The original name for the Sims was “Doll House” and at a basic level this encapsulates the premise of the game. It’s certainly one of those things people either love and can play for hours and hours or they just don’t get it and can’t last through half an hour of game play. However one thing is certain, if you liked The Sims, you will have a ball with the Sims 2.

In your Sims games you create people and control their actions including their interactions with each other, their working hours and spending their pay checks on building and decorating homes for them. Sims 2 is not just an improved version of its predecessor; it’s a whole new level up.

What is immediately apparent is that the look of the game and the amount which you can zoom in on your game characters has been vastly improved. The fun doesn’t stop there though as the facility for adjusting the look of your Sims is now also improved, allowing you much more freedom and choice to get them just how you want them.

Another great leap in the game is the stages of aging; Sims can now progress through being babies to toddlers to children to teens to adults to elders and young Sims look like their parents!

Once you start your game play the biggest change from the original Sims is the aspirations bar (Sims fears and wants) the points you earn from the aspirations bar add up to let you buy aspiration rewards (there is also a section for career rewards connected to your Sim’s working life). These rewards include smart milk to get your toddler Sims learning at super fast rates, a booster that maximises all the Sim’s need bars and an elixir of life to prevent your teen, adult or elder Sims aging and ultimately being taken to the after life by the grim reaper.

On the whole the Sims 2 looks better and offers more choices as well as more depth to the choices that existed in the previous game. Everything from relationships to schoolwork and professional life is now more complex and offers more to get your teeth into.

If you are the type that likes to squeeze a bit extra out of your game then cheating codes and expansion packs are for you!

There is a large range of expansion packs available from “Sims 2 Pets” to “Sims 2 Open for Business” all of which add hours more game play and new levels of fun.

Check out the Sims 2 official site for more information on expansion packs and also on reams of extra objects and looks for your Sims and their property. There’s also an on-line community to interact

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The inevitable release of yet another Sims 2 expansion pack probably won’t be so high up on your list of purchases this year. In fact, the Sims 2: Free Time is the seventh expansion pack that EA have graced us with. So is Free Time worth your free time?

Well, this particular addition to the Sims 2 centers around hobbies and leisure activities. But, hold on a minute. Doesn’t the Sims 2 already have a magnitude of activities and things to do? Indeed it does, but Free Time adds a completely new wealth of ideas to the already bustling list of sim related fun. In fact it adds 10 new suites of hobbies to pursue. These include cuisine, games (naturally), sports, cars, arts, music, nature, fitness, science and film & literature. It almost makes you feel spoilt for choice.

So how exactly does this alter the game you ask? Well to be fair, Free Time doesn’t really change the Sims 2 in any way, or at least it doesn’t affect how you have to play the Sims 2 like the Business or University expansion packs did. What it does do however, is allow your Sims many new and fun things to do during their free time, and this in turn brings in new items and even new career pathways. Your Sims can now pursue careers as oceanographers, entertainers, architects, dancers, and possibly the best of the lot, intelligence agents.

Probably the most unique thing about Free Time is the ability for your Sims do have dual aspirations. Now if you’ve played the Sims 2 before, you’ll know that aspirations are life goals you have to achieve for your sims to keep them happy (or if you were a bit naughty like me you could ignore their aspirations completely). These aspirations centered around a given theme such as love, money or knowledge. Free Time lets your sims have a secondary aspiration, and this results in you having to balance out between the two aspirations, making it more challenging to keep your sims happy (it also makes it a lot easier to make them suffer).

So to end, the Sims 2 Free Time, doesn’t really do anything new or drastic to the tried and tested Sims 2 formula. But what you do get, is more of the same, but more of it. The dual aspiration system is an interesting idea and one that does enhance the gameplay, and the multitude of new items and hobbies is most welcome. But for the most part, Free Time is a fairly generic expansion pack, but one that die-hard fans, and even casual players of the Sims 2 should definitely look into.

8/10