S1E14 - Dog's Life

Welcome back to another episode of Discrete Error, the podcast where every week we dive into the fascinating and extensive library of the greatest selling video game console of all time, the PlayStation Two. I'm Derek Kicker. I'm Ian Golding, and this week we leave a steamy one on the carpet with Dog's Life.

Woof. Woof. Bad dog. Bad fucking dog. Hi.

I'm Jake, and this is my life.

No school, no chores, no clothes.

How cool is that? Yes, it's great being a dog. Watch this. Dog's life. A dog's life.

Oh, a dog's life.

This game was a listener recommendation.

Okay. Curse them. Epoxy on their house.

Oh my God. Sorry, Katrina. And staff. So this is a weird game. Not a conventional game, new by any stretch. I'd never even heard of this game.

I hadn't either, actually.

I didn't know this game was a thing. But this game did come out on September 14, 2004 in North America. Came out almost a full year earlier in Europe because it's a British developer.

Okay. The pieces are falling into place. Okay.

Yeah. It was developed by Frontier Developments and it was a PS Two exclusive. It was published in the US by Hip Games, which is but Frontier Developments is kind of a somewhat long standing developer. They've been around since 94. They're still around today.

Okay.

It looks like they have a thing. And that thing is animal games.

Interesting.

And theme park games. And the amount of times that those two cross over is staggered.

Okay, go on.

So this isn't their first PS Two game. Their first PS two game was Wallace and Grommet in Project Zoo.

Okay.

In fact, they did both Wallace and Grommet games for the PS Two. But in 2003, they took over the development for all the roller coaster tycoon games.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. So over the course of like two or three years, they did a bunch of roller coaster tycoon expansions and they did roller coaster tycoon Three. And then they started another franchise, Thrillville. Do you remember those games?

No.

There's only a couple of them, I believe. But yeah, Thrillville, I think it's like roller coaster tycoon. It's like a theme park simulator.

Okay.

And then when Xbox 360 came out with the Connect, they just fucking went ape shit.

Really?

Because they did Connect themals, which is a horrific name for a game.

Horrific name for anything.

Yeah, then they did Connectimals now with Bears.

Oh my fucking god.

Okay, so they made connect names with animals. Now they have to do their other favorite thing, which is games with theme parks. So they did connect Disneyland, adventures.

Okay?

And then by twelve they saw the writing on the walls for the connect. So they went back to the well and did Zoo Tycoon. Another crossover of their two passions. They did a couple of iOS like theme park games. They did a game called Scream Ride, which I can only assume what that's.

About, okay, I just have to jump in.

Are you a screenride head?

Dude? Scream Ride is a good game. I literally just saw that it was on Game Pass, and I downloaded it and played it two nights ago. No joke. Scream ride is fucking good.

Well, then they started doing elite dangerous games, which are what the fuck? Yeah. Space flight simulation game.

Yeah.

They did Planet Coaster, and one of the few that I actually have ever played, they did the Jurassic World Evolution game.

Dude.

Which I like. Fucking I like that.

I love those fucking games. I love those games. And planet coaster is fucking awesome.

Yeah.

What the fuck?

And they did Planet Zoo.

Of course they did.

Funny, though, the last game they released is F One Manager 2022.

Okay. There's something going on with this because I literally was playing that last year. Oh, my. And it's fucking it's fucking good.

How is it good?

Because there's strategy to there's strategy. Okay. It's fun. It's fucking good. What the fuck? These developers have my fucking number or something.

It's like so many playing a horse racing game, but you're like the vet.

It's a lot like that. And what you described sounds appealing to me.

Oh, my God. Well, I guess I don't have that brand of mental illness, so this is very interesting. This is an interesting development because you're coming in hot on this game thinking but then you end up loving most of the things they did afterwards. Crazy.

Not most, I'd say, but, like, of you mentioned, I think five of them. I'm like, I enjoyed all of yeah, I enjoyed what they've done. Yeah. Wow.

You probably love Thrillville.

I'm going to check it out right after this.

Or the sequel Thrillville off the rails.

I mean, it makes sense.

And those are published by Lucas Arts. And apparently they're working on an unnamed Warhammer Age of Sigmar strategy game.

Okay.

Back to a dog's life. It was directed by David Brabin, who is, like, the CEO. He's the founder and CEO of Frontier Development. So. I mean, maybe dog's life was his passion project. Maybe he's just an animal lover.

Okay.

Or at least a dog lover. Which leads me to I'll just say it right now. One of the things I fucking hate about this game, which is it's very anti cat.

Sure. It sure is.

In a way that I don't appreciate.

No, you're a cat guy. You're kitty cat guy.

It's true. But I can see why Catherine Dickinson, his first wife, divorced him. She probably was probably she's probably like, you fucking don't like my cats? Fuck you, then.

Fuck you. Get your stupid greyhound and fucking hit.

Your farting dogs, you piece of shit.

Christ. With the farts.

He's also OBE.

What's that?

Most excellent order of the British Empire.

It's like the fucking Kentucky Colonels. Like, just a made up fucking Colonel Sanders. People can just jerk each other off down at the fucking VFW.

His picture on Wikipedia, though, is him at the Sing Star premiere, which is fun.

Oh, my God.

But dog's life, I guess. Let's get into what the plot.

Yeah, let's do that. Let's just do that. That sounds fun.

All right, little dude. I'm going to write a song about you. I'll call it the Awesomely Wicked Dog.

Yeah.

You do that, pooh brain. Meanwhile, I'm off to find Daisy. Something tells me she's not too far away. So this game oscillates between being very heavy on story and completely ignoring its own story. You start out, you're this dog in a pretty impressive CG cutscene.

I would agree with that.

Like, pretty impressive considering how awful the rest of the game looks. You blaze this dog and you're just farting, killing butterflies with your farts and digging up bones. And then you see a sexy lady dog cross daisy. Daisy. And you're like a yo bitch. That's not misogynistic because that's what you call female dog.

You're fine there.

And he tries to go holler at her. And then in his pursuit of this lady dog, she gets kidnapped by dognapped bitchnapped.

Bitchnapped. There you go.

She gets bitchnapped by a classic comedy trope. The smart neurotic guy and the dumb towering oath.

Yes. Dwayne and Wayne.

Yeah, she gets kidnapped. But then he gets kidnapped, too. Dognapped.

Sure, why not?

And as they are pulling away from his little neighborhood, he falls off the back of the truck because they didn't close the door properly. But Daisy, unfortunately, does not. And thus begins his odyssey to save a woman who's never spoken to him before.

No. That he saw once.

So after this, I'll be firmly in favor of canceling Jake.

Jake the dog?

Yeah. For trying to love bomb Daisy.

Yeah. She doesn't ask for his help, does she?

Yeah, absolutely. She probably doesn't even need his help. She's a strong, independent woman. Doesn't need no farting dog for fuck. She's also disgusted by his farting, too.

As well she should be.

Yeah.

It killed butterflies.

Yeah. Then the game begins in earnest, and it begins by Jake immediately forgetting that this woman he's in love with needs to be saved. And instead, he plays Follow Me with some kid that I guess is his owner.

Fair?

It's not quite clear. It's definitely not clear that it's his owner.

No.

Yeah. And then all of a sudden, the kid is like, I got to go to Grandpa's house. Buy. After all you did was run ten yards.

He's done with you. He's bored of you. He's like he's like a regular it's a commentary on the children's attention spans.

This is true. This is why children shouldn't be given pets.

No, for sure.

It won't teach them responsibility. They'll just abandon it.

Abandon them on their stupid farm.

Terrible. And thus begins a journey that'll take you to three different zones. Kind of four different zones.

I think it's four. Yeah.

And you'll basically this game is a collective on. You collect scents, you race other dogs. There's pissing games, which we'll get into in the gameplay. But you do a bunch of mini quests for people and animals around the zone you're in. And honestly, this game forgets its plot for the first hour.

Absolutely.

Like, no word of Daisy, no nothing for the first hour. And this is at best a four hour game.

Oh, yeah. Well, I'm going to get into it when you get to the control section. But it should be even shorter.

This should be a phone game.

Yeah, it would be a much better phone. It would be a much better board game. It would be a much better fucking flipbook game or some shit I just made up.

It'd be a much better cards against humanity thing, where it's like, sure, I have this terrible idea for a game. And then the second card is it's about a dog.

Yeah.

And then it's this game.

In these zones, you're going to ask yourself a lot of times, why am I doing any of this?

Yeah.

Why am I getting the batteries for the Stoner guys amp?

Yeah.

Why am I throwing a ball into a hoop three times? Especially when it's impossible not to get it into the hoop when you shoot it.

And this game also fucks. Oh, my god. This game also does a thing that some pseudo open world games try to do, which is everything is available all at once in the beginning, and then you're just kind of left to hopefully piece some of it together. Like, I found all three batteries before I even got to the guy who needed them for his guitar amp. I didn't know. There's no inventory. So I dropped them all in front of the house. I was like, oh, the fuck. These are or shooting the ball into the basket, which is insane. That can honestly eat up the first 20 minutes of the game is trying to get this fucking ball through the hoop three times.

What do you talk about? I literally never missed. I did it three times. I didn't know it was possible to miss. That's what I meant. I didn't know it was possible.

Oh, my god. No, I missed every time. It took me like 1520 minutes. Get it in the hoop.

Fuck sake.

Yeah, it just went shot off in a million different directions. Yeah. So I guess I'm bad at video games, especially ones with dogs.

I'm just a savant on games I fucking hate.

Oh, god. Well, so once the game gets back on track, you end up tracking kind of at Abbott and Costello, the dog nappers, to a mountain resort town called Lake Mini Wawa, which.

Grow up.

Yeah, absolutely.

You're an adult. You're in the OBE, bro. Oh, my god.

And also through the game, there's a doberman that busts your balls all the time.

Yeah, he's busting, busting chops.

Yeah. She's absolutely insane. But what you end up finding out is that your love has been kidnapped by Miss Peaches. And spoiler alert, she's head of a cat food company and she kidnaps dogs to grind them into cat food, which honestly seems very expensive, much more expensive than probably how they actually make cat food.

Yes, it's prohibitively expensive.

But Jake, ultimately, they go to Boomtown. Boom City.

Yeah. Boom City.

And with all the dogs you've recruited throughout the game and killer the doberman that is chasing you around and just cracking wise at you, you save Daisy.

Sure.

And spoiler alert, this game ends in a horrific cutscene.

Yeah. One of the worst ever.

I could not believe that a game that is clearly for small children would end the way it ends. And this is your fair warning. Skip ahead two minutes or a minute to avoid the story spoiler. But it ends with Miss Peaches confronting Daisy and Jake with a gun. And Jake's response is to say, I've been eating oh, my God, he says, I've been eating beans and cabbage, or something like that. Turns around, lets out a 22nd fart that is so disgusting to her that she falls backwards into the cat food making machine, is killed yes. And then canned into cat food. That's how this children's game ends.

Yes.

Is with a dog murdering a woman with his fart and her being pulverized and ostensibly being fed to cats.

Yeah.

And that's how dog's life ends.

I'm going to take this opportunity to now say the thing that I was thinking every second I was playing this game. I believe this game is a stealth, indoctrination piece into a libertarian worldview. Let me explain. At no point is there any sense that anyone is in charge or anyone is not able to do whatever they want without any consequences. These dogs are kidnapped, as far as I could tell, from that farm, the.

Farm where there's one road, one single and actually one single unpaved road, one paved road. So, you know, libertarians hate road.

They hate paved, paved roads. Yes. They steal the dog in well view of the child and the grandfather and the mother, who, by the way, does nothing but drive her car back and forth.

I think she's an average.

She has to be. So no one is in any position to stop these dog nappers because there's no police, there's no anything. It's just like, well, that's the way of the world. There's no checks or balances on this dog food or this cat food that's filled with dogs. There is no law. There is no government. This is simply a worldview of, well, the market decides that this can happen. That's my screed against this game.

That's what's really I think you're spot on here. It's funny that you bring up the mom and her just driving the car down the street and back again forth, back and forth like a used grandparent. That actually is the thing that gives up that it's a British game because she's on the wrong side.

Oh, I didn't even catch which is.

Weird because this game is all voiced by everything's in an American accent. It's clear that this is trying to be like a little slice of Americana.

Through a British lens.

Yeah. Which is very funny. And that's where, like okay, so I don't think this game is very good, but I think this game is very weird.

I don't think it's weird enough.

And it reminded me of Mr. Mosquito.

Dare you?

It reminded me of Mr. Mosquito. As in, Mr. Mosquito is great and clearly a Japanese game.

Yeah.

Clearly a Japanese game for Japanese audiences. And this game is clearly a Western game. This is what the west would make if given in charge of Mr. Mosquito. This is what Mr. Mosquito would be if it wasn't Japanese.

Interesting.

It would be this piece of shit.

Okay, I'm going to sign off on that take, actually. Yeah, it doesn't make me like the game anymore, but I'm going to sign off on that take.

Yeah, because it's weird in the like Mr. Mosquitoes. Weird in fascinating ways. This game is weird in incredibly fucking stupid ways.

Very stupid ways.

It's absurd. But let's get into the gameplay. So this game has maddening controls.

The worst. I think we've played every game we've played. I think even Simpson skateboarding. This made me more frustrated.

I don't know if it's as bad as Simpson skateboarding, but I will say the inability to control the camera at all when you are in Smell of Vision is one of the worst things I've ever seen.

See, I think where you and I are going to hit disagreement after disagreement, I never left. Fucking smell of vision. Really? That's how much I hated the normal controls. When you try to move and it takes half a second and it's just why do you have to step why does he have to step that way and take a step to turn? Why can't you just let me turn? It's a dog.

I have, too.

I can tell you how they move. And they don't move like this never left. Oh, my God.

And this game, like I said earlier, this game is a collectathon. You go into Smellavision and you collect Piss Scents, and you collect weird scents, and you just collect all kinds of scents. And if you collect enough Piss Scents, you get to race a dog or you get to do the Pissing Contest, where you piss on corners of a square, and that's not fun or good. Or you do, like, a trick off with a dog. And Jake always seems to take a shit when you do this, and that's weird and awful. This game's also sometimes a platformer which makes these controls fucking atrocious. In fact, in the very beginning stage, there's a scent in the top of like a loft. Like a hay loft in a barn.

Yeah.

Now, I didn't know this. I didn't know this until afterwards. You can pull the hay bales closer. I jumped in anyway. I did it without doing.

You did? I tried. And that's what made me hate the controls. And then I just happened to be near one, and it said, grab. And I went, what do you fucking mean, grab? And I held the circle button and he went and started pulling. I'm like, oh, you can do that, by the way. You miss nothing. It's not that much easier than making the jump because it's so fucking maddeningly designed.

Oh my God. Yeah, there's like, weird puzzles in this game that aren't really puzzles that they're like, you know, like, again, this game is clearly a game for children. And then so basically when you'll run into other dogs and you'll beat them in pissing contests and stuff, and then you can recruit them. And this is the one part of the game that I thought was kind of like an interesting mechanic, is that all the dogs have different abilities. So the first dog you can kind of take control of is a Chihuahua. It's a very small dog. So you can get through this little doggy door to get a bone that's hidden inside. Because really the goal of the game is to collect bones, which you can dig up or you can get from completing a quest. Some of the quests are absolutely fucking insane. There's a quest where some guys, some dude with the worst mad scientist accent says that he wants to make the first private again, this libertarian thing is clicking in my head.

I know.

He says that he wants to be the preferred private rocket to fly to Pluto. And then, of course, like everything libertarians build, it immediately fucking blows up when it gets 10ft in the air. And of course, he'll give you two bones if you go find the parts. Free market capitalism at its finest.

That's right, the market.

Yeah. Who cares what the shrapnel from this exploding rocket?

Who.

That could have killed. But yeah, there's tug of war games. And one of the worst things about this dog, a, the main dog is not likable. I don't like Jake.

Fuck Jake.

I think he should be put down. Probably.

He's like, I don't think dogs should be put down. Well, maybe Jake.

Yeah, maybe Jake.

If you had to equate him to a person and I can't explain this tim Allen. Yeah, I kept coming back to Tim Allen, one of those guys with the white guy confidence, the middle aged white guy confidence who thinks he's really funny. And you just look at him and you're like, yeah, okay, I hear you. I know what you're saying. And I know that where the joke is there, but you're not funny.

And also, if you go in on, like, a pound of cocaine with him and he gets caught with it at the airport. He immediately flip on you. Yeah, that's jake.

Yeah. And then he gets the judge thinks he's funny, so he doesn't get a sentence. He gets to have a fucking become a billionaire.

That's Jake.

Great. That's Jake. He's the kind of guy to flip on his friends.

Yeah. I would never buy cocaine with Jake. I like this game even last every second I get away from it.

Yeah. I'm just like, fuck this fucking Gabe.

Yeah. So I'm sorry, Katrina and Stephen, I could not get into this game. Could not.

They were children like you like stupid shit. One of my favorite movies as a kid was The Black Hole.

So let's see what other people thought of this piece of dog shit. Actual dog shit.

Actual.

Get your doggy asses into the big machine. Speaking of food, I had beans and cabbages for supper. Take this, cat lady. Dog's Life received mixed reviews. According to Metacritic mix, it has a 64, which higher than some games. We've yeah, that's high. That is higher. Euro gamer, of course, eurosty found the game amusing, but felt that it offered little for experienced gamers being aimed at a younger audience. They praised the game's warm sense of humor, and they spelled humor with a U. Oh, fuck. That fucking A. I'm about to push some tea in the harbor all fucking over again.

I'm ready. I'm ready to join you, my friend.

And cute visuals. This is a game about a dog farting and shitting and pissing. Nothing cute or funny about that.

This is a lovecraftian fucking dog. What are you talking about?

And found the idea of controlling a dog to be actually quite cool. Oh, my God. I think it would be cool to be a dog.

Can you imagine controlling a dog right.

Fucking just going after the Brits.

Yeah, fine.

Well, they fucking deserve it for this game. Spot said there's not a whole lot to Dog's Life, but what's there is entertaining enough, and it certainly lets you do things you can't do in just about any other game. Stupid, stupid take. Yeah, you're right. Other games, I can't like shit as a dog. Other games, I can't want to end it all after 15 minutes of playing. Yeah, so I guess you're right. Games by called it a nice change of pace, but found the game from Land and considered it to be aimed more at younger children than teenagers. A nice change of pace from good.

Games, from having fun, from not wanting to kill yourself every 10 seconds.

Here's IGN with both a good and bad take in one sentence. IGN called the gameplay simple and well executed, but noted that the visuals looked like the game was ripped from a BS one title and the audio seemed to be all over the place. The only thing that I don't agree with in that is that it was well executed. I do think it was simple. It looks like shit and sounds like shit.

I'm glad that you brought that up because I did want to talk about this. I don't know what they're called in the world of gaming, but if a certain cue or sound effect, series of sound effects plays when you move through.

The world yeah, like the triggers.

Triggers. Thank you. They were so fucking jarring. You'd be like, you'd hear the guy, the idiot strumming his guitar, and you'd take one step, it would cut off in the middle of what he was doing. And then you'd hear the goddamn bees in the first level.

Yeah.

That was so badly done.

Yeah. The boundaries. There's no bleed over of the audio. You're either in the zone where you can hear it or you're not.

Yeah. It's garbage.

It's very bad. But this game also has a world record. A Guinness World record.

Worst game ever.

You would think Dog's Life holds the world record for most video game voiceovers recorded by one person in a game. Carrie Shale voiced 32 characters from the game. So this is not only just like a piece of shit from front to back. We've got a voice actor basically doing fucking Meet the Clumps with dogs in this game.

Yeah. That does not surprise me because the voice acting work is so first of all, it's recorded. Again, this is like nerdy shit, but it's so hot. And above everything else is like internal dialogue. Yeah.

The in game mix is very bad.

It's piercing. You're just like, shut the fuck up, Joe. I wouldn't mind fucking eating a bone over there. Shut the fuck up.

Oh, this is very funny. So I'm looking at this person's. This person is 70 years old, which is just old man being like, I'm a dog. Listen to me fart. But I'm looking at the other video games. They did. They did kill Zone. They were a voice actor in Kill Zone.

Interesting.

Transformers universe. Whatever that is. Yeah, a game. I really like Xenoblade Chronicles, too.

Okay.

Terminator Resistance. It looks like their last video game work was in 2020, but they're still working. Still working.

Bringing that Jake voice.

So good for Carrie Shale. Hope you got paid a lot to be part of this piece of shit.

Yeah. I hope you have 20 pieces of silver. What you fucking want.

This is a Judas level offense making this game. So time for us to, I guess, squeeze out our ranking of this game.

Nicely done.

I'm going to give this game two out of five dog bones.

Sure.

Two out of five. Gadson flags.

Nicely done. Nicely done. I'm going to go lower. I have to go one and a half out of five. Adam Smith fucking political economic theories of the market. The market will decide maybe one and.

A half out of five copies of wealth of nations.

There you go. Nicely done.

God damn this game is bad. Duh.

Bad robot. Do not play this game.

Do not.

All right. Well, that was dog's life.

A dog shit's life.

A dog shit's life. Thanks so much for listening.

You can find us on social media at discretarepod on instagram. We have a Twitter again. Every time we record an episode, I think I'm going to remember what the Twitter is, but I don't. You can find me at funeral. Casual games.

I'm over at Ian. At Ian golden Games.

And you can find us on whatnot? At funeral casual? Speaking of whatnot, on June 4, we are hosting a charity auction where all the money is going to the Trevor Project, which provides mental health services and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ teens. And that'll be a good time.

Thanks again for listening. Do not forget to subscribe rate ring the bell. Do the stuff. Badaboom, badabing.