Product Description

Requires The Sims: 2, The Sims 2: Special DVD Edition to play

Get your paws on The Sims 2: Pets (Expansion Pack)! From scampering puppies to cuddly kittens, add a new furry or feathered friend to your Sims` lives. Choose from dozens of the most popular dog and cat breeds like Dalmatians or the American Shorthair. Or create a unique cat or dog by modifying their body shape and facial features, choosing specific colors and markings, and more. Decide on a personality-smart, sweet, silly, or sloppy. Your Sims can teach their pets tricks, take them for a romp in the park, and countless other things as they share their lives with their pets. But keep one thing in mind-your Sims` pets have minds of their own. Don`t be surprised if cats scratch the sofa, dogs dig holes in the garden, pets sleep on your Sims` bed, or worse. Expect the unexpected!

• Sims Have Pets!: Your Sims can share a lifetime with their pets. Sims can adopt dogs, cats, birds, and more.
• Create-A-Pet: Choose from dozens of dog and cat breeds, or customize features for a unique pet and then pick their personalities.
• Pets Have Genetics: Cross different breeds to create designer pets or make new ones and register them to appear in Create-A-Pet as a unique pedigree.
• Sit, Spike, Sit: Your Sims can encourage and discipline pets, training them to shake, play dead, and more. Unruly pets might dig in the yard, claw the sofa, topple the trash, or surprise their
• Sims in other ways, but Sims can change their pets` ways with the right training!
• Pets Have Careers: Now your Sims aren`t the only ones bringing home the bacon! Skilled pets can earn a living from three career tracks - Show Business, Security, and Service-and work their way up through five job levels.
• Friends for a Lifetime: Your Sims` pets are members of the family and

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #624 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2006-10-20
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Platform: Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk Review:
In a nutshell:
The PC and console worlds combine thanks to man’s best friend and a mouse’s greatest enemy. Create, pamper and train your favoured furry companions in the latest The Sims 2 expansion.

The lowdown:
After years of trying to create less complex, mini-game orientated spin-offs it seems EA are now keen to see the PC and console The Sims games converge. This new iteration is an expansion pack on the PC but a full price, stand alone game on the consoles. As the name subtly hints the main addition to the game this time round is a number of four-legged friends, plus fish and birds (although it’s really cats and dogs that get most of the attention). You can also create your own personalised pet via a complex customisation tool that’s just as versatile as the one for humans and on the PC version you can even send your four-legged friend to work!

Most exciting moment:
On the PC this is a perfectly welcome but very narrow expansion. However the full price console version is actually a considerable improvement on the original with an easier-to-use interface, better artificial intelligence and even reduced loading times.

Since you ask:
The next PC expansion pack is called In Season and seems to be roughly analogous to The Sims expansion On Holiday, in that it’ll focus on exterior objects and locations. It’s not yet clear whether there’ll be a console version.

The bottom line:
Finally, The Sims is made to work on consoles!-HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description
Get your paws on The Sims 2 Pets Expansion Pack! From scampering puppies to cuddly kittens, add a new furry or feathered friend to your Sims' lives. Choose from dozens of the most popular dog and cat breeds like Dalmatians or the American Shorthair. Or create a unique cat or dog by modifying their body shape and facial features, choosing specific colours and markings, and more. Decide on a personality - smart, sweet, silly, or sloppy.

Your Sims can teach their pets tricks, take them for a romp in the park, and countless other things as they share their lives with their pets. But keep one thing in mind - your Sims' pets have minds of their own. Don't be surprised if cats scratch the sofa, dogs dig holes in the garden, pets sleep on your Sims' bed, or worse. Expect the unexpected.

Key Features:

Sims Have Pets
Your Sims can share a lifetime with their pets. Sims can adopt dogs, cats, birds, and more.

Create-a-Pet
Choose from dozens of dog and cat breeds, or customise features for a unique pet and then pick their personalities.

Pets Have Genetics
Cross different breeds to create designer pets or make new ones and register them to appear in Create-A-Pet as a unique pedigree.

Sit, Spike, Sit
Your Sims can encourage and discipline pets, training them to shake, play dead, and more. Unruly pets might dig in the yard, claw the sofa, topple the trash, or surprise their Sims in other ways, but Sims can change their pets' ways with the right training.

Pets Have Careers
Now your Sims aren't the only ones bringing home the bacon! Skilled pets can earn a living from three career tracks - Show Business, Security, and service - and work their way up through five job levels.

Friends for a Lifetime
Your Sims' pets are members of the family and share all of life's great moments whether it's kids training puppies, teens playing fetch in the park, adults watching TV with their cats, or elders enjoying a sunny day in park with their long-time companion.

Customer Reviews

Finally, an expansion pack that's worth the money
Not since the University pack have I been as pleased to spend £18 on a Sims 2 Expansion pack. It's so wonderful in fact that I'm putting up with the red flashing walls (which i had experienced with those little item expansion packs, but didnt think i would with the main ones).

(Ive tried to upgrade the video driver online, as the instruction book told me to, but no luck. It doesnt matter though, you dont notice it after a while.)

The pack itself is fantastic though. The pets are absolutely adoreable and breeding them is loads of fun to - the puppies and kittens are absolutely adoreable and its interesting to see how they turn out compared to each parent.

I love how you have to train the pets with positive and negative reinforcement, just like in real life, rather than simply being able to control what they do (eg if they pee on the floor or chew the furnature, sims can approach them and 'praise' or 'scold' them for their behaviour, which influences how they behave in the future), as well as being able to tach them tricks that are not only funny and cute but useful too. Often they need certain tricks if they are to be promoted in their job.

Sims pets can now have careers! Ive only tried this out with dogs, not sure if cats can have jobs too, but dogs can choose from careers in the police, security or showbusiness careers, and often they need skills (as sims do), but in their case tricks, to be promoted.

I'm glad i pre-ordered this game, its lots of fun, and as usual is annoyingly addictive so that you're kept playing for hours at a time.

I'll eventually get my video card updated, if that is what is causing the walls to flash, but my computer's just returned from the shop where i paid a lot of money for other problems, so the graphics is at the bottom of the priority list at the moment. But be prepared to have the flashing walls. Eventually you wont notice them, as the game is so fun.

Fantastic when its fixed!!
I like most simmers was chomping at the bit for this EP to be released, I've had it now just over a week and yes, the pets make it a great new exciting experience.
You can choose in dogs from a huge selection of breeds from Great Dane to Chihuaiua or whatever they're called meaning you have two sizes of dogs, the little itty bitty handbag dogs to huge guardians. (only problem is you can't do a Paris with them and carry the little ones around unless they're puppies which is a let down)
Cats there is a wide selection too from fluffy persians to slinky siamese.

The new objects are mostly to do with the pets bar a few new building tools, but they are pretty nice all the same. Oh and like the vampire addition in Nightlife, here you can become a werewolf by befriending the evil glowy eyed black shuck type dog that turns up on your doorstep every so often.

Only problem is if you use add-ons from the community a lot of them do not work now including many that we have come to depend on!
The game itself is a bit buggy, I had to lose all my hard-worked sims to actually play the game as it duplicated every sim on installation rendering it unusable!

But once the patch comes out and users have updated their files it sets out to do exactly what we were so excited about in the first place... a fantastic addition to the sims, and its all worth it just to see a toddler cuddle a huge mutt!!

Pets!!!!!!!!!
I have now played the Sims 2 Pets add-on and it doesn't disappoint. The pets (mainly dogs and cats) are quite "life-like" like their owners, and can be customised to suit individual tastes. The breeding is quite some fun too, especially cross-breeds.

With having pets however comes responsibility (don't we know it!) and similar to having children in the game, they can take up quite a bit of your sims' time. This brings me to the one major downside (in my opinion, however others might actually prefer it): you can't control them like other sims (eat/sleep/etc.) so they act a little like visitors on your lot. So if one pet blocks a door for instance you can't make it move away, etc.