The Sims 2 - Pets

Handing the controller to the dog was the smart decision. On PC, Pets was an expansion where animals were semi-autonomous furniture with moods; on PlayStation 2, EA built something closer to its own game, letting you steer the cat or dog around the neighbourhood, sniff at things, dig where you shouldn't and learn commands through a training minigame rather than a progress bar ticking in a corner. That shift changes what the software is about. The human Sim becomes the support act.

The console version carries a light structure the PC release never had: a town to settle into, neighbours with problems, pet competitions to train towards, and a steady drip of goals that unlock new areas and animal breeds. It is thin as a story, but it gives the sandbox somewhere to point. Training is the heart of it. Teaching a dog to sit, speak or fetch means repetition, treats and timing, and the animals genuinely resist until the skill sticks, which is more honest than most pet games manage.

Build and buy mode survives the transition, trimmed but usable with a pad. Walls, furnishings and the usual catalogue of overpriced Maxis sofas are all there, along with pet-specific gear like scratching posts and dog beds that actually matter to a creature's needs. The interface is the obvious compromise. Everything that was a click on PC becomes a cursor nudge and a menu wheel here, and the small lots and loading pauses between locations remind you how much the PS2 was being asked to hold at once.

What has aged least gracefully is the camera, which fights you indoors, and the AI, which can leave a Sim stranded staring at a doorway while the cat sets fire to the kitchen. What holds up is the animal animation work. The idle behaviour, the way a dog circles before lying down, the cat's deliberate indifference to being summoned, all of it was observed rather than invented, and that observation does more for the fiction than any amount of plot.

It sold to an audience that did not care about the series' simulation pedigree and simply wanted a virtual puppy, and it served them well. Played now, it reads as one of the better examples of EA translating a mouse-driven franchise to a pad without hollowing it out. A modest game, but one that knew exactly which creature the player actually wanted to be.