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From:Electronic Arts
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User Rating: Amazon Sales Rank:#263 |
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2 of 3 customers found the following review helpful:
For Sims Regulars, not for Newcomers, 2008-03-30
This expansion brings a few new features to the game. The first of these is lifetime aspiration points, which you gain for having consistently high aspiration levels as well as meeting certain lifetime goals. These points can then be spent on bonuses which make life easier, such as slowing mood decay and making it easier to meet high scoring aspiration goals. The second is a host of new occupations, badges you can earn, and ways to gain skill points. These have to do with the hobbies you can pick. Performing everyday activities gives you hobby points, and those open new opportunities for membership to secret lots, subscribing to magazines, and in some instances, new skills. Your Sims could choose to take up dance, arts and crafts (including sewing), fitness, nature, cuisine (allowing you to make appetizers), or several other hobbies. The game also comes with a bunch of new outfits, wallpapers and flooring, and objects, as per usual. A few are new exercise outfits. A last minor bonus is that your Sims can play The Sims 3 on the computer or video game system, which allows you a tiny preview of the game if you zoom in closely enough.
Pros:
- The hobbies are fun and give you a new way to gain skill points.
- The bonuses that you can purchase with lifetime aspiration points are useful, and don't make your Sims superhuman as some Internet reviews have suggested.
Cons:
- The new lifetime aspiration points counter makes the interface look scrunched-up.
- It would be a bit more interesting if the secret lot memberships were a challenge to receive instead of being handouts when you get enough points.
- Some of the hobbies feel unfinished since not all of them give you new skills.
- If you put in a dance bar, autonomous Sims tend to gravitate toward it, making it tricky to interact with visiting Sims. Hopefully a future patch will balance this a little better.
Overall, I would not consider this a must-have expansion. The bottom line is, if you have all the expansion packs, it's a good addition to round out the series, but if you are trying to decide between this and some others, go with Open for Business, Seasons, Bon Voyage, or University.
3 of 6 customers found the following review helpful:
 Greatest expansion pack ever!! , 2008-03-15
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.
5 of 5 customers found the following review helpful:
A great way for Sims to spend their "free time", 2008-03-11
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 the only drawbacks I've experienced. But it's still a good game. I would get it used if you are someone that does not mind used products.
13 of 14 customers found the following review helpful:
 Overall Fun, 2008-03-07
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 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!
5 of 18 customers found the following review helpful:
Good, 2008-03-05
I've only played it for two days, but it has been bug free and actually really fun. I happy with the sims being able to use the new stuff almost everyday. I pre-ordered the thing but have yet to get the code for the poster......
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