Fierce Tales 1: The Dog's Heart

Fierce Tales: The Dog's Heart
by Blam! Games - June, 2012

Series links: Fierce Tales 1: The Dog's Heart, Fierce Tales 2: Marcus' Memory, Fierce Tales 3: Feline Sight

Available at:
Big Fish as Collector's Edition / Standard Edition
iWin as Collector's Edition / Standard Edition



The citizens of Houndspoint have always loved and trusted their canine companions, but a recent wave of coordinated attacks by a pack of strange dogs has thrown the snowy mountain town into a state of fear. After your beloved dog, Pippa, is kidnapped by the creatures, you vow to discover the cause of the sudden attacks and figure out who, or what, is behind it all. Explore beautiful hidden object scenes and mysterious locations to uncover the truth in Fierce Tales: The Dog’s Heart Collector's Edition!

The Collector’s Edition includes:

• Integrated Strategy Guide
  
• Exclusive Bonus Adventure
  
• Beautiful Wallpapers, Concept Art and Music
  

For the Standard Edition:

• Strategy Guide
  
• Blog Walkthrough (Big Fish)
  

Click images to enlarge
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Never mind the WOW! Factor, this one’s got CUTE!

  

BASED ON COMPLETED GAME

One of the other reviewers remarked that he didn’t understand all the fuss about this game, in his mind it was only a good game, and wondered if there was something that he was missing.

Well, I was one of the people who were blown away by this game at the time it first came out, and played it an unprecedented three times in one week. If you’d asked me to review it then, I’d have drooled. But his comments stayed with me, and now almost a year later, I get it. It’s the cute factor.

See, my friend, the story starts out with the kidnapping of a very cute puppy followed almost immediately by an injured one. My heart ached for those dogs. Thereafter the game is littered throughout with doggy images and folklore.  Add to that well-drawn and beautiful graphics, and you have CUTE!

This game is delightful, make no mistake about it, but without the cute factor I doubt we’d have all gone quite so completely overboard about it.

True, you have an involving story, plenty of well done HOs and puzzles, and lots of travel. There’s a map, but I didn’t find it useful except to ‘jump’. (It’s essential in the bonus game). There’s no collectibles or achievements. It’s quite lengthy, but there’s nothing other than the dogs to really distinguish it.

Although one thing that did stand out for me was how quiet this game was. It’s eerie. I even had to turn up the volume to hear the very pleasant and relaxing music.

In short, nice feel good game, well done, with added CUTE.

Bonus Content Review


Nothing but the usual offerings – wallpapers, concept art, music. The bonus game and the integrated strategy guide, which is adequate. (For more details, see my separate review on the Strategy Guide)

The bonus game is a prequel that is not at all needed for the main game, which ends conclusively. It is very interesting though, and has a few tricks up its sleeve I won’t spoil for you. Just note that it has more of the kind of things we’ve come to expect than the main game. For instance, some really neat though not difficult original puzzles. It’s also a decent length, about twice what I’m used to in bonus games.

Bonus game in conjunction with SG if you’re likely to need it definitely makes it worth the CE price.

I Recommend This Game!

Just for you, Renaissance Mom, I date this game as the beginning of the 'cute' craze that has been terrorizing you for the last year   

Fierce Tales 1: The Dog's Heart (IHOG)

Options include separate sliders for Music and Sound, plus Full-screen and Custom Cursor. Choice of Casual, Advanced or Hardcore Mode. Difficulty can be changed at any time.

Story:

The snowy town of Houndspoint has always had a real kinship with their canine friends... Until now.  Suddenly large dogs have started attacking people and stealing their beloved pets!  When your mini poodle, Pippa, is dragged away by these beasts right in front of you and your children, you are determined to find out what is causing this strange behavior and save your little friend!


Our Journal tracks the story and clues that we've found, but doesn't offer much in the way of extra story.  In order to understand what is going on, you're going to need to read every scrap of journal, research, etc. that you can get your hands on.  These will remain where you find them (they don't go into your journal), but you can go back to them and re-read whenever you like.

Gameplay:

Our MAP has fast-travel, but is not interactive.  There were so many illogical tasks that we were expected to do that I got lost a lot.  I was happy to see that there are directional HINTS available!


Hidden Object Scenes are lightly-interactive lists, and there is no misclick penalty when in Casual Mode (not sure about the other modes.)

Sights and Sounds:

The character design is... different.  Sometimes they look like your standard human, and other times they look like characters from a Puff's Facial Tissue Commercial.

Graphic-wise the scenery ranges from pretty good to very nice.  Here's a scene which I especially enjoyed:


Music seemed to be on a short loop, and got repetitive quickly.

CE Content:

• Integrated Strategy Guide
  
• Bonus Chapter
  
• 9 Wallpapers (3 resolutions to choose from)
  
• 13 pages of Concept Art
  
• 7 Music Tracks (I don't see an option to save)
  

Bonus Chapter:

The extra chapter is basically a prequel, following events that took place before we became part of the story.  It explains very little, and is not needed to understand the main story... As a matter of fact, for me it did nothing but cause more questions.

Verdict:

I really struggled to finish this one.  It's not that it's a bad game, it's just that I quickly got my fill of ridiculous tasks, and wondered what far-fetched action they would want me to take next. The game also neatly glossed over some very serious events; things which should have had a huge effect on the story but didn't. 

I think that this is a well-made game with pretty graphics, but if you're a story-lover -- or hyper-aware of logic like myself -- you might want to give this one a pass.