[Review] Planet Rescue: Ocean Patrol (DS)
This time it's medical.
After playing Dolphin Island, I booted up Dolphin Island 2, made for the A Game By Its Cover game jam, where real games are made based on mockup game cartridges in the My Famicase art exhibit. This one uses Ko Takeuchi's entry from 2008 and its accompanying blurb as the jumping off point to create a stylish action platformer. It has potential but during the jam the creators Jan and James were only able to implement a few small areas and two bosses… wait a minute, this isn't a sequel to the dolphin park management game at all!
Setting aside the gag, Magic Pockets' successor to Dolphin Island is Planet Rescue: Ocean Patrol (known in North America as Petz Rescue: Ocean Patrol, part of a small subset within the Petz series of Petz Rescue animal care simulation games on DS and Wii). This time the setting is more upfront a marine wildlife sanctuary, rather than a retrofitted amusement park, and thankfully gone is the element of training dolphins to perform in shows while being kept in tiny pools. You do still play games with dolphins, orcas, and now pinnipeds [seals and sea lions] as well, but it's framed as enrichment while they recuperate.
Mila and Greg, plus some other returning characters from Dolphin Island, have been kidnapped and dumped on a tropical island in the same fictional Hawai'i-esque archipelago. The culprit is WAZAPS, the shadowy organisation out to protect the environment and punish those who cause harm to animals (they were in the last game as well). They've set up an animal sanctuary there, where creatures who have been injured in the wild can recover. Much of the harm is coming from a particular Captain Planet-style villain whose fishing trawler is causing problems with its pollution and unsustainable fishing practices, so you have to deal with him while unravelling more secrets of local mythology with the help of the other quirky staff.
This time the more outright altruistic nature of the setting is welcome, and to support it there's more of a focus on medically treating animals and then—importantly—returning them to the wild after they've healed. Dolphins, orcas, and pinnipeds get the close-in attention where a wide variety of tools are used in touchscreen minigames to treat specific ailments and injuries, done over a series of sessions to heal them over time. These three categories of creature also now have unique minigames to play with the animals, and a more involved feeding mechanic. Other animals fill the island's pools and enclosed lagoons, all again modelled well, including a few additions to the roster like polar bears and whale sharks. You can now go for a swim to get up close to them, but they don't require much attention unlike the very needy busywork in the first game.
Instead of micromanaging every individual creature daily, this is a more chill experience, where their needs tick down slowly and you only have to do a couple of required tasks per day. There's more interaction with the other characters on the island (again, all with fun cartoony designs), managing your inventory of tools, food, and medical supplies, and digging up goodies from the sands and waters. Another big focus is the boat minigame, which is how you get new animal residents. Almost every day you can optionally sail out to rescue an animal in distress, while avoiding rocks with touchscreen controls.
I enjoyed the more relaxed pace and expanded activities of this sequel, as well as the change in premise (forced conscription of staff notwithstanding). Again it looks good for a DS game, with lovingly rendered animals; this one even lets them have babies, with some very cute cutscenes to introduce them. I did struggle with progression at a certain point, so if you're stuck in chapter 20, my hot tip is to switch detectors to the snorkelling mask and fish in the ocean until you have enough shells! As for me, I'm off to check out the third instalment in this little trilogy, toodles!














