The Sims franchise is one of the most prolific and successful ever, with both The Sims and The Sims 2 for the PC garnering critical acclaim (a quick search for both games on www.gamerankings.com indicate an average score of 90% for both games across several gaming websites), a massive fan base, and raking in the dollar (according to GameSpot, The Sims 2 and its expansions dominated the list of top 10 best selling games of 2006, with 5 titles on the chart).

Thanks to its raging success, the series has also gone multiplatform and churned out expansion after expansion. The latest of these, Sims 2: Pets (for the PC as well as all current consoles), has hit local shores, offering our players the chance to get up close with their feline and canine. UrbanWire takes a look at 4 different versions and see how they stack up against each other.

The Sims 2: Pets (PC)

(Additional reporting by Agnes Koh)

An expansion to the fan favourite Sims 2, Pets adds a bevy of options to the game, including pets (of course), playthings for said pets, as well as more general decorations of the home.

The expansion adds a Create-A-Pet feature to the game, allowing for an amazingly detailed and customisable creation of the pet you’ve always wanted (but perhaps were allergic to or never had the time to rear). Options include size, age, fur colour, spots and even personality, which will end up affecting how your pet reacts to you, to training and even to other pets.

Other than the usual cats and dogs, the game also offers birds and rodents like hamsters if those pique your fancy. Unless you just want to observe them running around in their cages the whole day, though, you’d be better off picking 1 of the first 2 anyway.

While the game doesn’t allow you to control your pets directly, you can train them daily, teaching them new tricks, conditioning their temperaments and even grooming them to head down different careers paths (think Garfield is overrated? Here’s your chance to develop your own star cat).

Unfortunately, grooming them and customising them fully requires a lot of time, effort and patience, which will definitely eat into the time your sim will have for other activities like keeping his job and working at a social life. While this does up the realism in the game, it’s also quite demanding and requires a lot of planning to be able to execute well.

In short, Pets for the PC brings some new content to the plate but there’s nothing groundbreaking here that will convert any naysayers. Still, the game performs admirably, especially compared to its disappointing handheld siblings.

The Sims 2: Pets (Playstation Portable)

(Additional reporting by Chong Yi Han)

The first and most disappointing (but more on that later) hand held iteration of the game that we’ll look at is the PSP’s offering, an almost straight port of the console versions.

The PSP has always been touted as the most powerful of the current generation handheld consoles and its technical prowess shows here. The graphics are smooth and detailed, with minimal pixilation. While it might not totally match up to the PC or console versions, it looks way better than the other handheld versions. It helps that the screen is larger too (although the map does get pretty cramped at times).

Pets offers a watered-down version of the console and PC versions, letting you create, in great detail, your pet of choice (only cats and dogs in this one, though) and groom them into your perfect companion, while maintaining your sim’s work and social life. While there’s only 1 neighbourhood and 1 downtown lot in this game, cutting down on the options of living a fully realised life, it does provide enough content to satisfy gamers on the go.

Like the PC version, a lot of the challenge in this game comes in scheduling your sim’s time to keep up with his own life, without neglecting his pet, since leaving it alone for long stretches of time results in nasty habits (like peeing on the floor) as well as making it harder to discipline.

While all these features make for pretty solid play, game-play is marred completely by long loading times. The Sims is a game based on interaction with the pet, with your sim, with other pets and several other such examples and it’s frustrating when almost every click of the button and option results in a long wait for the game to load. Even panning the camera view too fast results in (ironically) a huge slow-down. Saving is even worse.

For a portable gaming device, the load times aren’t terribly friendly to commuting gamers and spoil an otherwise pretty good game.

The Sims 2: Pets (Gameboy Advance)

(Additional reporting by Dorcas Ling)

Like the PSP’s Pets was a watered down version of the console and PC’s versions, the GBA’s version is a scaled down little cousin of the PSP’s game.

The premise of the game is similar to the rest: you start off by creating a human character (with an impressive list of customising options, including more than a dozen choices of colours for hair, clothes and shoes) and then taking care of his usual needs, like eating, keeping clean, getting a job and interacting with other sims for a social life. Of course, as the title entails, the game also offers the sims a chance to adopt their own pets, taking care of them and making sure they grow up well.

Like the previously mentioned games, these’s an issue of balance here: while game-play options like stores to visit and things to do for the sim are reduced (possibly due to technical limitations), it is still a challenge to take care of both the sim’s life and the pet’s.

In terms of technology, the GBA is obviously at the tail end of its life. The sims are blocky stick figures that move unnaturally while the pets are featureless small pixels, which robs them of any adorability and cuteness. There’s also no option to zoom in on them, which makes the pets more like a decorative addition to the series rather than something players can feel for.

Not only is the game perfunctory in terms of game-play, the cruddy graphics and lack of anything really addictive and/or personable about the pets in the game remove the fun factor from Pets.

The Sims 2: Pets (Nintendo DS)

Pets for the market’s reigning portable king is, just like the unique, touch-screen controlled device itself, clearly different from the rest of the bunch.

Rather than letting gamers control and micromanage both the sim’s and his pet’s lives, the game puts more emphasis on the pet’s angle; players only need to feed, clean and let the sim sleep once in a while and there’s minimal interaction with any other human sim. Instead, the game throws you into the character of a veterinarian who opens his own clinic at home.

Throughout the game, owners will bring their sick pets to the clinic, where the sim gets to examine the pet (using a set number of tools like a brush and an x-ray machine), diagnose its condition, treat it and even bring it to the park once in a while to play with it.

Interactions and controls are all controlled by the touch screen, where all the player has to do is to click on the subject, evaluate the list of options that pop up and choose the most apt one to solve the problem at hand.

While the emphasis on the pet’s aspect of the game should theoretically make for a more comprehensive experience, the game is let down by a lack of activities and gaming options. The list of illnesses a pet can be diagnosed with is a meagre 5, and after the novelty of going through the different techniques of diagnostics and treatment, the game feels repetitive and boring. Even the walks to the park end up with the pet performing the same few tricks over and over again.

The game does offer a pretty wide selection of dogs and cats for the vet to treat but, other than their looks, these pets behave in almost exactly the same ways and, while they might look furry and cute, they don’t really have much personality. In fact, most of the time, the pets seem as bored as the player who is likely to be playing this game.

If the game had more game-play options and range of activities to participate, Pets for the DS might make for a more engaging and enjoyable time. As it is, players looking for their virtual pet fix should stick to the hit series Nintendogs.

To wrap up, this latest batch of games from the popular series is pretty underwhelming, with a majority of them showing potential but getting bogged down by several problems. The best of the crop is by far the PC version of the game, with the DS version trailing a far second.

Screenshots taken from the official Sims 2: Pets website.