Picked this up yesterday, had a useless 2.02 left on my PSN account for some reason so ultimately wound up only spending an additional 10 bucks on it. It's pretty interesting, though how fast you can die is a bit alarming. Working my way up the carnivore tree, which unfortunately has about 7 canines in a row, the jump from Pomeranian to Cat was satisfactorily different due to how fast the Cat is, but playing a dog and then a slightly larger dog over and over is a bit irritating. Somewhat repetitive gameplay aside I think all the peripheral stuff is what makes this game pretty sweet, in the darkness of Shibuya station one notices a crocodile chasing down a racehorse, then immediately in the background is another croc fighting a Tiger. Then you wander up on a Panther and it one shots you.

I'd want to complain about the camera but I think it makes the game much more tense so it winds up being functional. I ran into the Tosa area to take down a boss, but wound up fighting about 15 Tosas (couldn't find the damn boss anywhere), who are pretty dangerous relative to other Dogs, how much Tosacide is necessary to unlock the damn beast? Eventually a pack took out all my followers so I died, tragically. The game is really random aside from level layouts, challenges aside from the Pomeranian and Sika Deer are random, mob spawns are random, toxicity is random, etc.

Bit of advice: Don't fuck with lion cubs if you've seen another lion in the area, getting bumrushed by 6 lionesses to kill your 6 followers and you in 2 seconds isn't so fun. Addditionally the free DLC items are quite useful, +5 to hunger gauge at the start is helpful.

Best run was about 59 years on the good ol' Pomeranian.

I wish the hunger gauge was slower. And I don't know how crucial the time crunch is, but I feel like I have to go directly to my next task and try to mate as quickly as possible instead of relaxing and exploring the area. I want to look around, creep and find equipment. See what's on the rooftops and so on.. But it feels like if I'm not rushing to eat and mark and mate I'm going to fail. But then again, is that the point?

It's like Persona 3-4; the school aspect and the idea of special days is cool, but the deadlines and need to min-max your time spent is kind of a bummer. I wonder if a Persona game without the time crunch is more fun or less fun to play.

As a side thing, this is 2012; I can't do save points anymore. Sometimes I need to stop playing the game Right Now, I can't "I'm almost at a save point" the food I'm cooking or the people I'm responsible for.

This game is suprisingly addictive, I want to unlock ALL those animals (and get ALL the DLC)

Fat Cat is indeed BOSS, Tokyo Jungle

@Brodehouse said:

I wish the hunger gauge was slower. And I don't know how crucial the time crunch is, but I feel like I have to go directly to my next task and try to mate as quickly as possible instead of relaxing and exploring the area. I want to look around, creep and find equipment. See what's on the rooftops and so on.. But it feels like if I'm not rushing to eat and mark and mate I'm going to fail. But then again, is that the point? It's like Persona 3-4; the school aspect and the idea of special days is cool, but the deadlines and need to min-max your time spent is kind of a bummer. I wonder if a Persona game without the time crunch is more fun or less fun to play. As a side thing, this is 2012; I can't do save points anymore. Sometimes I need to stop playing the game Right Now, I can't "I'm almost at a save point" the food I'm cooking or the people I'm responsible for.

Sometimes challenges are just plain impossible depending on what circumstances you run into, kill 20-25 animals in 10 minutes? Only if you're lucky (though getting it in the last 30 seconds is exihilarating). An interesting thing is holding the circle button will pick up an animal corpse smaller than you so you can save it for later, quite useful. Birds are the only animals guaranteed to be at a specific location (air combo!), boss areas always have tons of animals so you can plan ahead on certain challenges, but getting all of the challenges in one run is pretty difficult unless you get mark 4, 6, 8, 10 times + Change 1 generation(s) (or 2 at the 15 minute point).

The game isn't that much of a time investment so just starting a new run is fine if you can't get to a save methinks; only really successful games last longer than an hour. If you loop back to Shibuya Station frequently you can mate there in about 2 minutes, Dogenzaka and Shibuya shop are about 3.5, Suburbs is roughly the same though a bit out of the way.

That said I've played 5 games and I'm marked as A or S in the rankings (start out at C), either there's a triple S or they failed to import a mercilessly cruel Japanese rating system.

Enjoying it so far, it's crazy how the Pometarian is harder to play than the Deer. I don't understand the toxic wasteland area of the map though, there's no life there nor plants to feed on, just death.

In 30 years the Shibuya station I've come to know and love is filled with...predators.

Edit:Also, picking a high school uniform off of dead animals was oddly satisfying.

I'm downloading it right now after seeing the quicklook. The tagline "WHAT HAPPENS TO MAN'S BEST FRIEND WHEN THERE IS NO MAN LEFT?" just pushed me further over the line. So yeah, it's made a great impression so far.

@Ravelle said:

Enjoying it so far, it's crazy how the Pometarian is harder to play than the Deer. I don't understand the toxic wasteland area of the map though, there's no life there nor plants to feed on, just death.

Toxicity is random, there can be life there but watch out for toxified corpses. The bars on the map indicate how much food is in any given area; challenges aside try to go to the busiest locales.

Got the "Survive 100 years" trophy with the Wolf; its really luck based with a mid level predator. At year 61 Dinos start showing up and nothing save for the top of the food chain guys is left, found nothing to eat for 35 years (though did eventually find a handful of chicks and a porcupine randomly). Dinosaurs went extinct because they ate everything, evidently. In addition to Raptor types there's Pterodactyls that one shot you but take a very long time to wind up and go away if you dip in the grass.

The game sort of becomes purely stealth at this point, go around and mark territories, pray you find a desperate female to carry on your gravely endangered species, and repeat a bunch. Yaminote Line West seems to be Lion central, but once you're past that it's not too bad to cycle between the three areas (sewers being completely desolate and trivial to capture in my experience). Raptors are fast and hit extremely hard but you don't have to run from 20 of them like the Lions. The maximum score you can get within reason with a mid level predator is about 165,000, anyone above that is really into doing the same thing over and over for like 10 hours or so. Shortly after year 100 I found a Panther to fight, which seems to be the biggest thing you can take down as a canine; I died in glorious combat, worthy of a Wolf Samurai Bogart.

@aznjon12 said:

In 30 years the Shibuya station I've come to know and love is filled with...predators.

Edit:Also, picking a high school uniform off of dead animals was oddly satisfying.

When you're wearing a high school uniform, a tokyo train station is always full of predators.

@psylah said:

@aznjon12 said:

In 30 years the Shibuya station I've come to know and love is filled with...predators.

Edit:Also, picking a high school uniform off of dead animals was oddly satisfying.

When you're wearing a high school uniform, a tokyo train station is always full of predators.

That made me smile, clever!

@psylah said:

@aznjon12 said:

In 30 years the Shibuya station I've come to know and love is filled with...predators.

Edit:Also, picking a high school uniform off of dead animals was oddly satisfying.

When you're wearing a high school uniform, a tokyo train station is always full of predators.

Truer words have been spoken but this is pretty true.

@Fredchuckdave: Yeah, getting all the challenges in one go seems like it will be pretty hard. But you get a tuxedo! So there's that.

I was doing a runthrough (with the baby chick of all things) a little bit ago and had all the challenges so far at the 67 year mark, and then my power went out for a second. I'm kinda furious now at losing all that progress :(

It took me forever to realize that the chick can't mate. You have to go to sleep at a nest after taking over an area, and you will wake up as a chicken! Then you can get it on ;) I think that might be the only animal that operates that way.

@Fredchuckdave: I stumbled in to a group of lions AND Hyena's. Apparently they can get along just fine.

@Ravelle said:

@Fredchuckdave: I stumbled in to a group of lions AND Hyena's. Apparently they can get along just fine.

There's even a rare type of lion that looks like Scar :o Predators don't always go after other predators I've noticed, also just found a "Temporary Tattoo" with the description: "All of the Badness, none of the commitment. Animals of the same size or smaller will no longer attack unless provoked."

I've played six hours of it and I love the challenge in it, it's just that it's too brutal sometimes, hostile super strong enemies can spawn on top of a new-generation camp, you're not 100% safe even when you start a new game;

Absolutely loving it. The combat is much easier than the impression I had gotten from watching other people play it, but that's probably just a good thing as it seemed extremely brutal. Rolling into cat territory with a pack of pomeranians and just establishing complete dominance was an epic feeling. And then going on to playing a pig.... Also shit gets real if you survive long enough, had a train of panthers, hyenas and wolves hunting me down at one point. Can't wait to unlock some of the really big predators.

Absolutely loving this game. I managed to kill a crocodile with my Fat Cat last night. For some reason, I got behind it and it couldn't get me so I just smacked it down for about five minutes. Satisfying.

It's ridiculous, in a way I can get behind. With humanized animals and inappropriate interface/music which seem to belong in a Gran Turismo game. It scratches that itch for Japanese weirdness that I used to get out of Yakuza before it got stale. I'm enjoying it, even with the sometimes unfairly strict objectives.

My main gripe is that the game often throws you in situations where suddenly there are no sources of food ANYWHERE. The streets are suddenly barren and your hunger meter just keeps ticking down. Either the animals have all disappeared, or there's no plant life to be found. I shouldn't be sprinting frantically across 3 or 4 zones looking for a single chick to munch on. It's frustrating to watch my pack die one by one because the game decided to stop spawning food.

It looks like the game is glitching, but it must be intentional. Maybe the developers want us to feel that sense of desperation when food is scarce. It's probably why they want you to find food items. But whatever the intent, it generally feels cheap and arbitrary. One second there's plenty of food, and then suddenly boring empty streets for 5 minutes.

Also, I can foresee the game getting repetitive, but I haven't gotten tired of it just yet. Still having fun.

Every play through is so random, it's crazy.

I was on the verge of dying because no food was to be found, luckily I found an average female and managed to mate before I died, it resulted in a 2 pup generation sadly. The first one died pretty quickly because there was still no food to be found, my continuing with the other puppy I stumbled on to a massive nest of 30 cats, slaughtered them all hoping to find a cat boss but he didn't show. With enough food in my belly and ranked up due to eating 30 cats I ventured forward only to die moments later of toxicity. :(

@Ravelle said:

Every play through is so random, it's crazy.

I was on the verge of dying because no food was to be found, luckily I found an average female and managed to mate before I died, it resulted in a 2 pup generation sadly. The first one died pretty quickly because there was still no food to be found, my continuing with the other puppy I stumbled on to a massive nest of 30 cats, slaughtered them all hoping to find a cat boss but he didn't show. With enough food in my belly and ranked up due to eating 30 cats I ventured forward only to die moments later of toxicity. :(

Damn Humanity may be gone but their pollution gets the last laugh.

Finally out of Canine hell, aside from the previous 6 animals which are fairly repetitive (Tosa boss is the most difficult of them) you now have to take territory from Cheetahs and Bears with a Hyena, which is an incredibly grueling task. Cheetahs kill you in about 3 hits and if you don't have any attack boosting items the only way you're going to kill one is with a stealth kill, pray you get lucky with radar. I had attack boosted up to 140 so I could kill them pretty fast, but they're twice as fast as you are so its still kind of ridiculous.

Bears take no damage even if you have double your attack stat so its just run around and try to take the territory. I gather its possible to farm up your stats with any animal so they can take on anything but it would take upwards of 20 hours; so maybe just hope you get lucky? I died shortly after getting the bears, sadly I had a solid chance at getting every challenge (2 ranks left) got instakilled while I was out of stamina. Since generation stat boosts appear to be permanent the best animals are the fastest ones, as speed never changes. Don't think I'll have it in me to grind enough but could possibly have a Cheetah with 255 or 999 in everything, I imagine that makes the challenges pretty easy.

@mason said:

My main gripe is that the game often throws you in situations where suddenly there are no sources of food ANYWHERE. The streets are suddenly barren and your hunger meter just keeps ticking down. Either the animals have all disappeared, or there's no plant life to be found. I shouldn't be sprinting frantically across 3 or 4 zones looking for a single chick to munch on. It's frustrating to watch my pack die one by one because the game decided to stop spawning food.

Every time you mate it resets all the food in all the districts (represented by the bars on the map), so if you're really getting screwed early game just go find a desperate female and reroll it. Late game you're pretty much boned regardless, that's kind of the point though.

@Fredchuckdave: Just unlocked the Hyena myself and looking forward to getting into big cats and bears. But as you say actually unlocking them seems like quite the task. I guess you could just wait for dark and sneak your way around though ?

@Ares42 said:

@Fredchuckdave: Just unlocked the Hyena myself and looking forward to getting into big cats and bears. But as you say actually unlocking them seems like quite the task. I guess you could just wait for dark and sneak your way around though ?

Dark + radar is probably the best you could hope for, for bears they're easy enough to outrun just make sure you don't run into a wall. There's not a huge number of cheetahs and for me it spawned in Shibuya Woods and Shibuya Shops, both easy to get to from the start, so probably just trial and error until you get it. Alternatively ignore the cheetahs and grind the challenges for like 5-6 hours, but that's probably not close to as fun. I wish it just went Dog (with multiple purchaseable skins) > Hyena/Wolf > Cheetah/Panther etc, but you do have to go through 3 slightly different Dogs and then 4 virtually identical animals (so identical its difficult to tell your followers from foes).

I should note that I also ran into a Sabertooth that was 4 times the size of anything else I've ever seen, including other Sabertooths; took up about 80% of the screen.

I've had a ton of fun so far and my longest run was around 40 years with the rabbit. I pretty much just ran around, eventually forgetting about challenges entirely, until the game stacked the odds too high. It got really damn desperate around the 30th year. Every single section was polluted, there was no food and it seemed like every area was covered in huge predators. I managed to squeak my way through the sewers, coming across 4 unpolluted bushes that kept me going for another handful of years. That's when I got the random event of rabbits breeding like crazy in Shibuya woods. What a glorious time that was. Plentiful food, lots of company, no predators. Got myself a prime mate at age 12 and was ready to start fresh. I got snapped by a crocodile almost immediately after that.

Tons of fun, but now I feel like focusing on unlocking the different animals and playing through some story. Just got the chimp, so that should be neat.

PS+ gets the DLC animals for free(at least the initial ones). That might push me over for getting this game. It's just looks way better than it ever should.

@beard_of_zeus said:

It took me forever to realize that the chick can't mate. You have to go to sleep at a nest after taking over an area, and you will wake up as a chicken! Then you can get it on ;) I think that might be the only animal that operates that way.

Lions work like this, but you start with an adult. The two forms work completely differently though, the Cub is basically a Pomeranian with a crapload of health (greatly reduced attack and defense), and the Lion is what you'd expect. Probably the hardest challenges to complete because they're still large predator type challenges (Kill 40 enemies etc) but half the time you'll be a tiny cub. The only positive to being a cub is you rank up faster and those ranks carry over to when you sleep and become an adult, but age is a serious issue.

I just went 60+ years as a Beagle and got killed by robot dogs? I guess?

Starving hungry pomeranian, no pack, no food across the whole district, stumble across a desperate female, made it to the nest in Dogenzaka whilst furiously mashing the o button, the lil' bastard rears up and gives her one with a single, solitary 1 hit point remaining and carries on the bloodline! I leapt out of my god damned chair and yelled.

Got to the top of the carnivore food chain which is DilophosaurusAt this point the game becomes fairly easy, as the only weakness you have is low hunger (starts at 5, but you can boost that up with items easily enough). The biggest strength is not having to fight yourself, as others of the species are ridiculously difficult to do anything but run from. It's still possible to die but generally you'll be alright up until year 100. Past that something... else happens and I imagine the only way to succeed is grind out maximum stats. Scored 189k, good for 60th today! Trusty Japanese people. Got a second Tuxedo for brevity (can't buy it in the shop), boosts all of your stats by an absurd amount so it'll probably help for unlocking herbivores.

My Gazelle ass got lost in the sewers, ran into a some kind of predatory cat's lair. Solid Snake'd into a box and ate the fucking food. Got my ass hunted by Jackals while waiting for the elevator to come back up and at that point was just like "fuck it" and ran into the cat lair where they proceeded to kill all the Jackals and my brothers and I.

Died as a Gazelle because of two freakin' beagles, no freakin' Beagle is suppose to outrun a Gazelle damn it, why is there no sprint button! :(

I just had my first run over 100 years as a Jackal. The game gets very... different after 100 years. Also, I noticed the DLC is free with PS+, but it told me about half of them weren't available yet.

Just took over Polar Bear territory, unfortunately someone didn't tell them to show up so all I had to fight were a bunch of Hyenas. Bears play completely differently than every other large carnivore, you're so slow, plodding and massive but at least have a decent hunger reserve to balance it out. The bear attacks are massive cleaves that come out slowly but deal with packs of small predators quite handily, I'd be interested to see a bear versus the cat gathering event (25+ cats on screen). Defense is so high that you can actually take a few hits before dying, and possibly have some vague chance against the unforeseen threat after year 100, though I'm sure Dilos still tear you apart.

I am absolutely in love with this game.

...

I also kinda sorta bought a PS3 because of it.

I was going to buy one anyways! Eventually... but I saw the Quick Look for this game and read about it a bit and was like "fuck it, I just got my paycheck, the time is NOW"

Man, this game is awesome!

My heart jumped up my throat a few minutes ago when I was running my pack of 4th generation Pomerians through a pretty dark area when we stumble upon A FUCKING POLAR BEAR!

Best part is that I managed to dodge him, bite him in the ass and then run away and climb up on some signs onto a roof. Stupid bear.

@TeflonBilly said:

Man, this game is awesome!

My heart jumped up my throat a few minutes ago when I was running my pack of 4th generation Pomerians through a pretty dark area when we stumble upon A FUCKING POLAR BEAR!

Best part is that I managed to dodge him, bite him in the ass and then run away and climb up on some signs onto a roof. Stupid bear.

Fantastic post. Polar bears were randomly in the way of my last marking spot for my last challenge yet to complete, so I yelled "FUCK YOU BEAR!" at the screen, what a marvelous game.

@Fredchuckdave said:

@TeflonBilly said:

Man, this game is awesome!

My heart jumped up my throat a few minutes ago when I was running my pack of 4th generation Pomerians through a pretty dark area when we stumble upon A FUCKING POLAR BEAR!

Best part is that I managed to dodge him, bite him in the ass and then run away and climb up on some signs onto a roof. Stupid bear.

Fantastic post. Polar bears were randomly in the way of my last marking spot for my last challenge yet to complete, so I yelled "FUCK YOU BEAR!" at the screen, what a marvelous game.

Haw! I tell you what, that was the second scariest bear encounter in all video games. Condemned 2's bear in the cabin still holds the top spot though.

Stephen Colbert is right! Bears are still a threat!