sucsessfuly, customers will bring animals in more often, up to every thirty seconds. Treating the animals is easy, all you do is hear the owner say what is wrong, then go over the animal with a magnifying glass, thermometer, or hand. once you touch the affected area, a notice will pop up and tell you what to do. Then you just click on the medicine and bring it to affected area and click, and tada! then you will recieve the money and the animal will disappear. The game is fun at first but it gets VERY hectic after you get after-care areas because you have to play with the pet, feed the pet, clean the pet, clean the pet's enclosure, go to the store to buy more food for the pets after it runs low. the list goes on and on. And all the care stats go down fast! All this you have to do while treating more pets, feeding your self and buying the nessesary things to treat your clients. So... if you're prepaired to be feeling almost crazy some times with all the things that must be down then get the game, but if not then don't buy it.

I bought this game for my daughter after she had been asking for it for quite some time. My computer doesn't meet all of the game's requirements.

I'm running Windows XP Service Pack 2, Dell's XPS Media Center Edition, Pentium D CPU 2.80 GHz, 0.99 GB of RAM, with 109 GB of free space. I installed the game and when I tried to launch it, the error message "Pixel Shader Unavailable" appeared. After uninstalling it and reinstalling it, I did a search and found out that I have the wrong video card for this game.

We have many games on our computer and have never encountered this problem before. Some of the games we have are: all of the Nancy Drew games, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Zoo Tycoon, Delta Force, and Star Wars Battlefront to name a few.

What started out as a joyous moment for my daughter, turned into heartache. I will not be handing over the money needed for a new video card just for this one game though.

This was given to my daughter as a gift for Christmas 2007 and its been a home run ever since. She plays it as much or more than any other game. She also enjoys petz5 cats and dogs ... so for any animal lovers you may have, this game is good. It teaches kids a number of things in the process. I was amazed how many quality hours of clean cut fun this game has provided my daughter.

This is what my daughter wanted for Christmas. But here we are, Christmas day, and it won't work because of a pixel shader problem. And if you go to the website those folks say if your video card is more than six months old, you might have problems. Oh, well, thanks. Try explaining that to your eight year old. Merry Christmas.

I am a veterinarian, so this was fun for me to play, and it is also a great way to introduce my grandchildren to my beloved chosen career. Their mother is a human surgeon, so have to get my "vote" into their lives, as well. Thanks for the fun!

When I bought this game I had an old computer and was kind of disapointed because it required a very high graphics system. So I had to drive two hours away to the closest Best Buy with my brother and my dad to go and get a silly GeForce 1700 Graphic Card for my computer. It took about 30 minutes to take the old card out and stick the new one in. And once I started to play the game, it was a waste of my time and money! I was very disapointed. It was not at all like the first one. The graphics were better, but the gameplay was not the same. I can't remember all of it because it's been so long since I've played it (about two years). The only good thing about it was that the graphics were better and the surgeries were more detailed. It's a fun game, but not as fun as the first one.

My daughter is so excited to play, but it doesn't work right. When trying to administer shots as it says to do, it keeps saying "wrong instrument". And there is no way to exit the screen except to restart the computer. The horse riding doesn't work correctly, even though she has fun with it. I've found that it doesn't do everything it's supposed to, and sometimes if the horse runs off the track into a bush it gets "stuck", where it won't turn or anything, just run in place. And again the only solution is to restart the computer. And it's a shame because for people it works for, it sounds like fun, and my daughter loves to help animals and beams when she talks about the game but is very disappointed because it won't work.