By Adam Smith on October 19th, 2011 at 12:45 pm.
The Sims 3 Pets is now out and a little birdie informs me that horses are exclusive to the PC version, so that’s good. That same little birdie is in every version though, being the sort of creature that doesn’t care too much about the company he keeps. I actually had quite a bit of fun with the Create a Pet doohickey, treating it as a cruel and unethical genetics laboratory, but the advertising campaign for the expansion takes that one step further with a hybrid of man and dog, called Trevor Mountleg no less, encouraging ownership of pets. And sex in haystacks. Peculiar.
There was a unicorn in there, but you might not have noticed because you were too busy wondering if an unkempt British dog-man was about to propose that you tame him like a stallion. Thank all that is good they didn’t actually make a video of Trevor sitting in a gaudy mansion surrounded by his ‘pets’, making what could be referred to as a ‘move’ on a cat while urging experimentation.
Oh wait, they did.
He has loosened his tie in preparation for becoming nude in the near future.
19/10/2011 at 12:52 caddyB says:
I find it disturbing that they’d choose to put .. suggestive themes on the background in both videos. Surely there is more to Sims than being a dating sim with a lot of depth?
19/10/2011 at 13:02 Drake Sigar says:
I think most treat The Sims like a Cruel Intentions simulator.
19/10/2011 at 14:31 Juan Carlo says:
I’ve never actually played any sims games, but am king of amused by it as a phenomenon. For my little sister and her friends, for example, Sims was pretty much the only game that existed. In fact, it seems to have replaced “Barbies” as the current thing that young girls now do. Only unlike Barbies, which girls tend to grow out of, my sister still plays the Sims series now that she’s in her early 20s.
So I’ve always just kind of dismissed “the Sims” games as digital Barbies. Am I wrong? I suspect I’m wrong, but don’t really care enough to give the games a go.
19/10/2011 at 14:41 caddyB says:
I agree that it’s generally a “girl thing”. My sister has also been playing Sims since it first came out, and now she’s 21 and I can see her buying this expansion. Because it has horses in it.
Best of all the animals and all that.
19/10/2011 at 14:44 Acerbjorn says:
Well my sister usually makes a home, then kill all of the adults. Leaving her a house with only teenagers in it. So there’s that.
19/10/2011 at 17:57 Pointless Puppies says:
Aside from the “tween idol” presentation of Sims 2 and 3, it’s really no different from games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing. It’s just that this one in particular is set in a modern-age American suburbia, but it follows practically every game design archetype of “life-sim” games that are very popular among male gamers. In fact, in terms of gameplay it’s quite superior to the two games I mentioned due to the high emphasis on player interaction with the world and NPCs.
All it takes is for people to stop spreading the myth that it’s a “Barbie simulator” and actually look at what the game has to offer. The third game especially is probably the best game in the “life-sim” genre on the market right now.
19/10/2011 at 12:57 McDan says:
Well that’s certainly different, and I now know what I’m going to call the next character I make in a game. Sir mountleg at your service.
19/10/2011 at 13:03 Duffin says:
Oh look, an expansion that was already in the Sims 2 but we are being asked to pay for. Again.
19/10/2011 at 13:28 Buemba says:
Actually, even the first Sims got a pets expansion (Unleashed) so this is the 3rd time they’re doing this.
Though to be fair, if Late Night is any indication they’re not just porting old features into the new game this time around.
19/10/2011 at 14:07 Capt. Eduardo del Mango says:
Watching those videos at work, they appear genuinely horrifying. I’m not sure if the lack of sound is making them worse thanks to giving my imagination the chance to fill in the blanks, or whether hearing them would be infinitely worse than anything I could imagine.
The Sims games are developed by a dedicated studio, so we could purge the place with napalm without risking delays to anything we’re looking forward to. Tim Stone knows how to fly a fighter jet, right?
19/10/2011 at 14:30 Ergates_Antius says:
Horses? Best of all the animals?
19/10/2011 at 14:51 Meat Circus says:
They’re my friends.
What a shame.
19/10/2011 at 15:48 Ergates_Antius says:
Everybody loves good neighbours
19/10/2011 at 14:55 Inigo says:
Meanwhile Will Wright is face down in a puddle of vomit, empty absinthe bottle clutched in his sweaty hand and homeless Chinese families licking the mould from his filthy bare feet.
19/10/2011 at 15:06 Megadyptes says:
Will Wright left EA/Maxis back in 2009 and was not involved at all in The Sims 3.
19/10/2011 at 16:04 TsunamiWombat says:
Exactly why he’s passed out why homeless chinese people
19/10/2011 at 16:26 Kaldor says:
The cat in the pic is pure awesome just by being a cat.
19/10/2011 at 19:11 DigitalSignalX says:
The Sims has always been a torture and/or sex simulator. Are they truly letting us add animals into that mix or will there be scripted safeguards. Mods to the rescue if so…
19/10/2011 at 19:49 bluebogle says:
I was a huge fan of the series until the Sims 3. I bought the game and the first few expansions, but didn’t like that the emphasis had moved from community created content to everything at the EA Sims store. The in-game content had been largely removed (clothing, hair, furniture, items, so on) and were now being sold for ridiculous amounts as separate purchases. Just took the fun out of the whole game.
19/10/2011 at 20:11 LionsPhil says:
So is message of the advert supposed to be “The Sims 3: it’s for cosplaying furries”?
Wait. The first one actually offers “have a pet; be a pet”. And the second expands on that.
Oh.
Oh god.
I thought I was joking.
19/10/2011 at 20:52 bluebogle says:
I think they just mean you can play as (or control) the animals. They aren’t actually anthropomorphic.
19/10/2011 at 21:26 caddyB says:
I can’t decide if that makes it even more creepy.
19/10/2011 at 21:34 zhmmpp says:
top good games item,welcome to http://top4biz.com
19/10/2011 at 23:57 destroy.all.monsters says:
So it’s about bestiality and furries then.
20/10/2011 at 08:54 Jackablade says:
It does seem to indicate that you may have the option to “woohoo” with a dog with all of the abominations unto nature that may result from such a coupling.
I’m suitably intrigued.