P.A.W.S. – Personal Automated Wagging System

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Be A Dog For A Day…

A Review of P.A.W.S. – Personal Automated Wagging System

Grace Sylvan

PAWS is a cute program in which you can pretend you are a dog searching for bones (and the cat) in a backyard, be a flying dog delivering bones, or take a silly look at what makes a dog tick.

In our favorite activity you are a dog exploring a backyard. You see the world through a dogs eyes, although there is also a map you can take a peek at to help you locate the bones. You can look down, dig, and eat, along with barking 3 different ways. When you see the cat (who often is engaging in silly antics) you go on an automatic amazing chase. The ‘backyard’ goes all the way around a house, and includes several gardens, a pond, and gates. There is definitely a lot to explore. If you don’t find enough bones, you run out of energy and take a nap, during which ‘you’ have amazing dog dreams. (The authors suggest this as an easy way to end the game for young viewers).

Another activity is the flight game. In it, you are a dog with a jet pack who has to deliver bones to the various inhabitants of a dog town. My children enjoyed this game, but were disappointed with the short length of time allotted for each game. Of course they could play again and again, but we would have appreciated a way to set the length of the game. Flying the dog around the screen is a lot of fun.

The last area in this game is called ‘Anatomy’. There you can click on various parts of the dogs body and view silly animations of how the inside of a dog works. This part of the program is a bit limited, while the animations are nice and silly, there’s little to do once the click points are discovered. The one exception we found was where they could have the dog sniff things, and each time it would show a little picture of what it thought it was sniffing – meat, cat, cheese, etc. You could then reveal what the dog was sniffing – for example, the dog might sniff a worm, a feather, and soap, and find a bird in a bathtub! Anyway, Katherine and Robin found this area amusing enough to click on many times, while they tried to guess what silly things the dog was sniffing.

I find myself unsure exactly what age to recommend this program for. Very young children (ages 2-3) might enjoy watching the program from a parents lap, and clicking on things themselves as they grow in mastery. My 7 year old was good at maneuvering the dog around the backyard, but it took a bit of getting used to. My 4 year old (who is good at video games) really enjoyed flying the dog around, although he always thought the game ended too soon. Both children definitely found the animations and humor very appealing, but I’m afraid that replays haven’t been that frequent – and this CD uses 10 meg on our hard drive.

School House Scorecard

Product:	P.A.W.S. – Personal Automated Wagging System
Company:	Digital Garden PAWS c/o Virgin Records 338 N. Foothill Road Beverly Hills, CA 90210 Phone: 612-227-9244 Fax: 612-227-1006 E-Mail: paws@digitalcafe.com Internet: www.vmg.co.uk/paws/
Cost:	$35.00

System Requirements:

IBM: 2x CD-ROM, 486SX/33, 8MB RAM, Windows 3.1, mouse, 10.6 Meg Hard disk space

Macintosh: 2x CD-ROM, 68030, 8MB RAM, System 7.0, 10.1 Meg Hard disk space

Breakdown:

Ease of Use 3
Learning Value 2
Entertainment Value 3
Graphics 4
Sound 3

Overall Score: