The AceGamez Trio has been through thick and thin when it comes to the Sims 2 expansion packs. We've seen Geoff Holland through his Nightlife antics, we've seen Christopher Martin through his Santa Claus beliefs - and the three of us, including me, Dexter Pearson, have all managed a successful robot shop come entertainment mega centre in the Open for Business expansion too. But we're all getting on a bit - we feel as if we've done too much already and so we decided to quit and never appear in any Sims 2 expansion packs again. We sold our business for a small fortune and then just bought a luxury pad away from it all, away from the hustle and bustle of Sim antics that plague DexVille on a day to day basis.

But as you can imagine, going back to the days of The Sims 2 without any of the add-ons is a little bit of a grind. Not being able to go out and party was a nightmare for Geoff and Christopher missed building robots for the shop. As for me, well, I was content doing nothing, but seeing my pals at a loose end, bored and unhappy, eventually got to me too.

Timed perfectly, out comes The Sims 2: Pets - and I just found us something new to do! We can raise pets, breed them, love them, walk them and attract opposite sex with them, as chicks dig hairy sausage dogs. Although we'd had enough fame from the other expansion packs to last a lifetime, and made enough of a fortune to last two, The Sims 2: Pets dragged us out of retirement just for the thrill. We bought some land, built a new house full of rooms for different pets and moved into what I like to call Pet Paradise. Strays are welcome, especially if you're a stray senorita looking for a bit of bed and breakfast - if you catch my driftwood!

Well, it might not have been driftwood - more branch wood, as Chris threw it into the air and Woodman the Collie dog caught it in his mouth. We had a few more pets too - Lara was my mini female dog and then I had Meow the female cat that I had bred from scratch, and Maple, the blue shorthair male cat. I had a sick plan for Maple though - he and my small female dog Lara would eventually make us a million in cash, for I would be the first person to tailor a cat dog, or a dog cat. It's no wonder that Maple didn't like me then; he could probably smell my plan a mile off!

Geoff spent hours going around teaching our pets lessons. He taught Woodman to sit and stay, and he was constantly scolding Meow and Maple for scratching the hell out of our furniture. His persistence paid off though, because soon all our pets were well behaved, eating on time, scratching their own personal scratch poles and getting on together in perfect harmony. Geoff even tried to get our pets working, bringing in money, as in this expansion pets can actually get work if you find it for them - you could have a show dog that brings home the bacon or get them a career in security, guarding the businesses of DexVille! Of course, I had other plans though - I wanted that cat dog.

We really pampered Maple. He had his own little pet castle, which cost us thousands. Chris was making sure the windows gleamed and I was mopping up Maple's maple syrup. He had expensive food in his expensive bowl, and of course, his own room, tiled and airy. Maple was probably sleeping with one eye open though, because he knew that I was planning something - I swear he could read my mind! In the end, to save Maple having to breed doggy style, Chris talked me out of breeding feline Maple and canine Lara. "Don't you think it's been tried before, Dex?" - I guess I neglected to think things over. "And anyway" Chris proclaimed "Shouldn't you be trying to breed Lara with Woodman instead?"

He was right. But I thought I'd lie low on the breeding front for a while and get to grips with other things in this expansion pack. Meow, our custom breed cat, was great fun to have around the house. She was brought to life using the excellent create-a-pet system; you start off with a blank cat, or dog, and then you can add a coloured coat, then additional layers of other patterns and colours. You could start off with an all white cat like we did with Meow, and then add brown spots for the second layer, then white stripes for the third layer, which will then make those spots into spots of original coat coloured stripes - you can then add layers that colour specific body parts, like the front paw, or one of the ears, and before you know it, you have eight or so subtle layers that just precisely colour your pet to you liking. After going though the layering you can morph the face in a similar way to how you can with humans and then you can even select your pet's star sign and personality - treading lines between friendliness and independence, or genius and doofus - so in the end you'll get a perfect looking pet with a perfect temperament to match.

Unfortunately I had a little run in with a wolf - who apparently turned out to be the leader of the pack. You can tell this because he'll have yellow glowing eyes. This wolf didn't take a shining to me, but if he had, if he'd have gotten over familiar with me, eaten our food and slept in our pet beds, then one day he might have bitten me. Geoff told me that he'd seen a real life werewolf skipping down the streets of DexVille at night. I didn't believe him - I just put his craziness down to nightlife withdrawal symptoms - but he might have been right after all. If the leader of the pack wolf had bitten me, I could have been the next werewolf to dance down the streets of DexVille under a full moon.

Anyway, night time came. I forgot to tell you, but when I was having this run in with the wolf, Chris had locked all our pets in one room so hopefully some of them could become more than just friends. Our cats Maple and Meow seemed to be getting on well, but Woodman and Lara were several feet apart. It looked as if Woodman just wanted to lie in his basket, while Lara just stood there and felt all alone. Looking in from the outside, it appeared as if our plan of locking in the animals hadn't worked where dogs were concerned.

But Geoff had some exciting news to tell me - Relationship Guru as he's sometimes known had already bred Woodman and Lara two hours prior to me peering into the animal green room. It turned out that Geoff had removed Woodman and Lara from the room some time ago, played with them both, got them familiar with each other and then showed them into the pet breeding quarters. He even set the mood with some balloons that he placed near the entrance! Lara was expecting and we were all very happy indeed.

The animals don't make much sound when they're making puppies or kittens - the door on the castle shuts and you see fireworks explode in front of your own eyes! Of course, the textures and animations for the pets look superb and I especially love the interactions you get between man and dog, dog and cat, and cat and house! Come on, we all know those felines only love you for your house! With pet animations come pet sounds and we have a large array of yelps, meows and barks, along with loads of simish dialogue that sounds as if our Sims are talking gibberish to the pets, as we probably would in real life anyway! While the graphics haven't really improved and the rest of the sound remains the same, it seems like this expansion enhances the animation side a lot more than any of the expansions prior to this.

We all got a little bored of waiting for Lara to give birth to some obscure breed of puppies and with Christmas just around the corner, Chris got all giddy at the prospect of Santa Claus coming around to visit again. Geoff was getting bored of combing out fleas and I was just sick to the teeth of feeding these four legged animals - all they wanted to do was pee and eat. Just like us really, except I had no control of the order in which they do these things - the pets do what they want when they want. Things got a little out of control. Stray dogs came to stay over and skunks often came around to stink the place out. The novelty of owning pets in the Sim world had worn off.

When morning came, the pet police arrived to give the AceGamez Trio a telling off. He explained that he was taking away our animals and taking them to the adoption centre so somebody more deserving could have our animals. In some ways we were heartbroken but in other ways we were glad - we could now go back to normality. You see, The Sims 2: Pets is probably the weakest expansion pack of the lot. Only really bringing pets and pet items to the table, once you see past the novelty of putting out food for your animals and then failing to create a cat dog, or avoiding becoming a werewolf, you'll soon be visiting nightclubs in Nightlife or opening another shop in Open for Business again. There are some neat features, like being able to integrate families in the neighbourhood screen - which makes it easy to create a pet and then just throw them into any existing family, and Maxis have also added a games tip encyclopaedia for you to find out numerous bytes of information for all the expansion packs you own - but, like the pets in our family in this game, the novelty of this expansion will soon wear off. The Sims 2: Pets isn't for life - it's just for Christmas… this Christmas!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).