The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

Don't download the patch, whatever you do!

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

This is a good expansion pack. In fact, I'd say it's one of the better ones that the company has put out. It has some flaws, of course...some game crashes and bugs and all...quite a few of them, in fact...but that seems to happen more and more since EA took over Maxis. (They don't 'polish' their games; they get them on the market as fast as possible.) However, I do have two major flaws that you should know about before you buy this:

1. It comes with 'anti-piracy' software. DRM. And you can't uninstall it, even if you uninstall the game. I'm not sure exactly what it does, but I've heard it's bad. EA thinks we're a bunch of thieves.

2. If you download EA's own patch for this expansion pack, the anti-piracy software in that patch conflicts with the anti-piracy software in the game itself. Result? It varies, from what I've heard. Some people haven't been able to start their game, after downloading it. While my own game started, after downloading the patch, many textures disappeared, making

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 72 days ago at

This is a great expansion pack

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

Don't think twice about it, buy it. This expansion pack really increases what you can do with the game. There are many new items added that allow your sims to work on their hobbies and pass the time away. The wants are now also determined by your sims hobbies which adds another element to the game play. Even toddlers can have hobbies now. There are some quirky fun kinds of features included. Not to ruin any suprises, I won't go into grave details but it is interesting and fun.

14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 76 days ago at

Great, except for the SecuROM

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

As a former die-hard Sims 2 fan, I have the base game and all the expansion packs. Free Time is the most fun since Open for Business, because it gives Sims new things to do and new places to go. It also gives them new abilities based on their accumulated aspiration points, like being able to invest in the stock market and being able to make a chicken soup that cures colds. Yes, a lot of fun. But, the day comes when SecuROM decides to mess up your game, and then it's not fun anymore. I had the same problem with Bon Voyage, the first game that EA Games decided to put SecuROM on. I played happily for about a month, then suddenly the computer kept crashing. So, with great regret and a little sadness, I must give up the game. It's a lot of addictive fun, but it's not worth the problems EA's copy protection software causes. Bye, Sims 2. Bye, EA Games.

14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 92 days ago at

Entertaining, some flaws

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

I love the sims2, and I couldn't wait to pick up this latest expansion. Overall, it is worth the price, I love the new 'hobbies' the additional characters, the interests and hobby benches, such as sewing machine, dance bar (that's like crack, my sims can't stay off it). I do wish there was more of a randomization of hobbies/interests inside a household. I ended up with 3 sims with the same interest and that was a trifle boring. I agree with other reviewers the telephone calls from hobby club leaders is irritating. It makes me wish I could delete the household phone for good, but I do need it occasionally.

I have a bit of trouble playing the sims 2 with vista even though my hardware exceeds minimum requirements. I get crash to desktop errors which I never recevied in XP. Nvidia and sims 2 don't play that well together.

I'll give this one 4 stars. It has some great new content, but it wasn't ground breaking like Seasons.

14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 95 days ago at

Not as expected.

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

Hi. I am an avid sims player. I have LOVED the sims since they first came out with the orginal game. I have most of all the expanisions and thought this one would add so much to the game itself.

When I purchased the game after reading the review I truly thought this would put so much dimension in the game and give them so much more to do as I play. Well, this was NOTHING like I expected. I believe I did set my standards to high based on the other expasions I have received for the sims.

First, this game Sims Freetime can get very annoyng. Every single time your sim picks up a new hobbie and advances with it, there is a telephone call from the "hobbie master", I like to call them. So if you have numerous sims in a house advancing in their chosen hobbie, then the phone will ring off the hook even in the early AM. Another thing I do not like about this game, is that it takes so much time for your sim to get going. Before the time would fly, for whatever reason its like time has slowed down

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 146 days ago at

Fun Freetime Activities - and Sim telemarketers

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

Freetime, like all of the previous Expansion Packs (EPs) adds new and interesting functionality to The Sims 2. Sims as young as toddlers can stumble upon an activity that they find particularly appealing and get additional fun and perks while engaged in it.

Hobbies include science, nature, music, cuisine, tinkering, sports and fitness. Now considering the different activities and career paths that were already present, these add many new possibilities for finding a fulfilling lifetime of fun for your Sims.

New careers have also been added, new objects, such as the restorable car, the basketball and soccer nets, and new functionality to old objects like the newspaper and computer and career 'chance' cards that allow your Sim to take part in and share their love for their hobbies and gain enthusiasm.

Your sims can now pick their hobbies as a topic of conversation, and impart knowledge to other sims for relationship building and enthusiasm gain.

Sims also gain lifetime aspiration points

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for milestones that take place in their lives. Starting with toddlers who get points for learning the three primary growth skills of their age group (walking, talking and potty training), your sims will gain points to put towards perks such as a secondary aspiration, slower need decay, better luck at chance cards, the ability to make three way calls and give financial advice for cash, and much more. Of particular use is the ability to make Grandma's comfort soup, which drastically shortens the time your sims have the flu.

But, there is something annoying that happens once you install Freetime: Spam. Your Sims are spammed at every turn by the game announcing via a pop-up that a particular sim has gained or lost enthusiasm for one hobby or another. Once you get to higher levels, the spam increases, with your sims getting incessant phone calls from various hobby clubs and sims offering magazine subscriptions related to your sims hobbies.

Eventually, the NPC sims just barge in to your sims homes and give them membership cards to the new secret hobby lots of their interest area. There they can share their hobbies with other like minded sims and compete in contests for simoleons and build enthusiam even more.

The spam starts to encroach on your enjoyment of the game, as the phone ringing is not likely to be a buddy any more, but a hobby club telling your sim about their enthusiasm level. It makes you wish for Sim caller ID or phone screening. Even if you cancel the action of your sim answering the call, you still get a pop up about it. And if you have a full house of sims, it gets maddening, pop-ups filling the entire right side of the screen.

So, great EP if you can overlook your sims getting spammed to death. If simulated telemarketing reminds you too much of telemarketing in real life that prompted you to put every phone number you have on the National Do Not Call List, maybe this EP will get on your nerves.

(Supposedly, there is a user-authored mod that reduces in-game spam, but I haven't tried it yet. I'll update after I give it a go)

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 152 days ago at

Greatest expansion pack ever!!

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

I LOVE this expansion!! Definately the best of The Sims 2 series. I'm really into music and dancing so I love the new music and dance stuff. I wish this wasn't the last expansion cause it's just now getting really good!! I think they could do alot more with this line.

for milestones that take place in their lives. Starting with toddlers who get points for learning the three primary growth skills of their age group (walking, talking and potty training), your sims will gain points to put towards perks such as a secondary aspiration, slower need decay, better luck at chance cards, the ability to make three way calls and give financial advice for cash, and much more. Of particular use is the ability to make Grandma's comfort soup, which drastically shortens the time your sims have the flu.

But, there is something annoying that happens once you install Freetime: Spam. Your Sims are spammed at every turn by the game announcing via a pop-up that a particular sim has gained or lost enthusiasm for one hobby or another. Once you get to higher levels, the spam increases, with your sims getting incessant phone calls from various hobby clubs and sims offering magazine subscriptions related to your sims hobbies.

Eventually, the NPC sims just barge in to your sims homes and give them membership cards to the new secret hobby lots of their interest area. There they can share their hobbies with other like minded sims and compete in contests for simoleons and build enthusiam even more.

The spam starts to encroach on your enjoyment of the game, as the phone ringing is not likely to be a buddy any more, but a hobby club telling your sim about their enthusiasm level. It makes you wish for Sim caller ID or phone screening. Even if you cancel the action of your sim answering the call, you still get a pop up about it. And if you have a full house of sims, it gets maddening, pop-ups filling the entire right side of the screen.

So, great EP if you can overlook your sims getting spammed to death. If simulated telemarketing reminds you too much of telemarketing in real life that prompted you to put every phone number you have on the National Do Not Call List, maybe this EP will get on your nerves.

(Supposedly, there is a user-authored mod that reduces in-game spam, but I haven't tried it yet. I'll update after I give it a go)

14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 168 days ago at

A great way for Sims to spend their "free time"

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

I got this game the dayt after it came out, and it is pretty fun. It gives your Sims something new to do, and it helps them build their regular skills at the same time. And I love all the new objects. But of course, this expansion pack comes with some drawbacks. One thing is that the owners of each hobby lot will not stop calling! Everytime anyone in your household gains new hobby enthusiasm, they call. It gets to be quite annoying. And then when you've gained enough enthusiasm to be given a membership, they just walk right in your house, no matter what time of day it is.

Also your Sims can go a little overboard with their hobby enthusiasm. One of my Sims is a fitness enthusiast, so I bought him an exercise bike. (One of the new objects) What's really annoying is that he wants to do nothing but ride the darn thing all day! One time he stayed on there so long his energy was totally depleted.

And my sims that are into gaming stay on the computer so long they get wrist aches. Those are really

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 172 days ago at

Overall Fun

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

It's been very hard for EA Games to top the Season's expansion in way of activities and good game content for the Sims 2 game franchise, but they come pretty close with their new expansion Freetime.

The big draw is the new hobbies that are available for your sims to do in their spare time. And while this can certainly keep your sims extremely busy, often it feels like there's never enough time to do it all in. It does help fill in those gaps for age groups of toddler and children though , which is a great stress killer as both age groups have been limited in activities for so long. As your sim increases their "points" in a certain activity, options like surfing the web and posting blogs on the pc concerning your sims hobbies opens up. Eventually you have a special membership to a exclusive club for that hobby as well where you can go to do things related to the hobby or even just meet other sims who might share that hobby.

Also in this expansion is a second meter for your sims lifetime

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achievements. As your mood stays platinum it builds faster giving you points to spend in four categories: Motive Decays, Career, Your Chosen Aspiration, and a category to select a secondary aspiration if you want. The secondary aspiration is long overdue in my opinion, as it stops the extreme one-dimensional aspect of picking your aspiration. So now your sim may be obsessed with money, but if you select Family as a secondary, you might actually want children or to interact with your own family more. The Motive Decay section is almost essential these days as motives seem to pile drive down faster than I ever recall them doing before, especially as you partake in the various hobby activities.

However, this expansion comes with some MAJOR Annoyances. I swear that Maxis holds a meeting before each expansion to study and put together some of the most aggravating behaviors possible to irritate their fan base (Sea Chantey anyone?). In this case it would be the phone ringing off the hook and people stopping by chronically at your house (and no... locking the doors to household only does not keep them at bay) as you learn new hobbies. The phone only rings off the hook for the first few points into a new hobby, but if you have more than one person in the household it can drive you absolutely NUTS. And imagine if you play more than one household in your neighborhood. It grinds on a player very quickly. Another bad point is that as you don't do something for a hobby bugs the player by saying that you need to do activities associated to get it back up. So when you're just doing the basic skills (for scholarships or jobs) as you no longer study since the points pretty much are a permanent thing once you get them, or do anything else related to that field it will give you messages telling you that you're losing points in it. The downer regarding hobbies is that a sim doesn't actually get to pick what their "predestined" hobby is. You basically experiment around until the sim gets a highlighted section. This is the hobby that your sim is most interested in doing. It would have been nice for the players to pick themselves, based on their sims habits and personality. Be prepared though for your sims to pick up new gestures with every new hobby they gain points into, and while it's cute the first few times, you eventually get tired of them rubbing their bellies thinking about food or cracking their knuckles (beware, some sims will actually whistle the Sims 2 theme song). Based on all these exasperating things mentioned, this player currently has all sounds turned off.

The expansion does offer a few overdue new things though. The ability to sort and create your own music channels (so pick your favorite Sims 2 songs from all the radio stations or set up your own MP3's), a few new badges for your sims to earn and a new neighborhood with new characters to play. The sewing badge is rather neat in that you can actually make one custom outfit for each gender/age once you get high enough, it would have been great if Maxis had expanded that option a bit more for making custom outfits. There's also an option to study parenting out of the bookshelves now, once learned you're able to click on a baby and see their greatest need. However, I find this option completely unnecessary considering that babies in the game are very simple, and usually it gives me a toilet symbol (as if you can do anything with them regarding) and you just have to wait for a diaper change anyways. Other neat things include Mr. Humble, who might visit your household and give you a special PC that has a preview of Sims 3 on it, and if your household is really into their hobbies they could just get a visit from the gypsy who'll leave a mystical genie lamp which grants 3 wishes (careful what you wish for though...). Of course there's a few new outfits for the expansion, but have to say that I found them rather hideous (another specialty of EA Games as of late, wondering if they let 4 year olds design the outfits these days to save money) and one new hair for adult males. So if you're expecting a lot more content in that area, you'll be disappointed. The last neat item they placed into this expansion is the ability upon a sims birthday to grow up to three townies with you, so now when you make friends with little Marsha Bruening, she can go through the life stages with you, instead of still being a child when you're an elder and wondering why you don't hang with her anymore.

Overall, the expansion gives enough new stuff to keep you busy for a bit and expand your sims activities making it a decent buy. Finding the time to squeeze it all in may be a problem though, and people who used to keep busy creating large sim families may find it near impossible to do now. Still this is one of EA's better expansions and should have enough stuff in it to keep even a finicky simmer busy for a good while. And thankfully thus far this expansion has been bug free, which I know purchasers of Bon Voyage can greatly appreciate. Happy Simming!

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 176 days ago at

FreeTime Takes Up All My Free Time!

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

I picked up Sims2 FreeTime last Thursday, and if I hadn't created a Sim that looked like my wife, I probably would have forgotten what she looked like. There is something postmodern about being up at 1:30 AM on a Thursday night with your wife saying, "Come on, put the game away", while a Sim that looks like your wife makes hand gestures at a Sim that looks like you who is playing The Sims 3 on HIS computer.

FreeTime allows you to have enjoyable hobbies, often with things you were doing already, such as cooking, working out, watching movies, etc. Now, those tasks translate into cuisine, fitness, or film and literature. All your sims will enjoy at least one of these activities more than the others, which will allow them to have more fun and do more activities. If your sim is really into cuisine, he'll enjoy cooking and watching the cooking channel, but he'll be able to do other things such as read cooking magazines, blog about cooking, talk to other Sims about cooking, get a membership

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 179 days ago at

Freetime is great!

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

Freetime allows your sims to have hobbies such as Tinkering, Science, Nature, Arts & Carfts, Film & Theatre, Nature, Sports, Gaming, Cuisine. Once your sim reaches the half way point of mastering these hobbies it opens up a secret lot where your sim can perfect these hobbies. If your sims is into to cuisine a secret lot will open up that allows them to enter a food contest. Also your sims can earn membership into a hobby club once they reach this half point in there hobby skill level. Once they master a hobby then your sims will be in the zone. When your sim is in the zone they glow and their motive meter decreases alot slower which allows them to participate in this hobby a lot longer.

Freetime also offers new interactions like birdwatching, bug hunting, sing nursery rhymes (which sounds funny), watching movies, blogging about your hobby on the computer, browsing the web about your hobby, reading about your hobby in the newspaper, etc. It also adds a new study skill called parenting

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 179 days ago at

Never thought I'd say this....

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

I never thought I'd say this but now the game is even harder to master! Not that that's a bad thing, but I was having enough trouble micromanaging families individual needs and wants, now have to micromanage their individual hobbies too? And keep track or their pets? And make sure they don't freeze in winter? I'm complaining yet I'm happy at the same time. Free Time offers a lot of new activities individuals and groups can work on, and the new objects are quite entertaining. And with lifetime bonuses, I can finally give romance sims something to aspire to, and not feel too bad about it. It's just I have all the expansion packs, and I would say this one is the hardest for me to get used to because you can't just not play it like university or OFB when you get tired of it; there's an extra meter for secondary aspirations and a whole new aspect of gameplay when it comes to hobbies. I'm just saying for me it's going to take a little getting used to. I had a system on how I played and now I

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 182 days ago at

APPARENTLY THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH FREE TIME

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

This is the...7th expansion of the SIMS 2, so one has to ask: was there ANYTHING not done yet? Well, apparently yes.

Our Sims are given a choice of 10 hobbies (ranging from dancing and sports to...video games - Sims playing the SIMS 3? Yeah...deliciously ironic) which not only improve their mood but also their job skills if compatible. Said leisure-time activities can also serve in making money, since most hobbies end up, first, creating something and, then, improving on it.
Yes, there is a new Hobby-meter...Keeping it high will ensure your Sim's admittance into hobby-specific exclusive clubs. There are music and dance, arts and crafts, sports, fitness, scientific, nature lovers, gaming, cuisine, tinkering, and, finally, film and literature clubs - each branching out into more specialized subcategories.

Besides new clothes and items, this expansion comes with 5 new careers: architect, dancer, entertainer, intelligence officer (no Sim-Jack Bower, no) and oceanographer. The controls are

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 184 days ago at

Freetime Expansion Adds New Dimension to Gameplay

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The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

The Sims 2 Freetime offers just what the title implies; activities and goals for your sims when they are not busy with their usual day-to-day activities.
I was fairly impressed by this new expansion because of all the elements it added. When I first played expansions such as Pets and Bon Voyage, I got just what I expected. With this expansion, I not only got hobbies, but I got a new aspiration meter with rewards, and lifetime friends as well as "BFFs".
Not only does this expansion add all these elements, but the main theme of the expansion, hobbies, was incorporated seamlessly into the gameplay. This was done not only with a variety of new objects, but by giving new functionality and value to old objects. For example, I was impressed when I found out that my sims can now read a variety of books, or watch different genres of movies. They can also write a somewhat customized novel, and it is delivered to their door! And sims that enjoy "tinkering" will find that they can "tinker" with many

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14 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

9 price(s) | 184 days ago at

The Sims 2: FreeTime Expansion Pack: Windows

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