There's something that's long been missing since Maxis launched the amazingly popular and successful Sims 2. Those small, furry creatures that so enrich our lives with their honest companionship and affection were somehow missing.
While The original Sims saw our four legged friends added in a content patch, mystifyingly The Sims 2 launched with nary a Dachshund to be seen. With the release of
The Sims 2: Pets, man's best friends are finally back and in such a wide variety of detail and customisation that the wait was more than worth it.
Unlike some of the previous expansion packs, the content added in Pets meshes fully with the neighbourhood environment. You wont have to head to a special pet park to play with your pets since they are, after all, part of the family.
Graphics and sound remain largely unchanged with the exception of the excellently drawn animals which look just like the breeds in question - I love the bull terriers. There's also a smattering of pet specific purchases, as well as some "atomic age" themed furniture, all of which is well drawn.
Soundwise the only major changes are the acceptably realistic pet noises and the now standard batch of new songs from real-life bands re-recorded in
Simslish. As someone who stopped listening to new music circa 1987 I wasn't familiar with any of the songs, but this is always a nice touch.
For further details about the original game, see my review here:
http://www.epinions.com/content_379999260292
The New Stuff
The Pets in this expansion aren't merely the token pooch or pussycat to be added to the home like a new appliance - they are as varied and complex as your Sims themselves.
Dogs and cats come in a huge variety of premade breeds - almost one hundred in total - and may be obtained through a number of means. You might befriend a local stray, call the shelter and see who needs a home, or if you are the lucky owner of the Open for Business addon, head to the pet shop in the retail district and pick something out. You can even custom design the pet of your dreams. For those with less high maintenence desires, there's the option to buy a caged rodent known as a "Womrat".
As with Sims, pets have a number of statistics, including temperament, intelligence, eating habits and so forth which significantly impact on how life with that companion pans out in your household. In addition to having these stats make up a base personality, pets also feature an excellently realistic list of "learned behaviour". See, just like a real life pet, if you don't want your furniture made into that lovely new scratching post, or would prefer not to find a nasty surprise left on your new shag pile carpet, your Sims are going to have to train their animals through positive or negative reinforcement of their actions. Once a pet strongly learns something one way or another it is going to be near impossible to undo, just like in real life. If your dog has been eating human food scraps from the table all his life, that's going to be so firmly ensconced as normal behaviour that it's impossible to change without seriously traumatising your animal. I really liked this, particularly when pets from the animal shelter came with a pre-set bunch of learned behaviours - just like the little tags you see on their cages "Hello, I am an indoor cat who is very affectionate. I hate dogs and children, but I like other cats."
If you thought what you have heard so far about the animals in Sims 2: Pets was neat, it just gets better. You can actually send your furry companions off into the workforce - perhaps to become the next
Lassie or a noble police dog - even to star in that snazzy new cat food commercial. You can actually get to the stage where your animals can bring home more than enough bacon to support your household, leaving your human Sims a lot more free time to engage in more rewarding persuits.
The Bottom Line: Why it Works
The introduction of complex pets to the game could easily have been an overly complicated mess, just creating more micro-management for the player already with their hands full with a group of Sims - my wife can't stand controlling more than a single Sim at any one time. Happily, the designers have made animals uncontrollable by the player, leaving it to training and learned behaviours to dictate how the animals behave. I particularly like the way the basic independence of your pets can be a pre-set recipe for their eventual personalities, depending on the play-style of the given player. See, if you are going to be busy dealing with a career, a family, building up your own statistics points and so forth, your animal is bound to suffer from lack of training and attention, with very real implications for its behavioural tendencies.
With the majority of content complimenting the existing home setting there's no need to spend impossibly long loading times to play with pets - something which sucked a lot of the fun out of previous expansions where the majority of the action took place in an all new environment. Pets doesn't feel like you are experiencing an entirely different game, but the same game with all the richness and reward the companionship of a devoted animal can bring. Oh, and wait till you discover wolves running wild in suburbia.... or are they something more sinister?..... Bravo Maxis, the wait was worth it.
