The Sims: Pet Stories

A great pedigree - you'll be hooked on this like grade A catnip. [Sept 2007, p.89]

The low system specs are a nice deal and The Sims Pet Stories is a well implemented gateway into the Sims world, but EA has definitely skimped on the full gateway functionality by not allowing Stories to play with other releases in the series. In other words, if you really get hooked, be ready to cough up for the full-sized version.

The characters are funnier, the stories more interesting and the gameworld that little bit more interactive thanks to the hairy companions running around. Let's just hope that volume 3, Castaway Stories, features a smoke monster and mysterious hatches.

For those of you who like their games with lots to do or for those who just want to ignore the storyline and mess about by sitting back and watching their pet destroy their house one sofa at a time, The Sims Pet Stories is perfect. For gamers who want to relax in front of their PC, this might not be the best option.

The Sims: Pet Stories is, for our money, more interesting than Life Stories in that it contains the relationship elements of the latter while adding in the extra dimension of training up a pet.

A step too far in EA's attempts to make the franchise print more money. [Sept 2007, p.62]

It seems that EA tries desperately to create new content and games for Sims players. You can see the desperation here. Pet Stories doesn’t offer anything new to the previous ones but the horrible “stories” which are so utterly stupid that the player feels ashamed playing them. Everything’s not bad though. Creating and training pet is quite okay and there’s a lot to do as in all Sims games. Still, I wouldn’t pay full price for this new... game. [Aug 2007]

For anyone curious about the Sims phenomenon that wants a nicely accessible entry point, this will certainly do the job; but avoiding the structural elements and heading straight for the sandbox mode would serve a much better initiation.