In recent times, the only memory people seem to put into this game is the ability to piss and shit on command and the bizarrely dark plot, however Dog's Life is more than just these elements.
There was clearly care put into making sure Jake's movements look natural when making turns or going up and down slopes. His legs will move in a believable enough way and his body will rotate accordingly. It's a shockingly good looking system considering the rest of the game. However this makes the platforming frustrating, seeing as he will refuse to make a jump unless it seems feasible and would look natural. I can appreciate the effort put into this in spite of how it makes the game feel to actually play.

The music is wonderful and compliments each area really well. It's a lot of peaceful and relaxing tracks, with a few high tempo ones that are catchy and fun for the appropriate sections they play in.
However, visually, the game is a mess. Human models are gross and low poly and all the textures are muddy even for PS2 standards. The dogs were clearly the main attraction for the developers, but some of them still look just off, like the doberman.
Strangely enough, Jake has a dirt system where the more you run around the more mud gets onto his coat, albeit far too quickly, and you need to clean it off if you want to be presentable to random people.

On Jake's quest, he will need to collect enough bones to get past the dog catchers doberman. To do this, you will need to talk to NPCs and do tasks for them, collect certain scents, and even take control of other dogs. To do this, you need to collect one of two types of scents in the area that has a minigame attached. These range from marking territory, races, tag, and more. Once you complete one of these tasks you get to control the dog whenever you want, however there's a time limit related to how difficult or far away the task is. Completing the second minigame after this gives you a bone. There's actually a shocking amount of bones in the game, and you'll need 90 to get into the finale.
There's enough variation in the tasks, and each NPC adds a little extra spice, so even some mediocre tasks have enough going on to keep me invested until the end.

Ultimately, I think the game is worth playing for anyone into dogs or collectathons. Or just oddities on the PS2 in general. I played it as a very small child so my opinion may be clouded, but I think it's worth remembering past the toilet humour present.

Also there's rampant pedigree advertisement in it.

You know, in all reality this game isn't amazing in any way, but you just had to be there. This game is still a very comforting childhood memory of mine, and there's nothing quite like the weird piss and shit oriented mini-games and surprisingly morbid story-line. I was so obsessed with this game as a kid that I had a giant life-size foxhound plush who I would call Jake. This plush has been cuddled to complete and utter destruction, but I still own an exact replica.

I love you Jake from Dog's Life on the Playstation 2

okay actually what the fuck? what the dog doin

This games fuckin weird bro. Pretty much every individual part of this game goes for a completely different tone, and it all comes together as the gaming equivalent of eating paste made out of bananas, peas, and sardines. The visuals are made up of reasonably solid looking (albiet framerate-chugging) levels populated by uncanny-looking people. The writing is immensely crass and immature, with a wise-cracking snarky dog interacting with a myriad of cheesy stereotypes with enough poop/fart/sex jokes added in to make any middling dreamworks movie blush. The soundtrack ranges from bumping techno jingles to ambient music that straight up astral projects me to another plane of existence. Our doggy protagonist moves and animates with a shockingly realistic attention to detail compared to other cartoony platformers. It really does feel like the games director, writers, animators, composers, and designers all misunderstood the assignment in their own unique way, making the game an absolute tonal rollercoaster. And that's not even considering the unfittingly eerie and morbid ending.

The thing is though, the actual core game is a pretty solid collectathon, and the more I played it and got used to the serial-killer vibes the game has, the more I honestly enjoyed it. It really did feel like there was a lot of genuine thought in analyzing what dogs do and how to convert them into palpable game mechanics. Like dogs usually just beg, retrieve stuff for people, piss and shit everywhere, dig around in the mud, bark at things, sniff around random places, and eat potentially questionable food from god knows where. All of those aspects of being a dog and more are covered in this game, and the main gameplay of doing dog things to accomplish tasks to earn bones to progress is just as fun as collecting progress mcguffins in any other collectathon.

The game is weird, but it's not half-assed shovelware. If anything, the bizarre vibes make this game certainly hard to ever forget, and I could definitely see this game leaving an impact on me in many different ways if I had played it growing up. It definitely has a cult following, and I can honestly see why. Give it a shot if you enjoy some absolute strange fuckshit. Sasuga europe

I'll admit, I was attracted to this game after seeing an article about it in a gaming mag shortly before its release where there were pictures showing that you could piss and shit on command. One particular picture, of Jake on the hood of a police car leaving a brown steamer as a gift, sold me and the rest was history. Thankfully, the game was more than this one trick pony action. I found myself charmed by the characters and the simple story and the basic gameplay. It sits as the entry point on my top 30 favorite games list and I wouldn't have it any other way.