Down the road from your new Sims house is the town centre. There's a bunch of new career options for employable Sims that revolve around this new location, but you'll mainly be trotting down to the shops to pick up accessories for your pets. There're tug-toys, dangle-wands, catnip treats, frisbees... Everything you need to entertain and keep your pet healthy is available. But to buy them, you need pet points.
Look after your pet and develop a relationship with them, and you earn these pet points. If you have trouble - Kenneth won't stop leaving presents on the carpet - there's a useful trainer chap in town who can help keep your pet in line.
With enough training you can teach your pet a range of tricks, from handshakes to playing dead. But, given the effort that this takes, it's a shame that Sims 2: Pets offers no Nintendogs-style events that you can enter to win new items.
Above: Look after your pets or Animal Welfare will confiscate them before they run away
Set for release a PS2 this autumn, The Sims 2: Pets is all but finished. With the possibilities for breeding litters that inherit your pet's traits and the huge variety of cats and dogs on offer, our only real disappointment is the strict restriction on how many of the little bleeders you can keep. We'll be putting The Sims 2: Pets under the review-scope soon.
