One of the best Sims 2 add ons (The Sims 2: Free Time Add-On (PC))

Member Name: candyfloss89

Product:	The Sims 2: Free Time Add-On (PC)
Date:	06/07/09 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: nice new objects, new hobbies make sim life less boring, lifetime achievement awards are useful

Disadvantages: your sims will get spammed by hobby magazines, you have to do hobbies everyday to maintain skill

ABOUT THE SIMS 2 FREETIME
The idea of the Sims 2 FreeTime is to reinvent how your hard working Sims spend their valuable free time. Alleviate their boredom by giving your Sims various types of hobbies to take up. Create a dance enthusiast with the ballet bar, master chefs to compete in cooking contests or tinkering mechanics.

HOBBIES
Hobbies are not just a way to relieve your Sims boredom, they can also be used to make money too. Sims who's hobby is to "tinker" can tinker with old cars, restoring them so they can be sold on for profit. Arts and craft natured Sims can make pots using the pottery wheel or clothes using the sewing machine. The better they get, the more money they can earn from this hobby. Best of all you're never limited to any one specific hobby. You can have Sims participate in many different hobbies at once, or just focus on one, although each sim will be assigned a particular hobby anyway and this is the one they will naturally be best at. If they get good enough at their chosen hobby, they'll be invited to a secret lot where they can participate in their hobby and mingle with other like minded sims.
I guess hobbies are a bit like the trait system in The Sims 3. They make your sim characters less one dimensional and give them some kind of personality and individuality.

LIFETIME AWARDS AND PERKS
There is a meter used in The Sims 2 called the Lifetime Aspiration meter. The purpose of this is to measure how well the Sim is enjoying their life and it goes up every now and then when your Sim achieves his daily wants. So if you're regulary fulfilling your sims wants, their going to have a relativley full meter. The Sims 2 FreeTime improves on this system by giving you the ability to you can buy a perk for your Sim Every time their meter "levels up". These perks changes the game's rules for that Sim alone. These perks can range from permanently doubling the learning speed of all job skills to making the Sim's mood meters decay at a slower rate. My favourite perks include the fertility treatment that increases female sims chances of having twins and triplets, and a perk which increases the chance of alien abduction!

OTHER EXTRAS
The extra objects mainly focus around the hobbies, which I have already talked about. Other extra features include five new careers - entertainer, dancer, architect, intelligence and oceanographer and a whole new neighbourhood to explore. The new NPC is a magical genie who will grant your sims wishes of wealth or beauty if your lucky enough to find him!

ADVANTAGES
This expansion pack is particulary good for child sims, who tend to get ignored in previous expansions. In The Sims 2 Freetime, children can participate in hobby activities just like their parents. It's cute to give little girl sims a ballet bar for their bedroom and boys may enjoy the new ant farm.

My rich familys now have so many more items to decorate their houses and family orientated sims now have many more activities to participate in with their children. For once there's plenty of items to fill my mansions with!

The perks of the lifetime award system are really useful! I find taking care of my sims needs quite tedious and repetitive so being able to chose a perk that reduces mood decay is particulary useful. It also gives greater inspiration for fulfilling Sims every day wishes if you know you will be rewarded for it.

DISADVANTAGES
Your sims have to maintain enthusiasm for a hobby to be good at it. This means regulary participating in that hobby. This is annoying! If my sim has a family or is working a full time job, its hard to find the time to fit in a session on the ballet bar or an hour of car tinkering but if they dont they lose skill and enthusiasm for this hobby so the gave gives no choice really.

The compulsory stupid feature of this expansion pack is a model train track that can randomly set on fire if it is overused. Again, this is absolutley pointless and puts me off buying the train track which is actually a nice new object!

You get spammed with hobby magazines ringing your phone trying to get you to subscribe and hobby "leaders" who creepily let themselves into your house to bug you about visiting their secret hobby lot. This is enough to put me off participating in a hobby!

Summary: Well worth it to spice up your hard working sims lifes