Livin' Large: Redecorating The Fourth Wall
Reviewed by Banshee
on 10/27/00
Article
Discussion Forum
First
Impressions:
In
theater, the phrase "the fourth wall" is sometimes used to describe
the sensation the audience has when viewing a play, television show,
or film. It gives us the feeling of peeking through glass; the enjoyment
of the voyeur as we watch an anthill. We delight in observing the
unaware participants as they go through their daily lives, obliviously
acting and intertwining themselves with other players.
The Sims, however, has
added another dimension to this familiar metaphor: interactivity.
In addition to serving as the passive audience looking through a
one-way mirror, we now have the opportunity to act as director and
scriptwriter to our little simulated actors. They turn to us with
little thought balloons, asking for directions and blocking for
the scenes we plot for them. And, as in Hollywood, there's no shortage
of actors: on sites like 7
Deadly Sims and The
Sims Resource, it's possible to download known celebrities,
or "hire" a talented unknown for your game. Don't like the way Buffy
the Vampire Slayer was going last season? Just download Spike, Giles,
Joyce, Xander, Angel, Oz, and any one of several versions of Buffy
and Willow. You can rewrite history, at least in your own little
world.
Graphics:
The
graphics are of the same level as those in the basic game.
Sound/Music:
"Yobble-yeeble-diddlewheatle-ay.
Keenywonker huff-huff-huff!" As anyone who has played The Sims
knows, the characters have their own language, translated through
symbols in little thought balloons and enhanced with a very expressive
gibberish. If this hasn't been a term paper for a linguistics
student already, I feel sure that it will be.
Gameplay:
The
expansion pack changes the general feel of The Sims. Rather than
being an approximation of daily routine, now the aforementioned
routine seems to be taking place in The Twilight Zone, with trips
to the alternate dimensions of the '60s, Camelot, outer space,
and bits that could have been left over from an X-Files episode.
I created several families to use as test subjects for the new
items and downloaded several skins and houses from the web to
use in creating scenarios. The Ments (as in experi-Ments) were
my career testers while the Farouts were my testers for objects
and things I considered likely to be dangerous. The Spacers, the
Scoobys and the Tremes (as in ex-Treme personality traits) tested
certain items to see if more advanced families had an effect on
the way certain objects reacted. For example, although it could
be luck, it seemed that the more skilled the Sim cleaning the
lamp was, the more skilled the genie was. More testing is needed
to determine this as a certainty, however, and any Sim with a
bent for concocting potions with the chemistry set will be happy
to oblige. All in the name of science, of course.
While Elvis Ment was being booed by his roomies (how dare they
hiss at the King, even if he is a wedding singer!), Doobie Farout
was meeting the Grim Reaper, and Babylon 5's Captain John Sheridan
of the Spacers was trying to summon aliens (Kosh, perhaps?) by
using his telescope. This was after he set the hedge on fire from
shooting off fireworks. Commander Ivanova saved him from getting
killed in the fire; no big surprise there. Farscape's John Crichton,
another member of my Spacer family, has improved his mechanical
skills by taking up the hobby of fashioning decorative garden
gnomes at his workbench. Across the street, Rainbow Farout was
setting the house on fire and asking the extremely incompetent
genie in the lamp for wishes, while roommate Jeff was spraying
all those yucky roaches that seem to keep popping up. Over in
the next block, Oz and Willow Scooby tied the knot, then congratulated
Jeffrey Sinclair and Catherine Sakai on their new baby. Ash Ment,
game reviewer, was reporting on all of this for WomenGamers.com,
of course, after writing up the cute little jabs the development
team took at her profession with their oh-so-clever little popups.
Some days, she's not sure if she's writing for the society page
of their Sim small town or covering software like she's supposed
to: in The Sims, it's kind of hard to tell. Yep, it's just another
day in the life of an exciting Sim soap opera, I mean neighborhood.
Speaking of neighborhoods, they have expanded the total number
to five. It's nice to have more room - it would be easy to expand
the vision by turning one of the other neighborhoods into a business
district and pretend that your Sims are going shopping or going
there to work. I mean, I'm all for suspending reality, but they
have yet to explain how all that food magically appears in the
Sims' refrigerators. We see cars picking them up for work, but
no grocery van ever pulls up to the door. Perhaps the pizza delivery
has added services without telling us?
Enjoyment:
My
enjoyment of the expansion pack was damaged considerably at the
outset in trying to install it. What a pain! Due to a known glitch
with the promotional movie for Simsville on the installation disk,
I spent hours uninstalling and reinstalling the expansion, backing
up my Sims data, putting it back in the right place . . . very
laborious and time-consuming. What made it even more arduous than
it had to be was the fact that you cannot uninstall Livin' Large
separately: if you have to uninstall and reinstall the pack, you'll
have to uninstall and reinstall The Sims right along with it.
I was this close to taking it back to the store, but persevered,
and scrounged around online. I found a workaround listed on the
official site that involved copying the entire Livin' Large install
CD to my hard drive, then deleting the .avi file for the promo,
then installing from my hard drive. At the time of this writing,
there is now a patch available for the installation problem.
It is my opinion that this simply should not have happened. Electronic
Arts is the biggest game publisher out there, and Maxis is an
old, experienced hand at putting out games. How on Sim Earth did
they blow something so important and so basic as installation?
This is akin to going to your doctor's office and not being able
to get to your doctor because the front staff isn't there to let
you through the door! And as everyone knows, the front staff is
your all-important first impression. Same thing applies with a
game's installation. I was as appalled as I was frustrated, and
I feel compelled to give the expansion lower marks for this. If
it were a minor bug, I'd be far more forgiving, but I can't overlook
the (at least) four hours I lost to trying to fix the problem.
Other than that, the expansion was rather a mixed bag for entertainment.
I enjoyed the new careers and the added room for expansion in
the new neighborhoods, but think they got a little too campy in
places with the additional items without adding much utility.
Multiplayer:
Not
applicable for this game, but word has it that it will be a component
of future Sims games.
Overall
Impression:
If
you liked the original game, you will probably enjoy the expansion
pack, but after testing out various elements, I still felt as
though they could have done more with it. There are many new objects,
and a number of them have unexpected side effects. There are five
new careers: Hacker, Journalism, Musician, Paranormal and Slacker.
However, while there are a few new interactions, none of them
are particularly significant, and some of them are annoying. Perhaps
some of the more frustrating elements will be corrected via internet
downloads. For example, the tragic clown problem has already been
addressed with a clown catcher, available at The Sims Exchange.
I think they need to create an exterminator in the Services selection
window: even with the members of the household, a maid, and a
robot all cleaning up, the bugs are still appearing. Furthermore,
it would be preferable for the house robot to have a "leave on"
feature.
The Sims is one of the most innovative games of the year, indeed,
of the past several years. It looks likely at the time of this
writing that it will end up as the best-selling game of 2000.
Even in spite of the installation hurdles I encountered, I would
still recommend purchasing it. Its extremely addictive gameplay,
exceptionally usable interface, and refreshing new concept make
it a strong contender for simulation game of the year, in my opinion.
However, I cannot speak as favorably of Livin' Large. My recommendation
would be to wait until they release the inevitable combo pack,
if you don't already have the original game, rather than paying
full price for each separately.
Marketing
Efforts Towards Women:
This
game appeals to both genders, or it doesn't. By that I mean that
it seems players either love it or are utterly bored by it. Judging
from the sales, it seems safe to say that the "love" camp is winning
out. Like previous Maxis efforts, the game itself seems to be
fairly gender neutral. As for the ad campaign, I flipped through
numerous back issues of different gaming publications to try to
refresh my memory, but couldn't find an ad specifically for the
expansion. As I haven't seen one, I can't comment, but I am not
aware of any gender-specific marketing one way or another for
Livin' Large, though I seem to recall some fairly mild male target
ads for the original game that focused on a bachelor Sim surrounded
by attractive female Sims in the hot tub, dancing to music, and
so on, if memory serves me right.
 Screenshots
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