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Written by Oltman on Thursday 10 Nov 2011
Everybody needs a friend. For a long time, if you did not have any human friends you could create some Sim friends to play with. But even those friends need friends of their own. And if a dog is man’s best friend, then The Sims 3: Pets is your Sim’s best friend.
This is the third attempt by EA to introduce the idea of pets into a Sims franchise, and their previous efforts have been met with lukewarm receptions. Does it mean it is “third time lucky?”
The Sims 3: Pets is the latest expansion to the evergreen series, and does a lot of things just right. Not only do you get to add pets to your Sims family, but you also get to play as the pets. Pets have different needs to their human owners, but still need a lot of maintenance in order to keep them happy. Of course keeping them happy is, as always, totally optional. Dogs, cats and horses are available as these high maintenance pets, and it is these pets that also provided the most entertainment to my favourite saved family.
My little Muffin family’s adventures continue now with the added flavour of pets. With Berrie, the single mom vampire getting lonely while her teenage boy is off at art school, I figured this would be the perfect host family for my pets. A little black cat with a mean temper named Tenebrae (Latin for darkness) happened to join the Muffins. Regrettably the mean streak in her caused nearly all furniture to be ripped to shreds quite quickly. Berrie decided a cat is not for her and tried a dog, naturally. She phoned the local animal rescue center and adopted an old dog named Poops.
Poops is an old mixed breed dog who has lived a lot in his long life and spent the remainder of his days sleeping, eating and living up to his name. Finally Berrie decided a bigger animal was more what she needed as she herself was still full of undead life. A horse is just what she needed. After adopting a large white horse and trying to squeeze the horse into the bathroom, as that was the only room available, Berrie suddenly realized that this white horse needed a knight to save her from the animal farm that is now living with her.
Not all pets require fulltime attention. Little critters can also be purchased or caught in the wild, and then placed in little terrariums. Simply feed them every now and then and they will live happily in these contained environments. Snakes, lizards, turtles and rodents can all be kept like this. Birds also appear and you can set them up in little cages. A bird was also acquired by Berrie, and being the cruel vampire that she was, she put his cage outside where her little bird could look at the free birds in the back garden.
On occasion some wild animals will also make an appearance. In fact the only thing to get a reaction out of old Poops was the appearance of a raccoon that tipped over the rubbish bin. Poops jumped up from his bed in the shady back yard, ran around to the front of the house and proceeded to beat the stripes off the raccoon. Stranger still was their conversation about horses they had immediately after…
If you do not want to adopt a pet you can create your own with the new Create-a-pet feature. Working pretty much the same as the Sims creator, you can choose your pet’s breed, size, colour and traits. This DNA of your pet can then be passed down to the pet’s offspring. Thankfully cats do not reproduce as much in this game as they do in real life.
The pets do look like their real life counterparts. Their furry coats look properly fluffy, and their movements are pretty near perfect. Dogs chase their own tails while cats will sit and carefully wash themselves. Horses who take part in show jumping do so with aplomb and grace. You cannot help but fall in love with them.
The Sims 3: Pets also comes with a new neighbourhood especially designed for your pets’ needs. Appaloosa Plains has special venues designed to let your pets run free and have fun. Special parks for dogs, cats and horses are found here with special shops supplying their special needs. If your family resides in another town the game will offer you the choice of where you want these new areas to be placed, but these choices cannot be changed later.
As with all expansions, the Pets expansion also contains a big variety of new household items. These are mostly in a ranch style to go with the new Appaloosa Plains look and feel. By now your collection of items would have grown to an unmanageable size if you collected all the expansions. But building your house and finding a specific item or decoration is now extremely easy. The Sims 3: Pets now includes the ability to sort items by collection. The default collections are the expansion packs, but if you have your own set of items you like to use for new houses, then you can now create your own collections as well.
The extra level of interactions that Pets provide changes the way you play the Sims… again. This is by no means a bad thing as it keeps things fresh. The game you end up with after all the expansions is now a very different experience, and in my opinion a much more complete and fuller game. Every Sims fan will already have their little pets running around, and the rest of you will just have to wonder how much fun a virtual pet can be. Take my word for it, you won’t regret trying it out for yourselves. Just be careful not to neglect your real pets at home while playing with these virtual ones!
The good: Great lifelike companions for your Sims; great animations; item collections.
The bad: Not a lot of changes for the Sims themselves; you cannot return an adopted devil’s pet!
The ugly: Tenebrae’s devastating claws redesigned my house’s furniture!
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