If you're feeling particularly rabid, you can also use one of your powers to call down a meteor on a sim's head. Not only is gaining karma easier because you can now attain it by completing challenges, but you can also gain six new karma powers, such as the ability to make all the pets in a given neighborhood go feral or the ability to transmogrify pets into another species if one of your sims develops an unusually deep relationship with the pet. This attention to making pets almost as important as their owners extends to the console-exclusive karma system from the initial release. Indeed, one of the most significant improvements The Sims 3: Pets makes over previous pet-based expansions for The Sims is the ability to individually control your pet much as you would any other sim, which means it's possible to play the expansion with only minimal human interaction. As with any other sim, you can also customize your pet's personality traits, voices, goals, and more.

As a small bonus exclusive to consoles, you can create pets from any age group, ranging from puppies and kittens to adolescent and fully grown pets.

If you pick up the limited-edition copy of the game, you can even choose from 10 less orthodox pets, such as a Mabari War Hound from the Dragon Age series. If you want to create a digital incarnation of your favorite pet, for instance, you can start by choosing from one of the more than 100 available breeds or use the extensive customization interface to bring your memories to life. The console versions of The Sims 3: Pets may only allow you to play as cats and dogs, but the options for creating them match the PC version in complexity. Sick of your human sim's day job? Make Rover dig up treasure for fun and profit. Even so, if you meet it on its own terms, there's a lot to like, including new karma powers, a collection of 'mystery' quests, and, of course, the loveable companions themselves. That alone is enough to make this offering feel inferior to its more robust PC cousin, but a different setting and the limitation of only playing with cats and dogs (as opposed to the PC version's horses, snakes, and other assorted beasts) make it feel like an entirely different game. Rather than allowing console devotees of the popular series to import their sims from the original release into this newest outing, EA has released The Sims 3: Pets as a stand-alone game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. If you were thinking that The Sims 3: Pets would allow your existing sims to frolic with virtual puppies and kittens, Electronic Arts has a little surprise for you.

Sims 3 cats and dogs