Wii Preview - The Sims 2 Pets

The Wii version of Sims 2 Pets is lagging behind all of the other versions by a good year or so, probably owing to the total overhaul the game required in order to be ported to the Wii hardware. Regardless, it's set to be the first Sims title for the Wii hardware and can expect a healthy fan following based on that alone. The Sims is the darling of the casual game set, and the Wii is perhaps the ultimate casual gaming platform. Sims 2 Pets, with a whopping five million copies sold, is perhaps the most popular Sims expansion and as good a place to start in bringing the franchise to the Wii as anywhere else.

The gimmick of Sims 2 Pets is that it lets you create any dog or cat you want, with a wide variety of possible breeds and personalities, and put that pet in a virtual world of your own design. You can give your pet a human family and a house to call its own, and opt either to indulge in an outrageous fantasy or recreate your own life down to the finest detail. The diminished power of the Wii hardware, as compared to the original PC platform of Sims 2 Pets, doesn't seem to have damaged the basic gameplay any. The interface has been fully retooled to take advantage of the Wiimote and Nunchuk, and EA has used some clever tricks to compromise the graphics as little as possible. The meat of the game, the AI and customization options, don't appear to be significantly diminished from other versions of the title. The graphics, of course, don't stack up to the original PC version, but that shouldn't even be expected.