| The Sims 2: Apartment Pets | 
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| From: Electronic Arts
Category: Video Games
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $19.71
You Save: $0.28 (1%)
Buy New/Used from $16.19
Avg. Customer Rating:   (3 reviews)
Sales Rank: 950
Platform: Nintendo Ds
ESRB: Everyone
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0 x 0
MPN: 19101
Model: 19101
UPC: 014633191011
EAN: 0014633191011
ASIN: B001AW16QE
Release Date: August 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Run your very own pet spa to groom and dress pets | | • | Share your apartment with dogs, cats, snakes, rabbits, and more | | • | Meet interesting neighbors and take care of their pets | | • | Play fun mini-games to unlock toys, clothing, furniture, and accessories |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Live in the most pet-friendly apartment around! Your Sim is moving into an apartment building full of interesting neighbors and a wide variety of pets. From loveable cats and dogs to all-new exotic animals including slithery snakes, colorful birds, and cuddly rabbits, your Sim will experience all the fun of playing with pets while enjoying their new apartment lifestyle!
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| Customer Reviews:
 too similar too Sims 2 pets September 30, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This in my opinion is too closely related to Sims2 pets. I do prefer Sims2 pets to this one by far.
 Not so great, actually. September 15, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
From PlayingWithMyWeiner.com:
As a gamer who can vacillate between WoW PvP ganking and scritching a Nintendog between the ears in mere seconds, I thought that giving a "fair and balanced" review of a Sims Pets game was going to be tough. Not so much. I guess I require my pixellated pooches to actually be more than blurry pixels with mediocre control schemes.
I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the "plot". After the ever-so-detailed character creation experience (featuring both genders and no less than five top and bottom clothing options), you are plopped down in a teeny tiny Sim apartment with an nearly invisible Sim parrot. If you can get your stylus to touch the parrot just right, it will give you a Sims-type pop up window which will allow you to play a DDR-style minigame with the bird. Not a bad minigame, moves a bit fast, but it's a rhythm game, and who doesn't love those?
Wander around your new space for a bit and you'll get an e-mail on your PDA (*cough iPhone*) from your Uncle Bill, who owns the apartment and the pet spa below it. He says he's off doing research somewhere and thanks you for looking after the place. In case you have an itch for interior design, Uncle Bill has an "arrangement" with the landlord that gives you carte blanche to paint, paper, and generally tear the place up as you see fit.
This isn't your mother's Sims game, though. No sooner do you begin looking at swatches then the doorbell rings, and your friendly building maintenance guy hands you a puppy. Why? Because he found it, of course. Now you have to care for it.
Unfortunately, it is the pet care phase that makes this game less a member of the Sims family and more a subpar Nintendogs clone or wannabe Imagine: Veterinarian. Pets can have a number of negative states, including such technical states as "stinky" or "dirty". Your job is to "diagnose" and "treat" these states through washing, perfuming, etc.
The big problem here is the controls. For example. it is very difficult to "treat" Stinky when you have to both target his hotspots using the stylus and "spray" him with the same hand (using the right shoulder button). In addition, there are not one, but two timing mechanisms in play during your task: a standard clock timer and the pet's "annoyance meter", which will invariably cause Stinky to run away for a few seconds during the middle of any treatment. Good luck getting the percentage of treatment needed to "cure" Stinky when you can't even make him sit still.
And that's just the pets that are dumped on your doorstep. You also run a Pet Spa downstairs, which is how you earn money to pamper your pooches and make Uncle Bill's pad plush. You get an e-mail when a customer arrives and, if you can force the impossible pathfinding to allow you to take the elevator down, you may even get to diagnose and treat these customers' pets! Joy! Meanwhile, your own motive scores (fatigue, hygiene, etc.) continue to erode over time, as do the scores of each and every pet in your personal menagerie.
Finally, the game doesn't look great, even for a DS title. Nintendogs, which was a DS Lite launch title, presents cuter pooches, and Viva Pinata: Pocket Paradise shows what the littlest console can do with textures in a sim game. Next to those guys, The Sims 2: Apartment Pets looks like a GBA title at best, or at least the parts you can see - the camera only moves up, down, left and right - no swiveling whatsoever.
Looks like I'll have to go back to having my gnome rogue farm up pets in Azeroth and Outland. I'm giving The Sims 2: Apartment Pets - 2 Weiners out of 5.
 Very Fun! August 29, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
If you like all the Petz games, then you will like this! Actually, you will like it more. Not only do you get pets but you also get a sim. They still have to sleep, eat, go to the bathroom, stay clean, and be social. I do think they made it easier though because it is not like they have to go to the bathroom every 5 minutes now. It actually takes awhile for your meters to run down now.
You get to stay in a apartment that is left to you by your Uncle. You don't get to customize your apartment, it just comes the way it is. So you can't like, move walls or change the way room sizes look. The only thing you can really do is change furniture, curtains, anything inside the apartment. You work in the spa, earn money, buy different items for your apartment. I was a bit disappointed that you can't make your own apartment, change the size of rooms, and really do it yourself. The apartment is nice though the way it comes. It has a bedroom, kitchen, living room, patio, and bathroom. Another thing that sucks is I don't think you can move furniture, or maybe I missed that part. The only thing I noticed is you click on a piece of furniture and it asks you, "Would you like to change it?" Doesn't really ask you where you would like to put it. I might be wrong about that, but I have not seen that feature yet.
Most of the day you will be kept busy by helping customers. It is the way you make money, and really it is the GAME. You don't spend very much time in your apartment unless you want to ignore customers (but then you don't make money). Most of your time will be in the spa, talking to customers and then grooming their pets.
First, you find out what the pet is upset about. Maybe he stinks, needs a bath, needs some perfume. Then you do what the pet needs. If he needs a bath, you give him a bath. If he stinks too, then after the bath you spray some perfume on him. You have to do this all right or the customer will not be happy. It is like a game. If your bathing the pet, it has to be bathed in the right way. If your spraying perfume, you have to spray it in the right spots. If you don't do it right you lose out on money.
There is also a matching game. If your pet wants a collar then you match up all the cards until you find the right collar that it wants. If you don't match up the collar it wants in time, then your customer will be very unhappy. They won't give you as much money.
So basically, it is all about performance. How well you do in the spa. You can change furniture in the spa too, just like in the apartment.
You will have people that will ask you to take care of their pets. Don't get too attached, they come back for them in a few days! You just meet the pets needs until the owner comes back.
The pets look very real, and very cute. You can dress them up with anything you buy in the shop with your spa money. Sometimes pets will ask for certain items they want. Pets also get sick, so you might be buying medicine for them too.
The pets in your apartment have a game you can play called Hidden Treasure. This is a game you play out on the patio. You direct your dog to find the buried treasures. You want to find the good items and not the bad. So basically you walk them around the yard, they get all excited in certain spots and you tell them to dig. Then you get a surprise. This is a mini game.
All through out the Sims Apartment Pets you will find all sorts of mini games. It is so fun, and it still feels like the regular sims. The sims don't really have goals though like they usually do. The goal is just the pets. Trying to move your spa up, making customers happy, taking care of your apartment pets. So your meeting the needs of the pets and not the sim. The only thing you have to do with the sim is feed him/her, make him/her go to the bathroom, socialize, and all that regular stuff.
Hope this helps.
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