The Sims 3: Pets Expansion Pack

I've played the Sims since they first came out and I've enjoyed most of the expansions with the exceptions of a few (especially Bon Voyage which had bugs galore). For me so far this is the best expansion. The horses are the best! I love being able to make any kind of horse with all the custom possibilities of body shapes, sizes and colors. I agree with the reviewer who said the horses alone make this one worthwhile. The cats are especially realistic in the way they play and scratch. I was able to make a cat that had the exact personality of one of my real pets. Also, it seems to me that the pets in this one, as opposed to Sims 2 pets have greater free will. It was annoying in Sims 2 Pets having to make your pets do the simplest things. I also love that we can have more control over the animals actions in the skill department. It's so much nicer being able to make your horses train on the jumps and racing by themselves, so your sim can actually have a life as well. The other pets can hunt and train too with your order. Also, I love that you now can be a self-employed sim which earns promotions ie a Horsewoman/Horseman. That is so much more enjoyable than going to out to work everyday. Heck, I do that enough in my life, I don't want to play it! I bought this expansion along with Generations and I've been playing the features of this one 99% of the time. Though Generations does add alot of neat things for families. The only bummer to me is that as in the other buildings you cannot see your horse actually competing in the competitions. That would've been great, though it would've probably taken a whole lot more memory. Additionally, my first family had 2 pets die fairly quickly (before I changed to Epic lifespans & had life rewards). It seems like my sim family went a bit insane after the pets died, I could never get their needs meters to stay up for very long and that was annoying, so I ended up making a whole new family. I'm not one who likes my sims or their pets to die, so if you're the same be sure to change the game settings, cause they seemed to age so fast. Overall, this is a fun game and hasn't bored me as fast as my other Sims games. I'm hoping with the success of the horses, EA will come out with a farmer Sim game which combines these pets and other pets like cows, sheep, pigs, etc, with some of the features like Seasons. I've been wishing for that for quite awhile. If you enjoyed Sims 2 Pets you will probably love this one!

I have been a Sims fan since the very first iteration came out many many years ago. I have always loved the pets expansion packs and I was definitely looking forward to this one because it offered something previous pets packs did not include - HORSES! As a horse owner in real life and a lover of all things horse-related for about a zillion years, this was the best Sims news ever! When I got the expansion and installed it, I immediately moved my Sim into a new home with a barn and got a horse. This expansion did NOT disappoint! I LOVE training my horses, breeding them, showing them, etc. Everything involved in it is better than most horse video games I've ever played! I would have loved to have a more hands-on approach to the actual showing, but that is the only negative I can come up with at all. I love playing with the horses so much that I have yet to even try any of the other pets, despite this expac being out for over a year. HIGHLY recommend!!

Praises for Pets! Compared to the previous four Sims 3 expansion packs, this one is a 5-Star winner! I had no troubles with the install once I removed my mod files. Afterwards, I returned all mods but the one needing an update and had no problems with the game. (Remember to apply the DEP fix for Window 7.) I want to rave about the in-game animations. The graphic artists at EA paid close attention to details and captured tons of lifelike movements of our furry friends. Dogs and cats frisk and pounce, eat, sleep, hunt, beg, scratch, roll over and play dead, just like living dogs and cats. I don't have a pet anymore and sorely miss her but watching the little sim cats and dogs play on my monitor brings me both pleasure and melancholic delight. If you don't appreciate the artistry that went into animating these little sims animals then you have missed the joy of Sims 3 Pets. Want a custom pet? Enter Create A Sim for Pets. Peruse the prebuilt breeds. There are dozens of them. Or build your own mutt or stray cat (or horse). CAS for the animals has lots of "sliders" and customizations, perhaps even more than CAS for sim people. After getting the hang of the advanced options, I created the perfect Schnauzer and Siberian Husky. My cat is a Manx-Scottish Fold with cheetah-like markings. Assign your pets their own personality traits and unleash them into a new household. High free-will sims will care for their pets. Don't need to worry about filling the food dish or getting the animals' attention. My household of four handles their cat and two dogs easily. I was bored with Sims 3 and all the expansion packs until now. I watch the pets more than the household sims. I'm having a blast and appreciating all the hard, hard work EA artists and programmers put into this game. I highly recommend Sims 3 Pets over all the other expansion packs. Now if EA would just come out with a fabulous Seasons. Diehard sims fans can only hope.

I wish game had a pet store like the sims 1&2 do in the town. Otherwise great game.

I admit that I've sorely missed the Pets and Seasons expansion packs from Sims 2 since I purchased the Sims 3 version. I just really feel like that added so much to the dynamics of playing the game. I have a few (but not all) expansion packs, which are okay, but they bore me after awhile. This expansion, once you get beyond most of the glitches, totally lives up to its new and old hype. In fact, I have a hard time stopping so that I can get on with my work, which I do from home. The horses are a great addition to the game and horse-lovers won't be disappointed. I also love the fact that there are wild horses that you can interact with, not to mention the mystical variety (Actually my favorite part of the entire pack. **Hint: visit some of the local fishing holes from evening til dawn.) The cats and dogs are still adorable and come in numerous breeds. You can also customize your own breed, appearance wise, more so than in Pets 2, which I think is great. The minor pets are cool to watch; although you don't interact with them as much as you would with the larger pets (as in control them as you would the above three). However, they can be fun to have around and are low maintenance. I really enjoy being able to control horses, dogs and cats that are in the household. It reminds me of having more Sims children running about, and it can even get a bit chaotic if you have 6 pets. Like humans, the horses have a few skill sets that you work on - riding and jumping. The cool thing is that, after a time, they can work on these skills by themselves, instead of having to spread your Sim thin with pet skill sets and their own. All in all, I feel like it adds so much more to the game, rather than having to watch your Sims go to work, do homework, etc. There are a lot of things that I love about this expansion pack in particular, especially when it comes to how "smart" the pets are. Some of their actions, like playing about or things that they do to their humans, are either very realistic or just downright comical. They can sit and sleep on furniture, choose a favorite sleeping spot, be naughty or nice, and smaller pets can sit on laps or be picked-up. I've started clicking random items in the house or in the world, just to see if a pet can interact with it, and chances are that they can. Everything that I basically thought was missing from the first version is in the second. I also agree with others in that the graphics are loads better than in the original. I also enjoy the background (build/furniture music) as well as some of the newer items, like clothing, building items, etc. One thing I don't like, however, is the game not allowing Sims below teenage years to ride a horse. I think is a bit unrealistic, considering I rode as far back as kindergarten. I also don't care for the snapshot memory thing that Sims now get when they run into something memorable or negative, but you can shut it off. Overall, I think it's fantastic addtion, short of a few glitches and the need for patches, and I don't regret purchasing it. In fact, I now enjoy Sims 3 much more than I used to. Despite a dead laptop and a world of headache until I sorted things out, I was still giddy once everything started working. Someone mentioned problems with cats not getting any social interaction with their Sims, which I found to be the opposite. Mine were almost too needy and interrupting a lot of tasks I had for my human Sims, although this seemed to mellow out after a while. I suppose some glitches depend on how well the individual game loads for people. **Glitch Tips** I highly recommend trying the game out first by using a pre-made household, rather than spending time to create your own when you first play the game. This way, you can see how glitchy your disc is, or if it will shut down on you. If it does, you may want to uninstall and reinstall the game until it works for you. It worked for me, anyway. When I first tried this game on my laptop, it kept shutting down. Eventually, the laptop died altogether (harddrive fried), so I can't say if it was the game or the laptop. I loaded it onto my PC, which is new and one that I rarely use. It still had the game shutting down. Usually, this would happen after I made a family and a house. Naturally! Although it's still a bit glitchy, I can now get through the game without any problems by doing the following: 1. If it's not working, graphics seem skewed, or you see other major errors, try uninstalling and reinstalling it. This worked for me the 2nd time around on the PC. 2. Before you play, make sure to shut off other programs, such as messengers and anything with pop-ups. 3. If you're like me and use the Windows start-up button to minimize your screen, I advise that you don't. Usually, the one thing to shut me down on either computer would be some notice on another screen popping up in the background. The game would always freeze a short time later after going back to it. Not sure why, since I've played more graphic-heavy games than this before on it without problems, nor do I currently have any other EPs for the game loaded on here. At the very least, save the game before you try looking at something else.

I really love the Sims franchise, and when I got the Sims 3 base game I was hoping they would make a pets ep next because I loved playing with the animals in Sims 2. It took me years to finally get this game because of various reasons, so I had big expectations of what I wanted from what they offered. Not only do you get cats and dogs, but you can play with horses too, and not to mention there are tons of smaller animals you can find like birds and hamsters and can care for them, something that Sims 2 pets had lacked. All in all, I am happy I was able to buy this ep, and it has given me countless hours of entertainment and has also filled the void in my heart when I had to leave my own pets behind with my parents when I moved three states away from them.

I have been waiting for pets to come to the Sims 3 since I had the expansion in the Sims 2. When I loaded it and started playing I was actually surprised by the content! Lots of new clothes and things to pick from and endless possibilities of pets you can have! You can fully create you own breed of horse, cat or dog which is pretty cool or you can pick one that looks like your own pets. As far as expansions go I think this one is a must buy just for the fact that you get pets and that you can control them. They can be your friends and even befriend each other if you have many houses in your Sim home. If you are wondering if this one is worth the money I can tell you that it is, the amount of content you get is really worth it compared to a lot of the other expansions that have come out. Who knows maybe we will see Seasons or College Life come out next!

I love Sims and I've been playing it since the first games, but this is the first Sims game that I've preordered. Sims 2 was always extremely buggy for me, but Sims 3 actually worked better on my computer... until Pets. As usual, only play Sims if you don't mind long load times. I actually rather like the excessively long loading screens because then I get some reading done or do some pilates or whatever, and I become surprisingly productive. Obviously, this isn't for everyone because not everyone is that weird. The pets themselves look great. I love that the horses have an "exercise" status bar and the dogs have a "destructive" status bar (I haven't made a cat yet). It's funny and accurate. Unfortunately, that's about as far as I got. Initially, the game was completely unplayable because it would crash every time I started it and on the rare occasions it didn't, the graphics for the pets would get creepily wonky and my Sims would be unable to interact with the pets. I didn't even play the game until EA came out with another patch this month, and then I thought everything was fixed. It loaded and didn't crash nearly as much and the graphics were stable. I seemed to be able to have my Sims interact with my pets. Then I couldn't save my game. I kept getting "error code 12." I looked up a fix online that required going into "Command Prompt" and allowing the Sims 3 to use more RAM. This fixed the save issue. I'm not sure if this was responsible for what happened next or if it was unrelated, but after that I could play normally for a little while, and then my Sims couldn't interact with my pets again. Sometimes they would try to interact on their own, but it either might not happen or they would stand next to each other forever and not do anything. I looked up more fixes online. I deleted my caches, deleted my mods, turned off custom content... No dice. The next step would be to start from scratch, but I already spent 3 days building a town (more due to loading issues, save issues, and crashing than to actual work involved) and I am loathe to toss that out the window because EA can't build a game that works. This would be such a wonderful game if EA would have released it WITHOUT tons of bugs that make it impossible to even play the game. I've spent more money than I care to think about on this series and spent hours just trying to make it so that I could play the thing. This is ridiculous. After spending good money on a brand new game, no one should have to spend hours and days trying to fix it. That's not my job. That's EA's job and they're not doing it.

Me encanta

This is probably my favorite expansion pack for the Sims 3. This is the firs time that the Sims can own horses! You can buy them, breed them, train them, race them, and sell them. You can actually make pretty good money by doing this. The dogs and cats are also a lot of fun. They have also added small animals to the game. You can wonder around the neighborhood and find birds, lizards, rodents, etc. that you can keep as pets or sell. You can also look around bodies of water at night time and if you have enough animal friends you can make friends with a unicorn. The unicorns can breed with horses with a chance of having a unicorn baby.

Really disappointed HAve paid a lot of money for this game and it didn't even get delivered on time.

It was in good condition - very happy with it, I rated 4 stars because it didn't come with manual with my download code you need...I ended up finding one online but it would've been nice to know considering you need that code to download it, but no worries figured it out.

My daughter loved it