The original Sims2 was wildly successful. It was available for Windows before it came to the Mac. But thankfully Aspyr developed it for the Mac and now life is good. With it you can add another layer of enjoyment to your Sims, with pets to train, play with, and love. It is a strategy game, a creativity tool; a story telling simulation. You develop a story and watch it unfold with the characters you create, The Sims. The stage (Pleasantview, Strangetown and Veronaville) is where the action takes place. You have all the ingredients needed to tell a masterful story. As players find they need more creativity, the developers keep coming out with new features.

You create a Sim family and watch them grow, go to school, work, advance in their careers, entertain neighbors, deal with wants, needs, ambitions, and fear; from birth to death. It all happens in simulated real time, where every second is a minute, or you can fast forward. You can control them or give them free will and watch the fun begin.

With the Sims2 Pets Expansion Pack you get many additional features. You can adopt a pet from the pound, find a stray cat or dog, or create your own with unique characteristics from the Create a Family screen, where size, color, body type, markings, and personalities can be tweaked to your heart's content.

The fun begins when you interact with your pets. Sims interact with them, teaching commands and tricks while praising good behavior and punishing bad. Pets develop relationships with their masters the same way the Sims build relationships with other Sims.

They also interact with neighborhood dogs and cats which occasionally wander through. Pets with amorous characteristics might even mate, producing puppies or kittens that you can keep, give away, or sell to another Sim, or find good homes by "phoning" the Adoption Service.

Pet personalities affect how they behave when you interact with them, so it make take a lot more training to get a cat or dog to do what you want, if it's not very smart or it's really lazy. Of course, you can always summon an obedience trainer to help you.

Well-trained pets can have careers in security, show business, or service while climbing the ladder of success like their masters and bringing home much-needed Simoleons. Their success depends on their personalities and skills. Pets have day jobs. Sims assure pets' success by staying on top of their pets' careers or those careers will come crashing down in disappointment.

As pets succeed in their careers, they accumulate codes that unlock a variety of rewards. You use the codes to create dogs and cats, get special collars or bandit masks, or get unique fur colors, such as pink, or patterns, etc.

There is also a way to transform your Sims into Werewolves. When a stray wolf appears in the neighborhood they can give it a lot of love to make it stay. If the wolf takes a nibble at one of them they become werewolves with special powers that can train pets faster than regular Sims, turn other Sims into werewolves by fighting with them, and more.

If you don't want to tie up your Sims with a high-maintenance cat or dog, you can buy fish, birds, hamsters, and rodent-like Womrats. These pets also need to be fed and cared for or they die. You can choose cages, aquariums, and toys for them.

If you're a fan of the Sims you will love this expansion pack.