The Sims 2 for free!

[Covarr]

• You'll need Origin. Blah, I know. But activate the product code I-LOVE-THE-SIMS and it should be added to your library. This is totally legit, and will be redeemable until July 31. The really great part is that this is the "Ultimate Collection" version. It's got all the mods except for some holiday-themed one that sucks anyway.
• What's that? Your monitor runs at something much higher than 800x600? You're in luck! SimsVIP has an easy tutorial to run the game at the resolution of your choosing.
• If you're really picky about FOV, about widescreen games showing more horizontally rather than cropping a 4:3 image vertically, WSGF has a tutorial and a download to configure the game's camera settings. It's super easy, and will make that last bit of different to bringing this experience reasonably up-to-date.

Personally, I also really like the Realistic Ages 1 Month mod, which slows down in-game aging so that one Sim day is equivalent to about a month in real life (total lifespan, around 780-1140 days). This obviously isn't for everyone; heck, there's probably gonna be people who think time moves too fast by default, but I thought it was worth linking to anyway. It seems the most balanced of all the lifespan mods I could find.

edit: this mod looks pretty cool too.

[Mendelevium]

Well a free game is a free game. I actually remember playing with this on my Mom's computer when I was younger XD.

I didn't much care for the Sims 3, due to the lack luster performance it had on my computer, and just all around lack of content at the time (comparative to other games in the franchise I mean; it is my firm belief a sequel of this nature should include all the features of its previous installments, and then only improve upon those mechanics and then include new additional content. Instead of rehashing and money milking... etc... etc....)

But, what's awesome is I saw this post 5 minutes before the deal supposedly was going to expire XD. So cool for that.

[Cupcake]

It's a shame it's only the Windows version =\


...  It also sucks that there's no linux version; I want some sims damnit.