When The Sims 3 sold 1.4 million copies in its first week it was a no-brainer to expect sequels and expansions for the franchise.  The Sims 3 Pets offers all the goodness from The Sims 3 but this time adds dogs, cats, horses and even unicorns.  Players have the same options to initiate the perfect (or not-so-perfect) Sim character but now can create a pet to go along with the experience.  Pets can be given personality traits and there’s a good variety of breeds of cats and dogs.  I made my Sim character old and clumsy and my pet a frisky puppy who loves running around and playing.

The Sims 3 Pets – like other Sims games – offers the same casual gaming experience.  The player controls the environment and can select actions for both the human and pet characters.  Pets can learn new tricks and help you find ghosts and other objects in the game during challenges.

I played on the Xbox 360 version and the graphics looked nice enough however I was disappointed that I couldn’t zoom in closer to view the features of my puppy.  Another thing I would have liked to have seen in The Sims 3 Pets is a point-of-view camera from the pets which would really have broaden the game’s experience by being able to see the world through their eyes.  At the end of the day this game is much like The Sims 3 with the addition of pets – the Kinect offers some extras allowing you to use voice commands while the PC/Mac version introduces horses and unicorns.  Be sure to check out some of my sample gampelay video to see if you are ready to adopt The Sims 3 Pets into your family or not.

More on The Sims 3 Pets from EA can be found at:
http://www.thesims3.com/content/en_US/promo/pets/pets.htm