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The Sims 2 Apartment Pets

by Steven Rodriguez - August 4, 2008, 9:20 pm EDT
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The Sims meets Nintendogs.

A game that I hadn't heard of until seeing it at Electronic Arts' E3 meeting was a new spin-off of The Sims 2 line of games, designed specifically for the Nintendo DS. The Sims 2 Apartment Pets is a Sims game where you control a human interacting with the environment around them, combined with the animal interaction sequences that you'd expect to find in a game like Nintendogs.

The demo I saw at E3 had me in control of a female Sim in her apartment, which is situated above a pet salon where she works for a living. The furniture and other decorations within each room of the apartment can be changed and customized in the usual Sims fashion, and your character has the usual Sims traits such as happiness, health, and whether or not she needs to go to the bathroom. To that effect, it doesn't appear much different than the average Sims game.

The difference in Apartment Pets is that you need to interact with different types of animals. Dogs, cats, snakes, hamsters, birds, and other pets can populate your apartment, and you'll get to interact with them. You can play with their toys, dress them up in customizable outfits, and just generally love your animals.

The animal interface is tied into how your Sim gets on in life. The pet salon is your main source of income, and in order to make good money, you must tend to other pets that customers bring in. You get a notification that a new customer wants pet service, at which time you have the option of taking the elevator down to the salon on the ground floor. You can use touch screen to perform tasks like clearing up fleas, picking a new collar, and eliminating funky odors from the pet. If you don't want to be bothered with cleaning up someone else's filthy pets, you'll still earn money, but it won't be as much if you take charge of your shop and do things manually.

The game is fully 3D and can be played from an overhead perspective or zoomed in with a fully controllable camera that can swoop down to eye level. The game actually looks quite good, with fairly detailed animals and some nice looking Sims, complete with the shiny green diamond to point them around with the touch screen. Up close, the animals look pretty good, too. I was particularly impressed by how good the hamster looked, although that might have been me just wanting to put it on the hamster wheel again and continue watching it be cute.

I think EA may have found a good combination with Apartment Pets. It's something that puts quite a bit of meat on the average pet simulator by adding in the tried-and-true human simulator franchise. People who may have been exposed to video games through Nintendogs may be interested in it as well, seeing as it's an extension of what they already know and love. A lot of people like the Sims, and a lot of people like their pet simulators. It could very well be the best of both worlds.

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Genre Simulation
Developer Sims

Worldwide Releases

na: The Sims 2 Apartment Pets
Release Aug 26, 2008
PublisherElectronic Arts
eu: The Sims 2 Apartment Pets
Release Aug 22, 2008
PublisherElectronic Arts
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