This expansion pack has something for everyone.

As well as the new collection, the builders have a lot of new tools to play with. Octagonal and especially diagonal rooms are now a lot easier to build and roof. Also, it is easier to bring things down with the sledgehammer and the DeleteAll set of cheats. This is especially useful for those builders who have ended up with warped walls and no easy way to bring them down. Also, mosaic floor effects are now very easy with the tile rotation and quarter-tile options.

The film makers and story writers have a whole new element of gameplay to include. From bringing up your puppies to your neighborhood being terrorised by a werewolf, this EP adds it all.

Your artistic sims can now easily paint custom pictures with the new interface. Once again, limited only to your imagination, size of the file and ideally in roughly an 8:15 ratio.

For the players who like a challenge, there are some new lifetime wants included from this pack. Not surprisingly, they relate to pets.

For the animal lovers, you have cats, dogs, birds, womrats, skunks and wolves to bring up and also include in your stories. It was when some of my dogs had their first puppies that I knew I this expansion pack was definitely worth it.

For the above reasons, I recommend this expansion to players of TS2 on the PC. If you have not bought it yet and if you have young ones in your house who also play TS2, you will be definitely "flavour of the month" if you buy it for them. Also, with Christmas and the other holidays being just around the corner, this would be a perfect stocking filler for the sim addicts in your house.

Mind you, talking about the festive season, you might want to look at this.

The Maxoids have reissued the Christmas Party Pack but have added 20 new items to it covering Christmas and other festive holidays around the world and released it as Happy Holiday Stuff.

Also, for those who have not purchased TS2 yet (shame on you!), are a collector of everything for TS2 or wish to buy your mother a copy for Christmas and introduce them to this wonderful world, EA have released "The Sims 2 Holiday Edition", which includes TS2 and this booster pack and comes in a festive box. Like the similar version released last year, this is probably for a limited period though.

For those who bought the Christmas Party Pack but would like the new items without having to buy this new pack, the Happy Holiday Mini Pack is available from EA-link (formerly EA-Downloader) for £3.99 or $6.99.

In the Spring of 2007, the 5th Expansion for TS2 is going to be released. Following previous form, there was an insert inside the Pets box showing what is coming next. Thanks again to Rosierealea from the official site who has copied this insert. In this case, it tells us that the fifth expansion is to be about weather and the four different seasons including suitably season-related activities and probably a range of new outfits. I only hope my sims can get to throw snowballs at Mortimer Goth (yes, he's still alive in my game) if he happens to come walking past. Considering weather was supposed to be included in the original game, I believe that it is about time this came about. This is another expansion I will be definitely be looking forward to and over the coming months, the zoners will be keeping you informed of developments.