The Sims 2: Pets Hands-On - Creating, Adopting, and Owning a Virtual Pet

The virtual world of The Sims 2 will become home to all sorts of animals with the release next month of The Sims 2: Pets, the fourth expansion to EA's popular people simulator. The first three expansions have let your sims go to college, go to town, and go to work, but Pets focuses more on fleshing out your sims' everyday lives with the presence of animal companions. With the expansion due out next month, we got our hands on the latest work-in-progress version of Pets to see what being a pet owner in The Sims is like.

Pets features a variety of pets for your sims to play with, including "wormrats" and birds, but the main focus of the expansion is most definitely on cats and dogs. The latter two can be added to a sim family in any number of ways. You can custom-create a cat or dog in the create-a-family mode, just like you can custom-create sims, or you can adopt a stray cat or dog in the game, adopt one using the pet-adoption phone service, or buy one at a community lot that sells pets.

The custom creation mode offers you, by far, the most control over what type of animal to create. As with the sim creation tools, there's a button that will randomly select a breed and a gender if you're in a hurry, or you can go through the step-by-step process of creating your own cat or dog. You choose a name, gender, and breed (there are more than 50 dog breeds and more than 30 cat breeds to select from), and then you can customize Kitty or Fido even further. In the color option, you select fur color, and then you can add on different colors and patterns in layers. Then you can tweak facial features to really customize the look of a pet, perhaps to match a real-world one. Even fooling around in this mode is fun, thanks to the amusing facial-morphing animations at work. Additional customization options let you tweak body and tail, but you're not done yet.

Pets have personalities that you can customize, or if you don't want to mess with the settings, simply select a zodiac sign for your pet and that will automatically adjust the personality settings for you. The settings let you tweak your pet's behaviors between genius or doofus, hyper or lazy, independent or friendly, aggressive or cowardly, and pigpen or finicky. These can play a role in determining your pet's mood in the game, which we'll touch on later. Once you're finished with personality, your pet is created and you can go on and create another pet or perhaps a sim to act as pet owner. We should note that you can also take one of your existing sim families and add a pet using the create-a-family mode.

Being a pet owner in Pets is a lot like being a pet owner in real life, as you don't have any direct control over your pets. Instead, they're autonomous creatures with their own needs and wants that you have to take care of, as well as creatures whose behavior you'll have to mold through training. Dogs will have a tendency to chew anything in sight, while cats will scratch up a storm. You can discipline Fido after he rips apart an expensive sofa, though you can avoid this problem altogether by purchasing chew toys ahead of time. Likewise, a scratching post can give Kitty something to shred, other than your expensive furniture. As you'd expect, there are a variety of feeding dishes, toys, pet beds, and more to select from, with the witty descriptions that The Sims is known for.

Pets can be conditioned through rewards or punishment, so you can encourage whatever behavior you want to see through praise, while discouraging other behavior through a stern scolding. It's easy to know if a lesson has taken root or not, thanks not only to the handy meter bar that appears over a pet's head, but also to the impressive animation that lets you know what your pet is thinking. A happy dog will sit up and be perky, while a scolded dog will look hurt and ashamed.

The main reason to have a pet is to have fun, which you can do by playing with your pet. Cats can be picked up and nuzzled or tossed in the air, or you can tease them with a toy that sends them running around in a circle. Dogs are happy with games of fetch, but a belly rub is just as good. Mood is important, because this can affect your pet's performance at work. That's right, pets can help earn their keep and get out of your hair a few hours a day by getting a job. This can range from a career in law enforcement as a "snooper deterrent" to a life in showbiz as an extra. Simply scan the local newspaper for pet jobs, and the car will appear at the appointed time to pick up the pet for work and drop it back at home once the workday is done. It's not all work, though, as pets will get days off, just like their sim owners.

How this impacts the overall pace of The Sims 2 is interesting. Time is, after all, the most important resource in the game, and there's only so much time that your characters can spare during their normal, everyday lives for making sure the pets are fed, giving them the exercise they need, or playing with them. But that's the price of being a pet owner in real life, too. Just like in real life, pets in the expansion can require a lot of maintenance and work, but the reward is having a loyal companion that can help put a smile on your face. Pets will be unleashed for The Sims 2 in October.