On Nintendo Switch, you have New Pokémon Snap to quench the thirst of your inner-photographer, and now Xbox players can go all-out in Pupperazzi, an adorable game that’s all about taking the best photos of your new digital best friends. Is it any good? Let’s find out!
Shoot the perfect picture
The premise of Pupperazzi is easy to explain, you’re basically a walking camera that got tasked to take certain photos of cute dogs. The entire game is created in a cute colorful cell-shaded style which truly elevates the experience. It’s a fun world to walk around in and the dogs look cute. I’m not sure if I’m the biggest fan of the animations since some dogs moved around like frogs, constantly jumping around instead of just walking around like normal dogs, but perhaps that’s part of the game’s charm…
That being said, the first level is extremely small and teaches you how to play the game, which isn’t that hard. Like a lot of other games in the genre, you can use the camera with one of your triggers and take the shot with the other trigger. There are some filters to elevate your picture even more and you’ll find some objects like sticks to interact with on the map. The goal of the game is to take photos in order to clear some objectives. These objectives offer the needed variation and are reasonably fun to complete but never really challenging. From taking pictures of a certain amount of dogs to using a certain filter, the objectives are rather easy to clear, and the main goal of the game clearly is to just enjoy your time walking around, taking some pictures, and occasionally petting your favorite canine.
But, it comes with flaws
On paper, this certainly sounds like the perfect game for fans of the genre but in reality, it’s a bit disappointing. I tested this on my Xbox Series X, which is a powerhouse of a console, and yet Pupperazzi didn’t run as smoothly as I would anticipate. The way you move around on the maps isn’t that fluent at all and the animations of the dogs are just weird. It feels and plays like a game that was created in just a couple of hours and lacks that extra layer of polish before it releases to the crowd. Besides that, I feel like the game could have been a bit bigger.
In about an hour, you’ve seen what this game has to offer as it simply copies and repeats the same thing over and over again. Snapping cute pictures is fun at first but gets rather boring rather fast. The main issue is the lack of inspiring and fun maps. In four hours, you can complete the entire game, and never will you have got the feeling that you did something special or memorable. It just didn’t click with me and I wouldn’t recommend playing it. It’s currently available for free on Xbox Game Pass, so if you’re a subscriber, you can certainly give it a go.
