The Sims 3: Pets (2011)

A great fetch that celebrates why we love cute, little animals so much.

While it's probably best suited to fans of the franchise, the game's gorgeous animal antics are guaranteed to generate warm fuzzies in all but the coldest of hearts.

It's goofy, deeply involving fun.

Animals add that extra layer of depth to your virtual life. [Christmas 2011, p.89]

It's a Sims game. I think it's well put together, easy to control and geared for players that enjoy making up their own fun. It has a little more focus this time out thanks to the mysteries you can solve, but I didn't find the addition of pets to be all that thrilling.

Even if sold stand alone on consoles, The Sims 3 Pets is just an expansion pack: it won't revolutionize the gameplay of the third chapter, and some gameplay feature aren't deep as we would've liked. Add bugs and missing optimization on consoles, and what you have is a title suited just for sims maniac.

The pets element offers a little spark of nuance in an otherwise dated formula. And the spry animations of the pups and kittens do well to make the game all the more endearing.

The game is quite buggy and has a ton of lag issues. In addition to this the controls are bizarre and confusing. The house building is sort of fun, but other than that there's not much to do really. You get bored awfully fast, especially when you don't have full control over the game, because of, like mentioned before, bugs.

I love the Sims 3, but the pets expansion was not worth the money. This game had a lot of frustrating glitches, the graphics weren't as good as Sims 3, and I feel that they put so much emphasis on the "pets" and forgot about the other aspects of the game ( I cannot read to my toddler ). But overall, I do like it. Being able to create your own pet was cool.

This time of year isn't just about the most hardcore of shooters, the action-adventure games and the sports franchises. Before being swept up in the haze of releases these next few months - I decided to slow it down a bit and pick up the 360 version of Sims 3: Pets. I have always been a Sims fan here and there - and this was the perfect chance to jump into a stand-alone edition of an add-on pack that people have been waiting on for ages now it seems. Being able to actually control the pets doesn't seem all that exciting at first - and then you realize that there is a lot more to it than making sure your furry friend goes outside to use the bathroom. Your pets can have jobs (cats become cat burglars, dogs become police dogs), hunt and dig, terrorize your neigbours or make friends the very same way your Sim can. Not to mention the additions made to the game - you're basically getting the same console version of The Sims 3 released a year or so back, but you're also getting some additions in the form of new Karma powers, an entirely new neighbourhood (which is gorgeous, by the way) and new items, objects, etc. In closing - I've enjoyed this quite a bit, and it's bound to get lost in the fray of games released this season and most likely written off as casual by most gamers - but the ability to have my dog distract my horrible neighbour while my cat terrorizes his furniture and floors.. is just too fun to pass up.

Adding pets to the Sims 3 game makes it an expansion pack, and $49.99 is expensive for this buggy expansion pack. There is so much that EA could do to improve their games, and their reputation, but instead they continue to release buggy, lazy games. Guess they are too busy focusing on how to milk the DLC and don't have time to work out the bugs. Disappointing!

Hey, dog! Lets go for a walk! Dog! Stop bitting on my leg, I know we're trapped in a plotless pixeled hell! But we gotta- -leg tares off- DOG! In other words, no, this game is far from being good. It's just boring, wierd, and the lost goes on.