If The Sims: Hot Date hasn't brought enough love into your sim's life, perhaps you should bring some unconditional puppy love into his or her life ... literally.  The Sims Unleashed will bring to The Sims something that has always been missing from sims' homes for far too long ... pets.

The first thing you'll notice about The Sims Unleashed, before you even have the chance to buy a pet, is that neighborhoods have been expanded.  There will be thirty lots per neighborhood and you'll have the opportunity to zone each of them as residential or commercial/community lots.  More residential lots means more homes, and more sims to populate your neighborhood.  The community lots will allow you to add parks, cafes, shops, and markets to the neighborhood.  To make it easier to get around, you can call a neighborhood shuttle right from your phone to take you around the area.  If you played Hot Date or Vacation, then you'll be right at home using the shuttle service as it takes you away from home.

One of the new locations added by The Sims Unleashed will be a neighborhood pet store where you can go shopping for a new dog, cat, bird, turtle, lizard, or fish.  Phew!  That's quite a menagerie!  You'll have 12 different cats, 12 dogs, and two types of birds to choose from, and can pick male or female pets.  (If you get one of each sex from the same species, don't be surprised if you wind up with a litter of kittens or puppies!)  Once you select a pet, you can give it a name and take it home with you.

The first thing you'll need to do with your new pet is to train it (don't worry, you can hire a pet trainer if you'd rather not do the work yourself).  Training pets is done through a simple punishment and reward system that you can use to encourage good behaviors while discouraging bad ones.  If you want, you can even encourage your pet to do some things that are entertaining to you, although they may not be the best of behaviors.  If your dog likes to chase the mailwoman, praising him afterward will reinforce the behavior, and make him more likely to do the same in the future.  Perhaps this might be an effective and entertaining way to keep the bills away?

Pets will be modeled like your sims, and will have their own skills and needs.  Skills include housebroken, tricks, and obedience, and you can enhance these skills through training and the use of some of the new pet-related objects.  As for the needs, they are the same as those that you are already used to: space, bathroom, hunger, and the like.  Let your pet's needs go neglected too long and tragedy could strike, with death taking your pet away from you.  You'll then be haunted by the ghost of Fluffy as a constant reminder that you forgot to feed her...

Train you pets well and you might want to show them off at a competition.  Pet shows will allow you to enter your pet into competition, and you'll have to try to impress the judges with your pet's obedience, tricks, and good pet mood in order to take home a prize.  Should your pet be a true champion, you'll be able to bring home your prizes and ribbons for display to let the world know how great your pet really is.

If you have Hot Date or Vacation, you're probably wondering what happens to your pet when you go downtown or to Vacation Island.  Well pets aren't allowed downtown, so you can't bring your puppy with you to try and attract a date.  Don't despair yet, bachelor sims, walking your dog in your neighborhood park is a good way to meet potential mates that you can ask out later for a night on the town downtown.  Pets will accompany you on vacation though.  Since they are a part of your family, The Sims Unleashed treats your pets as family and packs them off to Vacation Island with your whole clan.

The Sims Unleashed will include over 125 new objects - the most in any expansion to The Sims since Livin' Large.  Many of these will be pet-related, but there will also be new decorator theme sets (including a New Orleans French Quarter set) and new gardening objects.

Gardening objects? »