Product Description

Requires The Sims: 2, The Sims 2: Special DVD Edition, The Sims 2: Holiday Edition, or The Sims 2: Deluxe to play

In Free Time your Sims can rediscover the joys of leisure time! Awaken your Sims` true passions in life as they discover and excel at all-new activities. Whether they`re tossing a football with the family, practicing ballet, restoring cars with friends, or building train sets, your Sims now have more ways to build skills, enhance friendships, and make their lives more successful. Craft new, unique items for your Sims to use in their daily lives including clothing, pottery, and more. Your Sims will even unlock secret rewards by mastering their hobbies and advancing all-new careers. Explore a wide variety of new hobbies that will change your Sims` lives!

• Discover your Sims` passion from a wide range of new activity types, from sports to science to arts and crafts. All-new hobbies include basketball, soccer, restoring cars, ballet, even searching for stars and planets!
• Hobbies offer lifetime rewards. As your Sims master new activities they`ll unlock aspirations, earn rewards, and uncover secret lots.
• Once your Sims build up their skills, they can sell their arts and crafts or see how they stack up against the competition by entering dance, food, and video game contests!
• All-new group activities are a great way for Sims to spend time with family and friends. There are even special activities for kids and toddlers, including an activity table for drawing and playing with blocks!
• Hobbies can be full of unexpected moments, especially for Sims with low skill levels. Your newbie Sim might sew a bear with one eye, make a lopsided jar on the pottery wheel, get poison ivy while hiking, or who knows what?!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #865 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2008-02-29
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Platform: Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk

It’s all about fun, personal development for your Sims in The Sims 2 FreeTime. Sims can follow their individual interests, whether it’s immersing themselves in books, becoming an award-winning foodie, flying a remote-controlled helicopter or playing the violin. Gifted mechanics can repair and then drive their newly-renovated sports cars. Sims can rake in oodles of Simoelons with skilfully crafted pottery or by writing a mesmerising novel.

Cool careers bring happiness and fulfilment to your Sims and your storytelling opportunities expand. New cool career options await, including oceanography, architecture, and entertainment. Now by honing their talents, your Sims can unlock a secondary aspiration making them even more unique.

Customer Reviews

Not my favourite of the Sims 2 expansion packs
I own and love every single Sims 2 game but I don't feel that this makes as big a difference as some of the others, such as University for example.

Your Sims are now able to pursue a variety of interests. Such as tinkering, and art and dance. To keep a Sim interested in a talent they have to keep working at it.

Once the Sim has gained enough interest in a certain area, for example, cuisine. They will first have the option of researching this hobby on the internet and in newspapers and also talking about it with other Sims. They will then be called and asked if they wish to subscribe to a magazine. You can of course say no to this and then subscribe at a later date.
Once the Sim has gained enough expertise in their area they will be given a membership card which allows them to visit a secret club. If they are interested in cuisine, they will be invited to Sue's Secret kitchen where they can enter food contests in hops of winning a cash prize.

Every Sim has a natural ability, but it may take a while to find out what this is. But once you find it that Sim will let you know how much they are enjoying the activity.

As the Sim gains enthusiasm in a hobby they gain rewards. If someone is interested in nature for example they will soon have the option to go hiking.

There are also more jobs available. Like choreographer and comedian.

All in all another good Sims game.

Not revolutionary but a step forward
There have been two distinctive types of Sims 2 add-ons; there are those that change an element of gameplay but which only impact your gameplay based on your choices (Pets being the prime example) and there are those that change the mechanics of gameplay. This add-on falls into the latter category.

Basically your characters now develop hobbies along one of ten themes where they gain enjoyment through action. Fixing the toaster? You are tinkering. Painting a still life? That'd be arts and crafts. This is a neat way of generating hobbies and works well.

You will notice that the more you indulge in hobbies, the more options you have with your sim. Worked up a fitness enthusiasm? Now you can go hiking. It adds an element of reward to exploring this expansion.

The changes are not as revolutionary as those in Seasons were but they are tidying and sensible. FreeTime is a quieter success than Seasons, making subtle improvements to the gameplay. It won't make you feel that you are playing a whole new game but there is enough here to ensure that you notice some improvements.

If you are not a dedicated Sims gamer I'd say skip over this for Seasons and University - the two expansions that add the most visible changes to the game. If you are though I would say this is worth a look and is one of the best expansion packs for the game.

Freetime great for My Busy Simmies!!
Even though my sims people in my game have extremely busy lives I wanted this pack oh so much, not just because I have all the Sims games anyways but cos of all the fun things my simmies can do, so at the weekends they do all their fun and family types things. But with this packs diversity you can also use it in a different way for exanple a soccer mom, could watch her kids play soccer, like they do at school events, and if you have Open for Business you can have a clothes shop where the clothes are made on the sewing machine then sold, also pottery shop, a garage (home business) to do up scrap cars and sell them on to buyers. I love this game so very much and play it very often if you are a sims fan i am sure you will love it too, taking into consideration the other packs do make this a more enjoyable pack on its own people may find it not as good, but as i said though I love it!!

Happy Simming