Product Description

Now 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!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #343 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2008-02-26
• ESRB Rating: Teen
• Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: 2.00 pounds

Features

• Discover new activity types
• New group activities
• Hobbies offer lifetime rewards
• Requires select Sims 2 titles to play
• (See Product Description for more details)

Amazon.com

Now 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 items for your Sims to use in their daily lives including clothing and pottery. Make your Sims unique as they discover secondary goals and expanded aspirations in life. Your Sims can unlock secret rewards by mastering their hobbies and advancing all-new careers. Explore a variety of new hobbies that will change your Sims' lives.

Features:

• All-new hobbies include basketball, soccer, restoring cars, ballet or searching for alien life in outer space
• As your Sims master new activities they'll unlock new 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
• 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 or get poison ivy while hiking
• Requires The Sims 2, The Sims 2 Special DVD Edition, The Sims 2 Holiday Edition, or The Sims 2 Deluxe to play.

Customer Reviews

Could've been a tad better.
The Sims 2 Free Time could've been a tad better. Like the many game reviews before me, I would say that this particular expansion pack can be a bit annoying at times. I get really tired of my sims tossing the football, telling dirty jokes ALL the time, getting phone calls from the hobby NPC's. I've had to put SO many hacks in my game just to get rid of the little nuisances that should've been reduced to a minimum level to begin with.

All that having been said, I do like having my Sims choose a secondary aspiration. I like having my Sims be able to compete in contests for cash rewards and plaques. So, yeah, I'd recommend this game to others... just don't download EA's patch for the game. Whatever annoyances you have, you can usually find fixes for on modthesims2.com, or insimenator.net, they're MUCH more reliable. Just do searches within those two sites, and you're bound to come up with something to remedy your problem. All in all, in my opinion, this game is worth it. Hope this review makes your decision easier for you... one way or the other!

Hmm
Me being a Sims fan since the third Sims 1 expansion pack of coarse I got this game the day it came out. It's very fun. If you don't like pre-destined hobbies you can download a hack to choose your own. Do a google search for it. Also there is alot of hobby leaders calling constantly. But if you download the Freetime patch there will be pop-ups instead of phone calls. But when downloading the Freetime patch be careful. Restore your game etc. Alot of the sims community noticed the patch screwed up there game. I have never gotten a glitch in my game so the patch worked for me and it's delightful.The game is so awsome it adds so much to this game. I recommend getting it!

Don't download the patch, whatever you do!
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 the game virtually unplayable. The only way to fix this is by uninstalling the expansion pack (loosing all your saved games, in the meantime) and praying that you still have both disks and the stupid code EA makes you enter to...surprise...make sure you aren't a pirate.

And whatever you do, don't download the patch again, after that. Maybe someday EA will make a better patch that doesn't ruin your game. Maybe they already have; I haven't checked the site lately. But I'm not taking my chances. I'm just going to grit my teeth and play the thing, bugs and all.

Like I said, other than that it really is a good expansion pack. Once you get past the bad things, it the hobby system really does add a lot of depth and personality to your game. So go ahead and get it, if you want; just know what you're getting into.