The Sims 2: Pets

"Bark Bark Bark, all day long"

*sorry for the spelling mistakes*

The Sims 2 Pets expansion pack is the 4th expansion pack for The Sims 2, and was released in late 2006.

I looked back on the expansions. I loved University and Nightlife was really good too. Open For Business... meh... And now, Pets! I don't know, but I felt the expansions we're getting worse down the road, but how could Pets be bad? Let me tell you how!

Ok, so you get to make pets now (cats or dogs basically), and you get a huge ammount of coat colors and designs to choose from, so no pet would basically look alright. I found it really amazing how unique you can make them! But that's the only good part.

So, I made a family and gave them pets. I played for awhile and... Well... Nothing. The pets walked around the house, minded their own business, ate their food, played with their toys, and slept (alot). Wow... Nothing much going on there. Of course your sims can play and hug them, but the choices are so limited and believe me, it takes FOREVER to get to a good relationship with
them considering your going to have to "Give Love" to them a million times before you become a simple friend to them. And when you do get to 100 relationships on both ends, you get nothing. The same old interactions you could do with them when you first met them.

Training? Tedious. You would be training your pet how to sit for hours, and when you do, both your pet and your sim are losing motives fast, and soon one or the other gives up and they go their separate ways. Want your pet to learn a skill? Get your sim to start training them, put it on high speed, then use the boolprop motive cheat over and over again for about 24 sim hours. That's the fastest way to do it, as it would seem. But when then, nothing real special has happened, besides now you can make them do a new trick over and over again.

Breeding; longist thing to wait for ever. Your pets could be at 90 with eachother, but they just don't want to breed. But it's getting your pets to a high relationship level thats hard. Most of the time, 2 pets will ignore eachother and pay more attention to sims, or their toys, or the toilet, or their beds (probally the most important thing in their lives). When they do interact with eachother, it'll probally results in a nasty cause, even if they're both good natured. Then they ignore eachother for a few days before they play tag and get +1 DAILY relationship, then they get distracted by something/someone else and forget the other one existed for a day or so. When they do breed, you get 1 or 2 puppies/kittens (more mouths to feed), and now you'll be spending a whole lot of money, it's not funny. So breeding; don't bother, it's not worth it.

Did you adobt a stray who just so happens to have bad training? Well have fun! He's going to be scratching stuff, biting stuff, peeing on the floor, begging for food, and biting others. Wanna change him for the good? Good luck. Not gonna happen, unless you spend countless hours on him. And not sim hours, REAL LIFE hours.

Now the graphics. Nothing really has changed. But the pet animations look cool, though they're nothing really special.

Caged pets? More mouths to feed. All you can really do with them is "feed" and "clean". Not very much fun, so caged pets are really a waste of money.

The sound? Over and over again, BARK BARK BARK BARK WHINE GRUFF MEOW MEOW BARK BARK. Now, sit in a room with a really loud person and have them say all that over and over again. That's what the sound is like.

COMPARISON TO "The Sims: Unleashed"

Well, I found Unleashed to be more fun. In fact, I think in Unleashed, there were more sim-to-pet interactions that involved more then just repeated training. Thus, it was easyer to build your relationship with the pet. Breeding? It happens, believe me, and its not a huge hassle either.

So what can you do in Unleashed that your couldn't in Pets? Have some carefree fun with them, play with them, pet them, and love them. In Pets, they're basic harbringers of either boredom or doom. You decide.

So, if you want pets, buy The Sims 1, and get Unleashed (its probally $20 less expensive anyways).

FINAL WORDS

If your into annoying things, then this is a must buy for you. Otherwise, don't. I made a mistake buying this expansion, and I'm debating if I should buy seasons. Oh well, at least University and Nightlife were good.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/07