Customer Reviews

The Sims Pet Stories DVD

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This game is the same thing as Life Stories. Only with pets. Reasons for buying? It's entertaining for the most part. The two stories are fun and will kill about two hours each. Maxis did a good job ironing out some of the wrinkles from Life Stories. The actual stories have much smoother transitions from one chapter to the next. Another thing I noticed is that the "dead time" between story goals improved significantly. No longer is there just a whole day that goes by of doing nothing (such as in Vincent's story). The pets play out much the same as in the Pets expansion. However, they did add in the "dog show" feature. I thought this quite charming and wish they had added it to Sims 2. There's all sorts of training equipment and, therefore, new interactions for your sims and their pets as they work together. I did notice that they left out birds. Which was slightly disappointing. As with the first one, this game is laptop friendly. So to sum up: A good game if you have a laptop or limited amounts of cash (so you don't have to buy sims 2 and pets). A good game if you really enjoy the pets aspect of the sims. A good game if you're bored. However, if you're looking at an introduction into the sims world I would go for Life Stories first. Pets are cute but definitely high maintenance. I also wouldn't recommend this game if you didn't care for the Pets expansion. Go for Life stories or wait for Castaway.

I enjoyed the idea of having my own story to play with The Sims Life Stories and since I love pets, I decided to get Sims Pet Stories. Overall, the stories are a lot more better executed. They are more like a sims movie where you are in control. Here are some pros and cons

Pros:
- Same type of feel as the Sims Life Stories... but now with pets.
- The main story was very intriguing and very well executed. They left you with just enough story-less time to replenish needs and focus on the sim itself and the story never stops going.
- Stories themselves were pretty interesting, especially the first.
- I love the new story objects. There are now pet training grounds and there was a dog show area in the community lots as well.
- With life stories, there was an issue where you may not get all of the story objects that you have just unlocked in different stories unless you moved out of the lot and into a new one. This one will automatically unlock the story objects after it has been unlocked in the story.
- Third neighborhood was not a repeat like the last one where it was just basically copying riley's story's neighborhood. There is a whole new neighborhood for your free playing pleasure.

And now the Cons:

- The biggest complaint for me is that the second story was boring and not much to do with the pet. This is probably by far the worse story compared to all of the sims stories series. It is basically a guy trying to pick two girls and he's kind of playing them too and the cat doesn't even really get much attention in the story. It was all about the romantic aspect. There's a lot less dead time where no story is going on in this story. However, it still bored me since all he did was go to lots to meet up with girls.
- With the first story... as much as I loved it, I wanted to see some more romantic aspect to it than just the dog. It was really all about the dog. The second one had nothing to do with the pet and all to do with the girls. So, seems like they had a hard time trying to balance the two. Although, the first one did a much better job of accomplishing its goal.
- There were a few bugs that I found where it tells you to do something but when you click on that other person, the supposed action was nowhere to be found. I was stuck for almost 12 sim hours trying to get him to do what the goal said for him to do.
- When in windowed mode, you still cannot scroll around the lot with just your cursor, which was pretty annoying.

When I think of more, I will post it here. But meanwhile, The Sims Pet Stories is very much like the Sims Life Stories but different stories. It seems like they do a pretty good job with the main story usually but the second one always fall a little short. Overall, each story is good for about two hours but there is still replay value in it since there are certain actions where they will let you choose the outcome. Have fun playing!

This is a much improved game over the previous Life Stories. The graphics are much more realistic, adding in shadows and cleaner features on the character. Their hair also moves! And in this version you can create your canine/feline family members also as Genius or a total Doofus.

There are also more fun objects like the karaoke machine which is a crackup! I also like the disco lights that you can add into your home. The addition of the pets make it so familiar for those who have pets. I enjoyed the cat story more than the dog story, being a cat-o-phile myself, but I had fun doing the competition run which was something I was totally unfamiliar with.

In this series strangers can move into other people's houses, and there isn't the limitation of four people per household. You can even have up to six kids and/or pets in a household. For that reason I wish there was a cheat code for the maxmotives because when you have that many characters in the story you need to "cheat" once in a while or else the Grim Reaper will come along and punch in your ticket. Still this is the best in the series, in my opinion.

My 11 year old daughter is a big fan of SIMS PC games. She asked for this specific game for Christmas and Santa so kindly delivered. She LOVES this game. To be honest, I don't play it with her and rarely watch so I can't comment personally. But, she will spend hours a week (we limit daily computer time) on this game vs. playing an Xbox or any other "games." Unfortunately, I can't offer specific comments but want people considering this game for their children to know, that I think it is a great purchase. My daughter is extremely modest and we have strict rules in our home about what is allowed on the computer, so I believe this PC game would be good for various ages.

I finished everything exciting about this game in about two hours. If you enjoy The Sims 2 and have the games then I would suggest not buying this game. There is only one possible outcome and after you're done playing that then the game is like a stripped down version of the Sims 2.

If you are a sims fan, this game is a fun but short diversion. I felt just getting to play the stories was worth the money to buy this game even though I already own all sims 2 expansions. If you like playing sims stories or quick, distracting sims games, you will like this product.

Compared to Sims Life Stories
--The stories seemed faster. There was less down time between goals. This is good in that it keeps the story moving but bad in that you will go through the stories all that much faster.
--The plot of the stories didn't seem as well developed as Sims Life Stories
--You get the full functionality of sims life stories with the addition of pets
--Less limits, you can have more sims and pets

Compared to Sims 2 and Expansion Packs
--I was actually quite surprised at how well this did approximate the real the sims 2 game with the pets expansion. If you can't run the regular sims 2 on your computer, this is a great alternative. I really didn't miss all that much.
--You get bonus pet show items I really wish were included in the Pets expansion pack.
--You CAN use some sims 2 custom content and third party programs like SimPE with this game.

I got fed up with all the problems I was having with The Sims 2 and expansion packs (constantly crashing game and computer) on my home pc and gave up playing it. I was so happy to find The Sims Pet Stories. It has turned out to be a fabulous replacement for The Sims 2 - I have not had *any* problems playing it on my laptop. I do miss a few of the items and actions from The Sims 2 Free Time but other than that I am totally satisfied with The Sims Pet Stories. I also tried The Sims Life Stories and was very annoyed with that version of the game - it felt more like the Sims 1 than Sims 2 with much repetetive sounds and actions. I recommend Pet Stories over Life Stories - in fact I recommend Pet Stories over The Sims 2.

This game was my introduction to The Sims. I was drawn to it by the pets. I feel like I learned a lot about design and even about myself, and I really did enjoy the pets.

I did finally get bored with the game after trying out everything I could think of to try, but that's a lot of hours of play that I got out of it. (I got tired of the choice of life aspirations and career paths mostly - what you thereby had to make the sim people do to keep them happy and functional.)

But I liked it enough that I plan to buy The Sims 3 as soon as I upgrade the RAM on my computer - and that's in spite of the very mixed reviews of Sims 3 so far, and the reported bugs and glitches in that one.

If your a SIMs fan then this is probably another SIMs series you'd like to add to your collection but for a first time SIM player like myself this game can be quite confusing. It was hilarious how I got into a fist fight with a angry lady who was starting a arguement with me. Overall this game is already but not really my cup of tea. I'd recommend it to SIMs fans though.

The stories is a great add on to the sims but you can tell what is going to happen before it happens. but they are still lots of fun.