Sims 2 Pets
Ages: Everyone

The best way to get a lot of play with pets is to create a small family, and make lots of pets -- that way you can concentrate on your pets' needs. While the expansion pack says "Pets", just think of them as other Sims.

You create them in the "Create a Family" screen. After you pick a dog or cat, the other choices are surprisingly similar to those for humans -- name, gender, size, age, breed, color, body mods, and personality. The color is complicated because animals have different layers of hair (didn't know that did you?). The pet choices are so good that there seems not be a reason to modify them. They also come with learned behavior and memories. Small fuzzy animals and birds will require cages which you will have to buy.

Now that you have a houseful of pets, you will have to attend to their needs -- food, comfy beds, quality time, bathing and walking – cats take care of themselves and you only have to take care of the litter box. And yes – you will also be shopping for them. The unexpected factor is, you can't control pets -- you control the action of your Sims people and the pets react to them. While pets don't have aspirations – you can have them for them. Dogs can be trained for security duty, become service animals or go into show business. You will find out that pets take almost as much work as people. Prima puts out a strategy guide that will bring you up to speed quickly if you haven't been playing the Sims for a while. And BTW, never take the basic Sims off your computer – there's bound to be another expansion pack.

This expansion pack requires Sims 2, and you are warned to back-up your old Sims2 games and also not to install Sims 2 Pets in the same directory. With some forethought they have made Sims 2 Pets playable on Windows 98, to accommodate those players who started way back then. EA has done an excellent job of making the animals look and act real, and they are a delightful addition to the community.

Reviewed by: Editor - 10/06