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The Sims 2: FreeTime
The Sims 2: FreeTime Reviews
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 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)
EDIT: I downloaded a user-authored mod that cuts the spam down to a reasonable amount. It’s still more than I’d like. And Mr. Humble, wherever you are – I think it stinks that this EP has made the game so annoying. Does anyone there market test your stuff with real players? It seems like it never was, other wise you’d know how annoying this EP was.
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 items they already have in their house.
There are, of course, a few downsides to the new expansion. It seems like sim motives decrease at a faster rate than before, although there are now unlockable rewards that allow you to slow this. It also seems to take a very long time to earn badges. Hobbies are not always the easiest thing to max out enthusiasm for either; it takes a lot of time. The variety of ways to increase this enthusiasm helps, as does the fact that a sim has a particular hobby that they will excel in faster than any other.
Overall, it is a very enjoyable expansion. I enjoy it much more than the most recent expansions, and I feel that it does add a new dimension to gameplay, as well as gives your sims a new kind of personality.
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