The Sims: Pet Stories

I HAVE a dog. I love dogs. The best thing my dog ever did was run into my neighbour's house and come trotting back out with an entire cooked chicken in his mouth. That was my old dog though. He is dead. I have The Sims: Pet Stories.

I don't like it much. It's the sequel to The Sims: Life Stories, and it follows an identical template to that game. You play what is essentially a cutdown version of The Sims 2 with the Pets expansion installed, and must take one of two pets through a particular storyline. The Pets expansion existed when The Sims: Life Stories came out, so why they didn't include pets in the first of these story-based Sims games is a mystery (the solution to which is this: money).

To be fair, this is the sort of thing that'd make a decent gift for somebody who doesn't really know how computer contraptions work. It'd be all too easy to take the piss out of how running the game in a window is listed as a feature on the back of the box, as is pausing - yes, somebody put pausing in a bullet-point -but the fact remains that as this is standalone, it retains the Sims' charm and appeal.

You really would be better off buying The Sims 2 and its Pets expansion though, and making up your own stories in your head.