It's not very often you get to review a game where your torn between whether you like the game or not before you even open it up. The Sims 2 Pets plopped itself on my door mat and I was excited. I love the PC version of The Sims 2 so much so I am kind of addicted, worryingly so. My emotions didn't stop there: I was also awash with a cause for concern. I've played The Sims on consoles before and it really wasn't the most pleasant experience for me or for my console. Poor thing didn't know what had hit it.

I stand there considering my options: do I open it and try to enjoy it, but expecting a piece of… well you don't need me to finish that. The reason being is not even I got to finish that thought as my girlfriend had torn it out of my hands, stripped it of its wrapping and had placed it in my cube, firmly pressing the power button.

The decision being clearly made for me I sat down a decided to see what happens. Now this being the Pets edition, the title seems to imply a lot more pets than, say, just cats and dogs… but you would be wrong in thinking so.

You start the game by creating your family and by adding a pet or two, or maybe even more, it's a personal decision. In doing so you start to notice how incredibly slow this game is. The menus do not want to load within a satisfactory time and it's at this point you start to wonder if the small discs of the cube could become a decent Frisbee. This really shouldn't be a factor of any Cube game but in this case it sadly is. It's almost as if EA couldn't care and just shoved the menus on and decided we can live with lag.

I will say that the characters are easy to manipulate and change so the people, who wish to see themselves in a game, can, in fact, be 'in' a game. It's just slightly spoiled by the menu delay. Of course when you decide if you want either a dog or a cat, you choose what breed, or cross breed them. On top of that, just in case you haven't already picked out the ugliest puppy in the window, you can make them taller, fatter, or generally unsightly. It actually made me smile.

So having built myself, and a rather ugly looking dog, I purchase us a small little house and move in to a quiet neighbourhood. Time to decorate. Out comes the wallpaper and new funky flooring. It's usually at this point I would like to be able to drop the walls down to a minimum so I can see where I'm placing my sofas, TV and dog bed. Not in this version, oh no, not going to happen. Sorry. Instead you get an opaque wall, to an almost ghostly effect, which makes it damn near impossible to place objects where you would like. That makes me unhappy, as I like a nice tidy room.

Of course if you want to be able to buy new things for your house and that adorably ugly dog then the next thing on the agenda is to find a job. Several types of jobs are available, but to reach the very tiptop of your career you have to work hard. Most importantly you have to start at the very bottom of that career line, so to begin with you will have to deal with being a rubbish man/woman or a sales person. It's a clever system, which gets yourself building up your charisma and other character traits.

There are a lot of other things you can achieve throughout the life of this game: getting friends, falling in love, going shopping and so on but you don't need me to tell you about in here. In fact, it's time for me to complain about the graphics.

I know we shouldn't complain about visuals, but the PC version was hardly pushing the envelope but was smooth and pretty (to a degree). Well, the GameCube version is found wanting. You can see that the little 'Cube is struggling. It's trying really hard to deliver, but strive as it might it just comes down to the game feeling rushed out.

Now as you can see I do seem to be comparing this with its PC incarnation, let me just say it's not something I usually do. On this occasion though we are talking about one of the highest selling games ever to grace the PC and when you get a game of the same name, it should be exactly the same. I mean, why change the formula? Well for some reason they took liberties and did just that, and badly.

The typical third person view remains but the way in which you control only one character at a time is not one of comfort. Of course when I say that you control only one character I literally mean that when you push forwards on the analogue stick, the character on screen will move. Some of you may approve of this change, but I'm used to the 'point at object and select your option' type of play, which, it must be said, can be turned on instead of this new fandangle style. Of course at this point you would expect me to be ecstatic that they had kept that same feel. No. Not the case at all. Using the 'Cube analogue stick to move the cursor across the screen is slow and not as reactive as one would want.

It would seem that I could never be pleased by anything from this game but to all your shock and awe, there is. It does keep my girlfriend happy and quiet though, which in turn keeps me happy.

If you're a fan of the PC originals then please don't play this game. It's not the same Sims you know and love and, if played, could possibly tarnish your view on future Sims games. On the other hand, if you have always liked the console version of the Sims, then go ahead and buy it. It's really no different to any of the previous games, except for a few fluffy animals here and there.