Reviewed: July 20, 2007
Reviewed by: Stacey Meade
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Developer
EA Redwood Shores
Maxis
Released: June 12, 2007
Genre: Simulation
Players: 1
8
6
7
7
7.0
Supported Features:
Screenshots (Click Image for Gallery)
The first Sims game was released on February 4, 2000 for the PC. Since then Sims has gone on to become the biggest selling PC game of all time. Several Expansion packs and even a new Sims 2 with its own expansion packs later and the Sims is still going strong. Each year the Sims comes out with new objects and activities for your Sims to enjoy. Now you can do pretty much everything you can think of and more!
The Sims is a virtual world with virtual people. The only real goal on this game is to make your Sims the happiest and wealthiest Sim around. Now the Sims has made its way onto the new Nintendo Wii gaming system in the form of The Sims 2: Pets. This Sims version centers on the family pet and the objects and activities you can do with them.
I just want to say that this is not the first simulation game that I have played, but it is the first Sims. I’m impressed. During the game you can build your own house and get a job and my personal favorite, get electrocuted by faulty appliances. When you first start up your new Sims game you have to create your Sims family. When designing your Sim person you can choose male or female, what color skin they have, hair color, body type and of course clothing.
Most of the clothing comes pet themed. You can choose to create a pet now or wait to buy one in town. You may have to wait awhile before you get your first pet if you choose to wait. Money is hard to come by in the beginning. You can only choose cat or a dog for now, and that’s all I’m going to say! You can change the coloring and pattern of your pet. There are, of course more options for dogs because there really is only one type of cat. I chose to make little replicas of my own family which can add a lot of fun and laughter while playing the game, especially when you run out of money.
In one instance I was not directly controlling the Sims and one Sim was about to eat the last scrap of food when they passed out. Instead of helping the Sim the other Sim came up and ate his food leaving the other Sim passed out on the floor till the medics arrived! I though it was really easy to create my Sim however sometimes your cursor would bounce around because of the Wii remotes sensitivity, but it never really interferes with gameplay. I really have no complaints about the controls I just thought I should mention it.
Once you have created your family, you now have to choose the destination where your family will live. You can choice several locations within the town including the mountains, the forest and even a small personal island. You start out with $20,000 Simoleons to build your house and buy your furniture. My first word of advice is necessity. Do not go crazy and buy expensive things like me. I ended up without a toilet or shower! At the time I had not figured out how to sell items back so I was stuck with an expensive outdoor light, but my Sims had to go to the bathroom on the floor.
You can choose different walls on the outside and inside of your house and the type of flooring you want to put down. I suggest that you at least get a bed, a refrigerator, a toilet and some sort of bathing appliance. If you have a cat make sure they have a food bowl and a litter box. Your house comes equipped with a trashcan for all of your garbage. Creating your house and buying things is my favorite part of the game. It kind of makes sense because I’m sure most people’s goal in life to have a good job and a good house. This game lets you live out this fantasy. Although one of the problems with this Sims is you can only have a limited amount of objects before you reach the fire code max.
In order to get a job you must wait until the newspaper arrives and check the newspaper make sure you pick a job that is suited for your Sim. Don’t just pick anything. Check their strong points against their job requirements. A job is very important, unless you have a cheat code for money, which I have not been able to find. I did however find one cheat. Inside the game case on the back of the instruction manual it gives you the option to register your game at EA.com. If you do this they will e-mail you a cheat. No I will not tell you the cheat. What kind of gamer are you?
Anyway once you have a job press + on the Wii remote and go into Personal Info. Move over to the career section and it will have parentheses around the skill or amount of friends you must have before being promoted. Sometimes it’s hard to keep friends so make sure you make friends with everyone you meet. It can be really challenging to keep your friends levels up. But as I played the game I realized that the whole game centers on your job. So you better start getting promotions. Keeping the promotions coming can get pretty challenging. There’s only so much time in a day and you have to eat and sleep. I spent a lot of my Sims’ weekends making friends and cramming as much skills into my Sims as possible.
Your Sims Pet is supposed to be the center of attention in this game however I found myself so busy with other aspects of the game that my cat had a tendency to run away every couple of days. Your pet can learn tricks and give your Sims love and affection. Sims’ pets can learn tricks much easier than any pet that I have ever owned, but it is fun to see them dance and play dead. I eventually, once I had enough money, built a room especially for my cat. I’m probably going to be one of those old ladies with 10 cats one day.
You can also visit the Town Square. You can take everyone in your family with you including your pets. The town square is a good place to meet new Sims and Sims’ pets. The town square only has pet related shops. It does have some places for the Sims to buy food or drinks but that’s it. The Pet Store’s include a place to bathe your pet, buy it toys and treats, and there is even a kennel to take care of your pet for a while. There is also a Pet Store there where you can buy basic pets, however, you cannot design them as you could in the beginning.
The graphics on this game were at Wii standard, not incredible but sufficient. Graphics come second to me when it comes to games. I don’t care how amazing the graphics are if the game is a dud. I think the graphics on this game were just fine. But in the future I can see Sims becoming a whole lot more detailed and realistic.
The small glitches the game did have where not terrible. The Sims pet I had seemed to be able to walk in thin air when ever it felt like and sometimes it would just suddenly appear. There was another instance where one of my Sims had a newspaper stuck to his hand, he bathed and ate with the newspaper. I thought he would be stuck with the newspaper in his hand forever until finally I had him pick up another newspaper and throw it away finally getting rid of the old paper.
The music on the game was fun. Even though the music was elevator music, I liked it. It had that Sims outlook on life feel. I also really enjoyed the Sims talking. They speak in Sims tongue, however, you always seem to know what their saying and how they feel. The Sims Pets sounded realistic without over doing it.
The Sims 2 Pets for Wii costs around $50.00 depending on where you purchase it. I think $40.00 would be a better price but I really enjoyed the game, but I’m not sure I would pay $50.00 for it. I might be enticed to pay $50.00 for the PC version but not for the Wii version.
I liked the game and did become semi-addicted to it. However the game does loose it pizzazz the further you get into it. Once I reached my fire code limit and could not purchase any more items or expand my house I pretty much lost interest. The allure for this game for me was to build a super house with super stuff but eventually all I could do was upgrade, which gets boring. Plus you could play this game and never have a pet, if you wanted to.
The glitch in the graphics where the newspaper got stuck really annoyed me. I almost considered turning the game off and starting again. I think buying the PC version and being able to add on the expansion packs would be a lot more fun. It seemed on the Wii version it did not have a lot of object options for me to choose from so I lost interest.