Disclaimer - I have received an early access copy from EA via the Game Changer's network

Oh boy! Where to start about the pack! This pack has elicited extreme reactions from simmers all around, most of it negative ( and that is amply justified). Like everybody else, I was not really pleased when this pack was suddenly announced. The main reasons for that are -

--- The Cats and Dog CAS and build-buy should have been in the Cats and Dogs Expansion pack. Even if they were not and the cost warranted a separate paid pack, it should not have been released so soon after the EP. It could have been released later (with more content separate from the Small Pets) like the Atomic something something pack from the TS3 store.

--- I am not a rodent person. Rodents for me are for dissection. Besides i don't think I have ever really seen a guinea pig outside the lab And my first pet was a bird (+ a rabbit which my mom felt was in imminent danger of being eaten by our dog so she gave the rabbit away )

But! I was given this pack so I will say a few things

1. Love the pet furniture especially the pet beds ( Would have loved it even more if it was part of C&D)



*See rest of the swatches in the attached pictures

2. The furniture looks quite good - especially the fish tank coffee table. They have decent number of swatches ( as opposed to the Toddler Stuff pack which has some weird swatch number choice). The furniture will find use in my game especially for kid themed rooms.







3. The included rug has a good number of animal themed swatches as well as square plain ones ( see attached pictures)


4. The wall circuit thingy which can be mixed and matched to make some elaborate circuits ( It is time consuming to cycle through the swatches and find the particular one which fits)


5. CAS - Like the hairs especially the messy, choppy short hair on females

- Cute toddler one piece suit ( which matches with some of the Pets CAS)

- That one terrifying hamster suit ( why doesn't it have any recolours ? )

* Will post the Pet CAS pics later today! (Sorry, I always check out CAS last)

6. The Pet Cage

-- 2 Tile
-- Good number of swatches and the mesh looks quite good
-- Interactions include - Rename, Fill bowl, clean, feed treat, talk ( with many options), study, observe

* I have played with a child sim and it seems the child can complete their homework by studying the rodent ( which seems like a feasible exercise), build creativity and motor skills and get some moodlets from interacting



-- Cats will try to paw at the cage while sitting on top of it

-- Many idle animations for the rodents - they go up and down the tubes, run down the slides, go on the wheel etc ( see the pictures with my very helpful arrows)

* I find the rodent disease and symptoms quite interesting ( for obvious reasons) and will check it out in details and post the various effects and moodlets here.
* Also need to observe the 'Secret Life of the pets' or whatever else it is called

Conclusion -

In my opinion, if they had to do an extra pet related DLC then the best option would have been to release one with C&D CAS and objects sometime later ( not when the EP is still freshly released) + Make a separate Small pets pack ( which would fully work on its own without any other requirements). But alas!

Would I have bought it , maybe ( seeing as I bought KPST without much ado) If seen objectively, I quite like the objects, CAS and gameplay. i am just not sure how to feel about the pack in its full context.

The furniture looks nice, but it's a shame we have to paid extra for it.

The beds are still flat with no 3D mesh though. 2/10 Did not pay for the first time, will not pay for again.

Also the rodent mesh looks like a disgusting mess. 1/10 It's barely enough polygons to look like a stuffed rat.

The stump shaped food bowls look kinda cute at least. 8/10 I would actually use those irl.

Coffee table is not a functional aquarium, just looks like one. 3/10 That's just false advertising.

The rest of everything in there is just fucking recolours of shit they already gave us. 4/10 Seriously, how lazy are these people?!

Thank you for posting this. It will help some folks decide about it. I know I am not getting this but it may help some folks who are on the fence.

No, but seriously, I wouldn't even pay ten cents for the main feature of the pack to come out looking like this:

That is fucking shameful.

When I was taking 3D game design and animation I would have failed for turning in a model that looked like that.

This used to be a AAA game franchise. Get your shit together.

It's looks like kids's pet pack, i can't see any of those objects looking good anything else, but a kid's room.

Instead of being targeted to the 12s this one is targeted to the 8-10s? LOL

The furniture does look like it's part of Cats&Dogs, however the colors doesn't excite me that much tbh - maybe if you build flashy kid rooms? I dunno maybe my negative feelings about the way they handled the pack influences what I think about the objects aswell. I saw the gameplay in the official stream, and it all felt very Meh to me, except maybe for the sickness, but I'm still peeved they made a link to the vet career and ignored the gtw hospital as usual - another evidence that the content of the pack is meant to be part of Cats&Dogs. I do like that the kids can do homework interacting with the cage, but other than that, it all feels like a big Meh right now.

The new illness would have been great but they ruined it by having your sim turn into a rabid hamster on death. I don't know why they refuse to give us anything normal.

It's not cute, it's not funny, and it ruins the ability to use it as a serious storytelling element.

Ummmm did they change the texture and graphics for this game. Why does everything look like it should be on a candyland board game???? If I were still trying to give TS4 a chance, I would be soooo pissed off right now. I mean WTF!!???

The animals have no fur....they look like play-doh.... I know I uninstalled this years ago...but I do not remember the game looking this fake, and really poorly done. Good god!!! no wonder I stopped playing. Why would anyone pay for this? I mean, isn't it bad enough that they turned it into some overly sensitive "This is how you play our game" Bull shit... but the graphics are horrible too???!! Oh hell no!

I dunno about the pet beds design, e.g, a dog sleeping on a bed shaped like a dog. Like, I wouldn't want to sleep on a bed shaped like a person.

Then again I haven't looked at a lot of real pet beds. Is that a common design?

I think that is why we have seen so many rugs in TS4. They are simple and cheap to create, I guess the designer spent a few minutes (or seconds depending on the skills) to create it.

Wow. well, we can certainly see where all the budget went. That is a fine looking rug.

Some of the stuff looks okay. But it also looks like it would only really suit in a children’s room. That rat picture above? Urggh.

I like the idea of guinea pig disease coming back even if it has been renamed Randy rodent disease or whatever it’s called. But I can’t justify it and a rodent habitat for £10. I have a gift voucher and I still can’t justify it. No interest in the pet costumes.

BᴜT ɪT's GᴏT ᴀ GɪAɴT ʜAᴍSᴛEʀ SᴜIᴛ!!1one

Shigemi, did you ever end up getting Cats & Dogs? I remember you didn't want to because you weren't happy about them not being controllable (and now they are thanks to mod)...

lmao if mods can make the pets controllable, why wouldn't EA/Maxis make some cheats to do so in the first place like The Sims 2? That's The Sims 4, the developers never give 100% passion into it.

Nope, didn't get it and never will. I'm putting my foot down. I refuse to encourage this travesty to go any further

And there are a lot of reasons why I'm unhappy about that pack. That was just the thing that pushed me over the edge of a cliff I was already ready to jump off of

Those are awful pet pillows- they look like they've been flayed... or even worse!

SimsCommunity (who normally praises TS4 and the Gurus way too much) gave this pack a 2/5 review. For once, I agree with him... granted I would have given a 0.5/5 rating but, oh well, we can't all be perfect. I'm just waiting for Clint to rip this trash to shreds, ala Sweet Treats Style.

may i remind you, there is a mod to make pets controllable? *spoiler* its pretty boring to control them. most of the interactions are scripted (like when cats must go "meow meow" rants) and its pretty much the same as choose a sim and go "pet" "hug" etc but the other way around. i dont get why you want to control pets...

I am aware the mod exists. I have too many other problems with the pack for that to change my mind.

And it doesn't really matter if you know why I want to control pets or not, because it's not your business to worry about how I play my game. But if I must say something then it's to get screenshots of specific interactions at specific times with specific sims for storytelling, to be able to break those infinite animation loop cycles you were complaining about earlier, and to keep my dog from starving to death next to a bowl full of food, which I told you all was going to happen even before the pack came out.

"Oh nooooooooooo" the gurus said "the AI is so smaaaaart!!11"

"Oh nooooooooooo" everyone said "the gurus said the AI was smaaaaart!!11"

ea/maxis was always lazy. do you remember on sims 2 pets expansion when the pets started to randomly to fall trough the floor. they took like a year to fix that and many people (as myself) raging on how they would release a expansion pack with that critical error and dont fix it right away...

Back in the day of Sims 2 we had Pescado fixing critical errors, to the point where Maxis snagged some of them as is. LOL

i am sure, but the specific bug i meantion was adressed to ea/maxis when the seasons expansion came out. and was sucessfully patched on hobbies expansion (so the problem was truly fixed after 3 EXPANSIONS) it was quite awful seen the pets walking. considering the legs would go under the floor tiles they looked like furry snails on the floor. the dogs more like if someone would have cut their legs and they would be crawling around by the ticks on their fur... so there was always game breaking issues on sims related to pets.