Not too long ago Maxis presented us with little furry friends to keep our Sims company and us more entertained. The popular expansion has returned to The Sims 3 this time with a lot more pizazz and unicorns! Read more for my full review of The Sims 3 Pets.
I spent a full week playing The Sims 3: Pets nearly non-stop. Half of my time was spent doing everything I could to find and adopt a unicorn into my little family, the other half concluded having way too much fun exploring all the new social interactions between my Sims and their pets, as well as making and watching my pets torture my neighbors and destroy their things. But before all of that malicious fun, I checked out the new features in Create-A-Household and saw what an impeccable job Maxis has done improving the Create-A-Pet process from the previous Pets expansion on The Sims 2.
In the regular Create-A-Sim room, you have the option to create a dog, a cat, or a horse, as well as your Sim. Other animals, such as birds, snakes, turtles, rodents, and lizards can be purchased from a pet store or from the Buy Catalog as empty terrariums/cages that you can have your Sim stock. You can only create your pets as adult or elder pets, but if you want little ones, you can always set two pets as mates from the edit relationship screen before you move in your family and have them mate later! The options are endless when it comes to customizing your pet. Choose out of 100 breeds of cats, dogs, and horses and customize their fur, coat color, collar, saddle, other accessories, and almost every body part you would like until you have your pet masterpiece! I was still feeling festive for a previous game release and created two Great Danes by the names of Joker and Batman.
Like I stated above, you can do virtually anything with your pet in terms of customization! I had a lot of fun creating these two, (Batman pictured below, Joker above), and way more fun playing with them! Another change from the previous Pets expansion is that you actually get to play as your pets. From just sniffing around the house, asking a Sim to interact with you, being trained to hunt and finding items or prey, to duking it out with fellow pet enemies, destroying valuable things, digging holes everywhere, and peeing on your neighbors, this expansion is jam-packed with crazy new interactions to do as your pet, sim, or together!
One of the aspects I was most curious about was the introduction of the horses and unicorns. There is a whole new equestrian theme to The Sims! You may now learn the riding skill, have your horse trained and enter competitions such as racing, jumping, and cross-country to win prize money. There is even a new profession as a horseman/woman, which, with the right amount of training, can pay off big time. As for the unicorns, I was under the impression that you could create them just like the other pets, but finding and adopting a unicorn into my family was harder than running forward five meters in QWOP.
I had to look up how to do this various times and it still took me forever! To acquire a unicorn it’s best to have the ‘Animal Lover’ trait and have three animals in your household already, all with the titles of ‘Best Friend’ or greater to you. Once you do this, a unicorn decides to roam about town late some nights and there will be a glowing cloud-like object above its location; which was usually the waterfall in Apaloosa Plains. Unlike wild horses, the unicorn will let you come up to him at ease and interact. You have to do this a couple times until you have established a good enough relationship with it to adopt it into your family. This takes forever because the unicorn appears around 2-4AM and vanishes into some magical unknown dimension at 5AM. OR you could just enable cheat testing, shift-click, and add it to your family the moment you see it. Which is what I did when my computer died after hours on end of unicorn hunting without saving…
The unicorn, which in my game was pre-named ‘Midnight Horse’, has special abilities you can make him do, or he can do to your Sim. He can set things ablaze, curse or bless Sims, teleport, etc. He wins every race and jumping contest he is entered into without a doubt, perfect for wannabe horsemen/women. Getting the unicorn and playing as him was my most favorite part of playing Pets. It’s not every day you see a Sim being blessed by a unicorn.
The little critters are fun too! Although you can’t play as them, your Sims sure do have a lot of fun caring for and playing with them. I had a parrot in the family for quite awhile. My Sim taught him how to speak various greetings and songs, and he would squawk them at the family as they passed by his cage. Someone forgot to feed him for awhile, and he passed on. The family was so sad that I bought them a pet snake!
Shown above is my Sim with Solid the Snake. Catchy, eh?
My overall experience with Pets was outstanding. A week straight of it and I’m still going to be playing it avidly. Having played every expansion since the very first release in 2000, I am quite the addict. There are very few things I would change if I could; adding more items and clothing for the actual Sims is one, and maybe pet clothing? If you are a fan of the Sims, or ever wanted to digitally sniff someone, I do encourage you to pick up this expansion and start making your pet masterpieces today!
Final Score: 8.0/10
I have posted additional screenshots of pet life and other animals here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/britneyparks/sets/72157627975952828/
I will be periodically adding more to the set, enjoy!
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I play this expansion on a Macbook Pro! I assure you it's possible.
I used to be able to speak simlish circa Sims 1.
I expected it to be like all the other Pets expansions but it's not and completely different.
Kind of glad my pets didn't have jobs this time haha.
It's a real shame that the majority of Mac users cannot play this game because of crappy Cider coding and EA's lack of customer support. Head over to EA's official TS3 Mac forum and take a look:
http://forum.thesims3.com/jforum/forums/show/205.page
The Pets Expansion is NOT compatible with Mac OS X 10.5.7, despite the System Requirements saying otherwise. False advertising.
At first I thought the pets thing would get old - after all, I remember Giga Pets and that concept was interesting for maybe 2 hours. Anyway, finally just picked up this expansion pack and it is surprisingly fun! I have spent literally hours just playing around with the coat design features, you can really create distinguishable animals.
Also, this add-on has some new songs in Simlish, and those are always hilarious. My favorite has gotta be "Television" by Jack's Mannequin, it is such a trip to hear that song in Simlish, I wonder how they do that?
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