I got Sims 2 Pets a couple of weeks ago and I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on it.
Overall, I’m a bit disappointed by the expansion as a whole. I love the pets themselves, I think that Maxis did a great job with implementing them with their own DNA, and oh my god the number of breeds included is just astonishing! You can really get some unique looking pets and you can get exactly what pet you are looking for!
However, my problem with it is that this is basically the only thing you get from the expansion. There are a few pet toys included, there are also some non-created pets like the mole rat and bird and a huge aquarium, those are all cool. But there is only one set of furniture added to the mix and no outfits that I can tell. The furniture set is I think mostly kids stuff though there is a lot of decent modern stuff, what is there is pretty nice but it isn’t much. There is also a lot of pet pictures (of course) and statues. Again, cool but not that cool.
So my peeve is that this expansion is JUST about the pets and nothing more. It is a very thin expansion. Overall I still think University was the best. That expansion came with a very unique play experience in the college years, it offered a ton of college like items including a lot of party stuff, 2 new career tracks, and influence, though honestly I’ve never gotten much use out of influence. There were also a bunch of pretty hip haircuts and outfits to choose from.
My second up would be Open for Business. I actually had a good time with stores, even though I have found that the object creation tracks are both tedious and boring and the main business that I tend to run is just charging for people to play in lot. But for that I get the powers from the business ability tracks, there are a bunch of new items, though mostly player created ones, but overall for some reason I enjoyed what the expansion brought to the game.
From there I don’t know which is better Pets or Nightlife, they are pretty close but I think I lean towards Nightlife. I hated the play mechanics added to Nightlife. Honestly I think that parties are one of my least favorite things in the game as a whole, and they just basically added a new version of parties in the dating scene. I avoid dating almost as much as I avoid parties. Though Nightlife had a lot to offer even if you didn’t like that mechanic. It had cars, which while they are fairly worthless they are kind of fun to have, and it is nice being able to build a garage. The game also included a new lifestyle track though I don’t like it and think it was far too similar to one that was already in the game (I can’t remember the names of those tracks). But the items I think are where the game is at! I loved the items that game added. There was a bowling alley, I think that was the one that also included different shapes of swimming pools, i think it also had poker tables, there were dance floors, dj booths, various color changing objects throughout, it was just a lot of items that were a lot of fun to play with. There were also alot more cool outfits and haircuts, about as many as University.
Pets just is such a disappointment when it comes to outfits, hairstyles and items. I don’t know what they could have done otherwise, but they needed more. Why not add dog outfits for businesses? they added display cases. It isn’t much but at least it would have been something.
Looking ahead they had an advertisement for their next expansion which will center on outdoors. I am both intrigued and disappointed by this news. I don’t know what to think of it. It looks to include weather for the first time which should be fun but what else will it bring? Undoubtably a bunch of weather related outfits… I’ve been hoping for a long time that they finally get around to adding more town objects and maybe they will finally do that too… I have always wanted to build my own little town but found the objects in the creator so lacking that anything I would build tended to look with what shipped. I’d also like to see an entirely new town to start in as I am getting more than a little sick of playing in the same towns over and over again and marrying the same people as well. I am sure they will add snowball fights, snowmen, and leaves to jump in and rake. But what items? To me the greatest thing about expansions are the items so I can do more things with my house… what will they add to help this?
Mostly the next expansion gets me excited because of the introduction of water polo!!! Finally something to do in the swimming pool!