Yesterday was the release of The Sims 3 Pets expansion, highly anticipated by all lovers of Sims and pets. I bought the digital version from EA, and downloaded it without any hassle at all via their Origin program. I even received two codes, one for a free “stuff” pack and another for some skins. For registering the game on the Sims 3 web site I also received some IAMS pet kits and some space-like pet beds. It was a good deal all around.
Believe it or not my biggest excitement didn’t come from any of the pet related things initially, but from the fact that EA had FINALLY fixed the photography bug. This broke with their latest ‘stuff’ addition, and rendered the skill useless. Photography plays quite a large role in the Sims, so having it back was important to me. Once I had gotten over that little excitement I decided it was time to adopt a new pet for my home.
Players have multiple methods of obtaining pets, which I really appreciate. You can adopt one from a shelter or find out if anyone in your neighbourhood has one up for adoption. The three basics are cats, dogs, and horses. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes and even ages. You can adopt an older dog with their traits already defined, or a young puppy. You can keep their given name, or choose to name them yourself. Each pet comes with a memory book of their life, and their first ‘memory’ is of being adopted by you, their wonderful owner. There’s a huge selection of interactions available for Sims to take advantage of and not only can you interact with the pet, but because technically they are a member of your family (much like a child would be) you (the player) can control the pet and decide what they are going to do. There are some really amusing options for both the pet and the owner. Your pet will also start to adapt to your actions, for example if you praise them for grooming themselves they may adopt the neatness trait. Right now my dog has the lazy trait, go figure. It means when I take him for a walk (such as in the screen shot above) he runs out of energy really quickly.
A bunch of new lots also came with this expansion, dog parks and places to ride your horse. Of course players also get all of the typical animal goodies, scratching posts, food dishes, and litter boxes as well as some fancier items. So far I’m having a lot of fun playing this expansion, I think it’s quite well done and really appeals to a large audience. I’m not sure if you can take your pet abroad yet, but if you can I think that will be a lot of fun. I don’t use any mods at all in the game and I haven’t come across any glitches since yesterday, but the forums had a few complaints such as spiral staircases not working. Hopefully EA is a bit quicker about updating their bug squash list now that the expansion is live, but I wouldn’t really hold my breath.
As always, happy gaming no matter where you find yourself!