The Sims 2: Pets

"Could have been good, but it's too flawed"

The life simulator known as The Sims has made quite a name for itself. You create your Sims and guide them through their daily lives. In this installment, you also create Pets for your Sims. Really simple, you probably already knew that. But is it worthwhile to play the PSP version?

Gameplay - Sim and House Creation

For a portable game, the amount of customization is really amazing. The only thing that was on the PC version that isn't here is the full customization of the components of the face. You can only choose the face from 12 preset faces, then choosing hair type and color and accessories. It would have been okay since the eyes are rarely shown, but the preset female faces are quite ugly. Some were even manly. Aside from that, it's great.

Oh, but since there is no woohoo in this game, the Romance aspiration was removed. It was substituted by the Creativity aspiration. Sims with it, as the game says, "love to experiment with every aspect of their lives". There isn't much of a difference though, wishes aren't too different between aspirations in this game.

The pet creation stays pretty much the same. Choose a breed, fur color, fur markings... Failures here (such as the size of certain cat breeds) were already in the PC version.

Houses, unlike in the PC version, can't be built from scratch. You have five layouts to choose from, and as Sims in your neighbourhood gain aspiration points, you unlock more, to a maximum of 20 with 15000 aspiration points. Of course, wishes now only give you little aspiration, otherwise 15k would come too fast. You can also change the floor and wall type.

In the Pause Menu, there is the Buy Menu, in which you buy furniture and place it on your house as you wish. It has a pretty bad problem, though: The Fire Code. You are limited to a certain amount of furniture in the house. If you exceed that limit, things start getting on fire randomly. It's really annoying since for smaller houses, the Fire Code is too low, and if you sell something in your house just after exceeding the limit (i.e. not leaving the Buy menu), something will still catch fire.

Gameplay - Controls

Well, I won't go too much in detail. You can either control your Sims with the Analog stick and interact with nearby objects with the X button (Direct Mode) or you can control the cursor with the analog stick and select with the X Button (Classic Mode). You can switch modes anytime by pressing the Select button. Another thing worth mentioning is, if you hold the Left Trigger, the game will fast-forward. GBA Bustin' Out players rejoice, no longer you have to wait for hours until your Sim gains the 9th or 10th skill point. The controls work, but they aren't really wonderful or anything, since they are kind of troublesome to pickup.

Gameplay - General

This is where things get bad.

First off, everything the game does requires loading. This not only makes the game slow and boring, it also depletes the battery like nothing else. Even when the game isn't loading, sometimes your Sims will just freeze and take a while to do what you told them to. It might be just for a few seconds, as well as for a few minutes. And since only characters are frozen, the in-game clock continues counting the time. It can make you miss work or any other thing that has a specific time set. Thankfully, going to the Neighbourhood and back in the house solves this, but that includes loading everything again.

Speaking of the Neighbourhood, although you can create as many families as you like, there are only four lots. Your Sims can still meet in the Town Square (I'll explain in a second) even if one of them doesn't have a house.

Secondly, the Sims wishes are rather inconvenient, as soon as you're done with some basic desires, some others will appear. I'd mention "Train a pet", "Beat a chicken at checkers", "Find Simoleons" and "Have [1 to 5] Enemy Relationships", specifically. The middle ones left me totally clueless. The last one makes you waste a potential friend. But the first doesn't seem too hard, eh? But it is. You have to train your pet until he learns a new trick. For some reason, the first two tricks were done pretty quickly. The rest was done 1% at a time, taking a few days to get a measly 100 Aspiration points.

If your current wishes leave you unsatisfied, you can call a therapist and ask to have your wishes reevaluated, but it will hardly ever work. And they do not change when you go to sleep.

For Pets, however, it's the opposite. They have about six possible wishes, all of them being pretty easy to fulfill. One of them *is* "Train a pet", but for animals you don't really need to finish teaching the trick, 1% will do. By the way, Pets don't get aspiration points, they net their owners pet points.

Pet Points are spent in the Town Square. If you spend enough at the stores, they get more merchandise. Works pretty well, actually. The only issue with the Town Square is, although other sims on the neighbourhood show up for you to make friends, after a while only the same group of Sims will show up there. Since talking on the phone only gives you one relationship point, to keep your other friends you have to invite them to your house, which takes long and they might not accept. And for some odd reason, you can't say goodbye to them, you have to "Ask Them to Leave" when you're done. It's pretty weird, even if they are best friends, your Sim will still shout on the others' faces asking them to go, although it doesn't really affect their relationship.

Moving on. As I said before, you can't woohoo. Thus, there are no babies/kids in this game. In fact, there is no age progression either: Your Sim is created as an adult and remains one forever. Since age progression was one of the biggest things that set The Sims 2 apart from it's predecessor, it gives this game a bit of a The Sims 1.5-ish feel.

One last issue: The phone. It rings constantly. Curiously enough, you'll expect your friends to not call you at 3am, but they actually do. And get angry if you call them back, saying you woke them up. Not to mention, you also get prank calls constantly.

Other than that, it's just our plain old Life Simulator. Get a job, meet other sims, get promoted and make more money. It can get old really fast, or not get old at all. It all depends of who plays it.

Graphics and Sound

Graphics are ok. There are a few bugs here and there, but they look pretty good. The sound, however, is very limited. There are two or three songs that play on the menu, which means you'll get tired easily while furnishing the house. Also, when your Sims speak, since they have only a couple of phrases to say, they'll repeat the same Simlish Speech over and over again. Considering the phone keeps ringing, then yes - you'll want to play on mute.

Overall

It could have been a good game, but it didn't really live up to it's potential. It follows the formula for life simulation we've seen until now, but the horribly flawed gameplay and overall average, unremarkable components send the game downhill. If you're really interested, it might be worth renting. If you're a The Sims fan, it might be worth buying. If you don't meet any of the aforementioned criteria, walk away from this game.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/04/09

Game Release: The Sims 2: Pets (US, 12/14/06)