Review: The Sims 2: Pets (PSP)

Let's get something off our chest straight away: this is the worst version of Sims 2: Pets to date, so if you still want to buy the game (despite the poor reviews) then the PSP version should be the last console you buy it for. And once again it comes back to that old PSP pitfall - loading.

Playing this game is like kicking a ball through treacle. After each action and every movement, your sim makes the game jerk almost to breaking point. Moving the camera quickly is not advised, as this causes even more loading issues. It's as if the game is held together with sticky tape. Before commencing, Gamestyle recommends that you don't even bother creating your own character, instead opting to control a pre-made default sim. If you don't then, combined with the tutorial, you're looking at a good 45 minutes, possibly even an hour, before the game properly starts. By that time Gamestyle really couldn't be bothered to see what the game offered, but thankfully we soldiered on.

Once you choose - or, god forbid, create - a sim, you are faced with a selection of houses ranging from your standard family home (in a pretty neighbourhood) to something that resembles a shed in Manchester. From this point, much like all sandbox games, it's up to you what path you take. However there are a number of things that need to be performed. These may as well be called chores because that's what they feel like. A drop down menu shows you the current status of your sim, and various bars tell you a number of health related details from how hungry your character is, to how much he needs a shower. The problem is these bars deplete far too quickly, making happiness seem like an awful lot of hard work. Providing your sim is happy, you are granted a short amount of time to actually play and train with your selected pet; which is surely the point of a Pets edition? Then there are the jobs. These are not as irritating as you might think; job hunting is just a matter of grabbing the newspaper outside your house and looking at the job pages. This is a crucial part of the game because without a job you don't get money, and without money you can't enjoy the town square.

The town square is where you can shower your pet with gifts or buy items to decorate your house. Spending at each shop will gradually improve the experience you have with that establishment - and more experience means more items to splash your cash on. As ever, though, venturing into each shop brings with it so many countless loading troubles that even spending money (which is supposed to be fun) is a tiresome experience.

A good thing to come from the console version of The Sims 2 is the ability to take control of your sim rather than using a pointer to direct them (which is still available if you want). However you can't actually control your pet; instead you need to train them to follow you and obey your other instructions, as well as scold them when they keep digging up your garden or trailing water on your nice new carpet.

The Sims 2: Pets is no slouch in the graphical department. Characters have a great style to them and the animations are done well. Maybe it's too good because the game certainly goes at a snail's pace when you ask your sim to do something. It also decides to slow down when you use the camera to zoom in and out, making it all seem like this port was put together by a team of badly trained monkeys.

When you get down to the bones of The Sims 2: Pets, you can see a good game there; it just gets bogged down by literally the worst loading we've seen in a PSP game ever (maybe even beating the infamous WWE Smackdown Vs Raw game). So ultimately we have the worst version of an already average game.

Rating: 3 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver