Paparazzi (Xbox Series X) REVIEW – Pug Life
Gaming is an amazing way to explore huge narrative adventures across worlds real and imagined, but sometimes it’s good to take a break. Some games don’t need to decide the fate of the entire world. Sometimes, it is nice to relax and have fun with cute fluffers. Paparazzi have that option by bucketload.
Paparazzi, a game about photographing dogs, is not content with being enslaved by complex plots, complicated characters, and intricate gameplay mechanics. That’s it. You’ll play on five levels of the game, which you’ll return to in different forms, explore, dress up with the many dogs you meet along your journeys, and take lots of cute pictures.
You’ll be asked to take a photo of a specific dog or use a particular filter. This earns you followers and bones, which can be used to upgrade your camera, including filters, lenses and other features—upload photos to dog social media. Depending on the images you have captured, other fans will be interested in your work. This adds an extra layer to puzzle solving and discovery.
Although your tools may seem basic at first, you will soon be able to take fish-eye lenses shots with a sepia filter. When setting up shots, the amount of customization you can do is quite good. Many filters and lenses are available, but some post-editing would be a nice touch. Be careful when taking a selfie. It turns out that you are playing as a sentient camera, with arms and legs. This is both terrifying and creepy.
The existential camera-based horror aside, the show’s star is the dog. There are dozens of dogs ready to be the focus of your next great photoshoot. Paparazzi offers plenty of toys and food that will keep your dog interested or get them to sit still for a few seconds. You can make dogs dizzy with the flash of your camera or scare them by dropping a Roomba near some puppers. But why would you? It’s okay, it’s true. The game also asks you to dispose of the room later.
The joy of discovery is what makes Pupperazzi so appealing. There are only a few levels, and they don’t all have the same size, but there are plenty of dogs to play with and secrets to discover. You’re sure to get a “awwwww” reaction from every dog you see. Watch a dog navigate the city streets on a moped or see a bulldog selling hotdogs next to some other dogs enjoying a relaxing spot near a waterfall.
Unfortunately, this appeal is only temporary. Once you’ve seen one dog ride a bike on a bicycle, you’ve seen them all. Sundae Month seems to be well aware of the short-term fun of Pupperazzi. You can only take so many photos of dogs before you start to feel bored. This game can be completed in 3 hours. You’ll probably be more focused on satisfying requests than taking in the atmosphere by this point so Pupperazzi won’t feel bored.
There are however, some bigger problems that could hinder the fun. One, it can sometimes be difficult to fulfill requests. Even though you have all the necessary elements, there are times when one feature is out of focus or too far away. The game doesn’t give any feedback. Switching between filters and lenses, even when you use a controller, is not intuitive. The menus can sometimes feel difficult to navigate. There are a few glitches that you should be aware of, such as one that essentially corrupted my save file. Big fun.
Although this is a rare occurrence, it could also be possible to break your game. The only remaining task was to complete Puppypedia after completing all levels and main missions. The game crashed suddenly, but it continued to crash every time I tried to boot it up. This was solved by using a second profile to load and then switch in the menu. However, it corrupted my Puppypedia entries, thereby messing up my save file. The achievement was unlocked after I had completed the missing entries. However, it was for the second profile.
Although the review build is a little more unstable than I prefer, Pupperazzi still makes me smile every time I look at it. There’s more room for adorable games like Pupperazzi than ever before, and I’m happy to see more of them, especially when they involve cute huskies in party hats.
