The Sims 2 Apartment Pets

The Sims is a global phenomenon. With dozens of games available across every platform imaginable, there have been many great iterations of The Sims and a few that have been less than desirable. The latest to come under the world’s scrutiny is The Sims 2: Apartment Pets for the Nintendo DS.

The Sims 2: Apartment Pets is a spin-off from the recently release The Sims 2: Apartment Life for the PC; however, instead of just living in an apartment, the player lives above the Pet Store that they run. As the landlord is your very relaxed Uncle, it’s A-OK to keep a few hundreds pets in the building, varying from the normal cats and dogs straight through to snakes. As with all Sims games, the player has to take care of the Sim and they must also take care of the pets that they adopt and look after as well. The more the game is played, the more minigames are unlocked, each of which are associated with the species that the player has adopted. Each of these games will help the player gain more money, and will also improve the ability to control the pets that have taken over the apartment.

Unfortunately, the first pet the player has isn’t a welcome one. On the way up to fix something in the apartment, the maintenance man hands over a little lost puppy and then makes a quick exit. The reason why becomes apparent immediately – the puppy stinks. A PDA appears and then instructs how to interact with the putrid creature. It’s all done via the touch screen with lots of taps and rubbing.

All of the aforementioned mini-games run very similarly to each other, and most involve drawing lots of circles, streaking lines or holding the L and R buttons to attack the animal with perfume. There will be the occasional mini-game that’s slightly different, but the general premise remains the same throughout the title.

Once the Sim has become proficient in looking after their animals they will be able to venture down to the Pet Spa downstairs that Uncle Landlord left in the player’s control. To earn extra cash the Sim must deal with customers face to face, but as anyone who’s worked in retail will know – it’s not fun.

A basic control system is implemented through the game: a lot of double tapping to get to the desired destination and the D-Pad will allow the option to pan the camera across the house to see what’s going on in other rooms. Unfortunately, the touch-screen isn’t very sensitive and frequently takes more than two taps to recognize a “double” tap.

An option of dressing up the pets in the house has a lot more focus in this title, and there’s a startling array of hats, shoes, and coats for the different species of pets to wear and parade around the homestead. There’s also the option to purchase various different toys to keep the pets entertained while the Sim is trying to deal with horrible customers downstairs, or simply just look after itself.

However, there’s very little need to look after the Sim as the stats don’t seem to go down very often. Unlike in Castaway, or the original Sims games on the PC, where the Sim is very needy, it’s almost as if this Sim is entirely self-sufficient.

As with all The Sims games, there’s the distinct graphic style of a very long human being on the screen that wears very bright clothes. Overall, the graphics aren’t bad at all; in fact, they are fairly distinct on the whole and have good anti-aliasing to them. The music is forgettable and the rest of the audio sound effects are the usual Sims rabble in that made up language of theirs.

You can watch the full trailer here.

Final Verdict - 6/10
The Sims 2: Apartment Pets is fairly engaging for a few hours, but unfortunately it becomes stale very quickly as the Sim character itself requires far too little attention. A great concept, but owing to the awkward controls and the lack of care needed for the Sim, there’s just too much monotony.