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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Your very own interactive soap opera, March 24, 2004
As most people familiar with the Sims phenomenon are aware, Sims Bustin' Out allows you to create characters who interact with other "Sims" in various everyday--and not so everyday--situations. In Bustin' Out, your character starts out living with Mom, who sports a pink bathrobe and bunny slippers and nags you about getting a job while you figure out the basics of operating the game controls. Your Sim can select from several careers: movie star, fashion victim, jock, mad scientist, counter culture, gangster, and paramilitary. If you climb the ladder of success all the way to the top, you get to move into Malcolm's Mansion. At this point, I'm a few promotions short of the 10 required to get to the mansion so I can't describe what it's like. What I CAN say, is that Bustin' Out is incredibly addictive! The challenge of getting the next promotion, or accomplishing some other goal, really hooks you in.Bustin' Out has some fascinating and odd places where your character can live including a haunted house, an art gallery, a disco, a gym, a military outpost, and a beach-side love shack. Each location features various goals to accomplish, which will unlock new items and new outfits. Making friends with other Sims unlocks interesting social options ranging from the elegant (air kissing or kissing the hand) to the crude (burping in face and give noogie). One of the more amusing interactions is watching Mom laugh when you ask her to pull your finger. Despite the goofy robe, she definitely wasn't based on MY mom! The Good:
* Aside from the androgynous scientists, each Sim character is quite unique. The Sims who you encounter as roommates and party guests each have their own reactions to the different social options you use. Hand kissing may score happy points with Mortimer, the elegant Vincent Price-like resident of Goth Manor, but seems a real turnoff to Dudley, the perpetually sloppy owner of a white-trash trailer. * The stuff you unlock as you progress gets pretty cool: robots, aromatherapy mood enhancers, musical instruments, mooseheads, bookcases disguising a door, etc. * Keeping your mood sufficiently elevated by taking care of basic needs (rest, fun, comfort, food, hygiene, potty breaks, a clean house), maintaining relationships with friends (necessary for promotions) and getting to work on time grows challenging. * You aren't locked into one career, and don't lose ground if you switch careers in the middle of the game. Strategic career switching is one way to avoid going to work without getting fired so that you can concentrate on developing friendships necessary for promotions. * You can start right in, without spending much time reading the manual. Other Sims will tell you how to operate the controls as you go along. At initial levels, you will get broad hints, such as roommate Dudley commenting on how badly you stink, if you need a shower. * You can move back to earlier homes, which helps save money if you want to mooch off Mom, or if living with someone rebuilds a friendship faster. * The Sims wardrobe contains pretty hip clothes, and each time you restart the game from after saving and closing, you can have your Sim change clothes. Your Sim will automatically change clothes for other activities: working out, swimming, heading to bed, heading to work, and bathing. (Intimate areas are blurred out for this last activity.) The Frustrating and Disappointing: * Maybe it's just my system, but Studio 8 contains glitches. For some reason, only at Studio 8, the system will not let me purchase all the items currently available for sale, even though I have plenty of "simoleons" (Sim money). Discovering this after selling the futons to replace them with more comfortable beds was a real pain. The roommate who gets stuck sleeping on the couch instead of a comfy bed stays in a pretty bad mood. * When your Sim is at work, you don't get to see what they do. They're just away from the house. At higher levels for some careers, you at least get to see them head off to work in interesting outfits. For instance, while working as a virus breeder and other careers in the mad scientist track, your Sim will don protective clothing and a breathing apparatus before heading to work, military Sims will change into camouflauge, and those working up the gangster ladder will slip into a black "cat burglar" outfit. But when the movie star as a lowly kid show sidekick and the jock is starting out as a mascot, I would really like to see them wear silly outfits to work--and they don't. * You can only save one Sim per memory card. If you want to have multiple Sims progressing through life, you will need to ante up for extra memory cards. I haven't tried the "free play" feature yet to see whether you can save both a "Bustin' Out" Sim and a "free play" Sim on the same card. * The "Bustin' Out" versus "free play" brings me to another aspect that some players have found disappointing. In "free play," you apparently can build your own house and create a family of up to four people, including having a same-sex domestic partnership if you choose. According to what I've read on Bustin' Out websites, "free play" does not give you the opportunity of visiting other locations. Since getting a chance to hang out at places where my Sim wouldn't necessarily want to live is part of the fun, I hope that this feature gets added when the next version comes along. Since I haven't played any computer versions of Sims or the original PS version, I can't compare Bustin' Outs features. What I did notice is that compared with Sim City and Sim Earth, Bustin' Out really holds my attention by having achievable goals to work for, and by not being too impossible to maintain everything in balance.
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