The Sims 3: Pets

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1, StreetPass Supported

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Review:

I’ve never been a huge fan of The Sims series, so unfortunately I cannot comment on the changes The Sims 3: Pets brings to the popular “Life Sim” style of Management Simulation, or how well the game transitioned from other platforms to the Nintendo 3DS. However, having played the original version of The Sims 3 on Nintendo 3DS, I can definitely compare that release to this standalone expansion, released across PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo 3DS in 2011.

For those unaware, The Sims as a franchise is about micromanaging the day-to-day life choices and household purchases of a simulated person going about their life. The Pets expansion adds pets into the game, naturally. On PC, this was an expansion to the original game, but on other platforms this was a standalone release. And on Nintendo 3DS in particular, this game feels like a second attempt to get things right after the disastrous original release of The Sims 3 on Nintendo’s handheld.

Once again, this game features simple 3D graphics for its characters and locations, joined by the series’ signature incomprehensible “simlish” gobbledygook speak, which even shows up in the game’s diegetic music over the radio. However, this release features none of the graphics and performance issues that the original release of The Sims 3 had. Perhaps this is because this release isn’t attempting to render the game on both screens at the same time, instead opting to use the bottom screen for menus, something that was probably a wiser choice for the gameplay regardless.

Even if you have zero interest in dogs and cats, The Sims 3: Pets is unquestionably the definitive way to play The Sims 3 on Nintendo 3DS. The gameplay is far more polished, less buggy, and more streamlined, not to mention the improved selection of options here. It’s staggering that this game came out later the same year as its poorly-crafted predecessor, because the difference is like night and day. And while the controls do take some getting used to here, this actually feels like a competent port of The Sims to the Nintendo 3DS. What’s more, the second screen now gives a full display of your Sims’ stats, meaning you no longer need to guess when they’ll soon be needing one of their needs met.

And of course, this game also adds the ability to micromanage the lives of pets – either in addition to your human’s life, or in place of it. I will say, seeing the options pets have is an almost surreal experience, like playing The Sims as an alien or something, where their interactions with people, animals, and the environment around them is completely different than the humans’, as is their list of goals. Overall, it’s a really clever re-imagining of the series’ formula, though I will say that the decisions to allow pets to open doors instead of just making doggie doors definitely comes across as odd

Of course, it’s still not perfect. The game still has you doing a lot of tedious micromanaging of your Sims’ needs when you might prefer to have them building on one of their ambitions. And figuring out how to get them to perform some tasks is still something of a head-scratcher.This game’s labor-intensive need to constantly micromanage minutia and perhaps even keep a wiki on-hand to figure out how to do stuff is definitely going to mean this game is an acquired taste.

Still, despite it being somewhat niche within its genre, and despite its flaws, The Sims 3: Pets succeeds where the first attempt at bringing the franchise to Nintendo 3DS failed. This is for all intents and purposes a competent port of The Sims formula to the Nintendo 3DS. And regardless of whether you have any interest in cats and dogs, this game delivers on that series’ formula in this port, albeit not without some issues.

tl;dr – The Nintendo 3DS port of The Sims 3: Pets has players managing the life of their simulated person (and/or pet) in a Management Simulation. Unlike the original port of The Sims 3 to Nintendo 3DS, this port of the game works surprisingly well, regardless of whether you want to mess around with the pets portion of the game. It’s still not a game for everyone, but if you want a Sims game on a Nintendo handheld, this is probably the one game most likely to get you to say “Woohoo!”.

Grade: C+

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