By Monica Bair
A new look, new friends, a new you, plus the best of the web, The Sims Livin' Large Expansion pack makes living a whole new experience for your Sims. Tags: download The Sims Livin Large PC, download The Sims Livin Large PC torrent, download torrent The Sims Livin Large PC, The Sims Livin Large PC download free, The. Aug 24, 2001 - A new look, new friends, a new you, plus the best of the web, The Sims Livin' Large Expansion pack makes living a whole new experience for. From where i can download The Sims: Livin' Large expansion pack for free? The sims livin large? When I try to install the sims livin' large it doesn't?
When I wrote the first Sims review, I was in the grip of a horrible addiction, one I thought would never end. Bathroom, prepare dinner, shower, call over friends, sleep, work, watch TV, sit in hot tub.. The Sims was a form of pure real-life entertainment that wouldn't be reproduced in such a potent form until Survivor hit screens everywhere earlier this year. How are you supposed to take the time to make dinner or take a shower when you've got a whole neighborhood of shower schedules and dinner plans to make?
Months later, I had a much more level head about the whole experience. Most people tend to peak out on the Sims after about three weeks, which works perfectly -- you'll definitely get your money's worth by the time you finish, and if you don't play obsessively (which you will), then you'll get hours upon hours of fantastic entertainment. Sooner or later, though, most people seem to pass a certain point, usually after building their first pool, or reaching the top of a particular career ladder, where they start to realize 'is going to the bathroom for an hour really all that exciting?' You remember that you actually worry about those things in real life, you lose the charm of discovering how relationships work in the game, and you slowly, gently set it down for guns, or jumping crocodiles, or whatever gets your fancy.
The main flaw with The Sims tends to be with the consumeristic angle of the game -- your happiness with playing the game quickly becomes a matter of getting the bigger, better object to play with in the game -- carpet, wallpaper, bathtub -- because the other aspects don't hold as much entertainment value. Jobs don't vary your gameplay, other than in work times and skill sets, and relationships are more of a burden at times than a joy, especially when you've got an active character who constantly relies on huge quantities of social interaction to stay happy (like my Sim Tal, that high-maintenance Sprite). Once you've had a chance to play with all the toys, build your pool, and mess around with a few neighbors, you tend to lose interest in starting the whole cycle with a new character or family.
So how does this work in terms of an add-on pack? Maxis has opted to keep the gameplay identical to the original game, and has added new tilesets and skins, as well as some key gadgets to keep you busy in new themes like Vegas, or a Castle. The sad clown will visit your abode if you have his portrait in your home, and someone's particularly in the dumps. An expensive cleaning robot will take care of all your chores for you, as well as a bit of entertainment, if pressed. This time around, death literally comes knocking at your door if a character passes away, and you can bid for their life -- with some odd consequences. A telescope allows you to look at the stars and build your logic skills.. but with a price. Use it a little too much, and you may have a little alien visitation, causing permanent personality changes to whatever character is abducted. A chemistry set does similar personality acrobatics to characters who drink specific potions, or turns them invisible, reinvigorates them, or creates an evil clone who causes household problems. And let's not forget the new Vegas vibrating bed, which allows characters to 'play' underneath the covers, causing merriment and a bit of exhaustion for everyone involved. Voodoo dolls and genie lamps are just some of the new interactive gizmos that make life in Simsville a little more surreal than in the original title.
The clown, for instance, doesn't exactly help the depressed situation, but actually makes it worse by waking your Sims up in the middle of the night with depressing tricks, sobbing in public places, or generally annoying instead of helping matters. The genie might give you a pot of gold for a wish, but he could also set your favorite couch on fire, or even worse, give you a set of Pink Flamingos for your front yard. The voodoo doll allows you to have some fun lil' entertainment, but at someone else's expense. The vibrating bed makes life a little sexier in the Sims world, while the castle and Vegas themes help you to create weirder families, and setup storylines that you couldn't do as easily in the original game.
There are new career paths as well, such as a Journalist or a Paranormal, which add to the weirder aspects of Livin' Large. Of course, career paths feel just like all the career paths, only with different costumes and names.. which is where the general problem with Livin' Large lies. While the new additions are fun as hell to see implemented in the game, they're more of a random dice roll in the straightforward Sims universe than a major tweak to the way the game is played, and while things like new plants, objects and tilesets are fun, they don't feel as incredible given the fact that tons of tilesets are available on the web, and on The Sims site as well. It's a testament to how well Maxis has supported the game (still some of the best continuous online support of a title I've seen, in my opinion), but in the end it actually works against the add-on pack, at least in the broader scheme of things. While we're all about new junk for great older games here at IGNPC, I think with The Sims we were hoping for a chance to do at least some of the things that you didn't get to do in the original, such as interact more directly with your job, or get the ability to do things like assign rooms to certain characters.
So that's where you stand with Livin' Large -- most of the new additions are just wallpaper (no pun intended) on the same walls. The grim reaper, sad clown, cleaning robot and chemistry set are definitely fun new gizmos to play around with, but what would have made this add-on great would have been some tweaks to how you play the game, not just a new set of toys to play with.
If you're still playing the Sims, and loving your neighborhoods, relationships, and career paths, then this game will definitely give you some new reasons to play -- and new things to do with your characters. But if you feel like you've burned out on the original Sim experience, there might not be enough new material here to keep your interest through a whole new set of characters and lifestyles. I love lounging with my pals in Vegas but I definitely wasn't as excited about making sure all my characters had gone to the bathroom and brushed their teeth before bedtime this time around. Or maybe I've just started becoming more interested in doing those things myself, in real life this time around. Livin' Large may not be the leap we've come to expect from add-on packs these days (especially when compared to massive add-ons like the recent Age of Empires 2 pack, but it will certainly be a much-needed fix for die-hard fans of the original.
-- Vincent Lopez
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Overview
The Sims is a very different game. I’ve been a fan of SimCity since the original version -- I love taking control of a whole town, building it from the ground up and tearing it down with a disaster or two. The Sims takes things one step further, giving you control over a single family. You get to decide what they do for a living, how they spend their free time, and who their friends are. You build their houses, decide on the decor, and buy the furnishings. The only limits are the variety of objects available for our Sims to interact with. With Livin’ Large, Maxis adds a suite of new furnishings, gizmos, and toys, as well as five new career paths and even objects that can alter the personalities of your virtual family.
Gameplay, Controls, Interface
Livin’ Large is strictly an add-on; it requires a copy of The Sims to be installed. The add-on consists mostly of new objects and activities for your Sims, but there is one other very nice addition: one limitation in The Sims was the single neighborhood available to play in -- Livin’ Large expands this into five. Each is completely separate, families in one neighborhood can’t interact with those in the other four, but the expanded space allows you to experiment with different game options or, better yet, allow several players to have separate games on a single machine.
With over 100 new items to interact with, Livin’ Large provides tons of new opportunities to improve (and ruin) the lives of your family. Included in the new objects are completely new decor styles with new floor and wall styles, new windows, and new furnishings. Build a medieval castle complete with a suit of armor or an overly tacky Vegas-style love nest. The new options range from brooding candle-lit embrasures to gleaming art-deco furnishings. Several fan sites have had add-in textures ever since the original release of the game -- in creating their add-on Maxis had to compete with some very talented amateur decorators. They have done so in style. /samsung-galaxy-note-2-software-update-free-download.html.
The heart of the new features is the wealth of new objects. Almost all of the new objects provide new ways for your Sims to improve their happiness ratings or their job-related skills, but do so with a twist. For example, there is a telescope that will help improve your logic skills with use, but be careful, while you’re watching the skies they are watching back. Sims who gaze too often may be visited by aliens with personality altering results. Other objects such as voodoo dolls, a bumbling genie that rarely gets his spells right, a chemistry set that creates a variety of mood-altering potions, and a clown who’d depress Shirley Temple all add to the fun.
There are also new objects of the more mundane variety. From new chairs and sofas to updated kitchen appliances, there are great new possibilities for pampering your family. The most impressive item is a household robot that will take over the cleaning, cooking, gardening and repair chores, freeing up your Sims to play with all their new toys. Fitting in with the new tacky Vegas decor there’s even a vibrating bed, which allows adult Sims to 'play' underneath the covers.
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In addition to the new objects, Livin’ Large adds five new career tracks for your Sims. Try your hand as a hypnotist in the Paranormal track, goof off as a golf caddy on the Slacker career path, or rock your way to stardom as a budding musician. My favorites additions are the Hacker and the Journalism tracks. Watching my Sim family lose several thousand dollars to replace a computer seized by the police was hilarious, and when I got my first promotion in the Journalism track (to Game Reviewer) I just about bust a gut laughing.
System Requirements
Win95/98, P233 or faster, 32MB RAM, 4X or faster CD-ROM drive, 175MB hard drive space for saved games, a high color capable 2MB PCI or AGP video card with a DirectX 7 compatible driver, a DirectX 7 compatible sound card, and a mouse. You will also need to have a copy of The Sims installed on your computer.
Bottom Line
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If you’re a fan of The Sims and you don’t have a copy of Livin’ Large yet, you need to drop everything and go get it now. The additions to the game are well worth having -- I found myself even more addicted than ever after just a few minutes playing. My wife pokes fun at me for spending so much time playing a game that is basically a computerized paper doll set, but I’m hooked and I'm hoping that Maxis puts out more add-on packs that match the quality of this one.