Making Friends With Sony EyePet

As its name implies, the EyePet uses Sony's PlayStation Eye peripheral; the successor to the PlayStation 2's popular EyeToy gadget.

All together now: Awwwwww! Cute little blighter, isn't it? As a staunch heterosexual male, I’m unashamed to admit that I love its lickle-ickle face to bits.

The PlayStation Eye's inbuilt camera allows players to appear on screen with their EyePet. Naturally, this translates to deeper and more complex interactions in-game.

The PlayStation Eye has been programmed to track the Magic Card’s shape and colour. It’s essentially a small sheet of durable plastic with a stand built into the back.

One of the EyePet's biggest draw cards is the high level of customisation. You can shave, paint, dress up and coif your virtual pet to match your heart's desire.

With our EyePet dressed to the nines, we checked out a few of the mini-games on offer. Selections are made using your hands, with cool little holograms hovering above the Magic Card. It's like Minority Report, but cuter.

We challenged our EyePet to a game of tennis, using the Magic Card is a racquet. It's not nearly as sophisticated as Wii Sports, but it remained pretty fun nonetheless. (Naturally, our furry opponent's boundless enthusiasm made the match twice as enjoyable.)

In this screen, we're using the Magic Card to give our EyePet a shower. The TV screen fogs up with steam realistically, which is a nice touch.

Once we had washed our EyePet free of sweat and grit, we fluffed him up to give him a coat of suds. It's all very reminiscent of Nintendogs.

Reverse shot of previous slide.

Now here's where the EyePet gets interesting. The game let's you draw objects which then appear in the game as 3D models. Your EyePet can then interact with your creations and you can even control them with the PlayStation 3 controller. How cool is that?

The PlayStation Eye scans the drawing, and a few seconds later, and a scan of the image appears in game.

The EyePet looks especially pleased with its new toy -- and why shouldn't he?

Here we are driving around the car as the EyePet looks on happily. The whole process, from sketch to playable car, only took a few minutes.

The Sony EyePet will be available "before Christmas" with an Australian RRP of $79.95 (this includes the EyePet software, Magic Card and PlayStation Eye peripheral). It will be released in the U.S. on November 17 in two versions: $39.99 (game only) or $59.99 (game and PlayStation Eye peripheral).