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Basically the same but with more!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 37 / 41
Date: December 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I like many of the other reviewers that played the first Sims PS2 version until I was dreaming of Sims characters I'd played it so much. So I was really looking forward to Sims Bustin Out for my Gamecube.

So far I love the game. Many of the things are similar to the other version, but this one has many more things you can do for careers and fun. The added option of the cars/scooters was a neat option although I'm not real sure for the Gamecube version they needed it since you don't control the vehicle only get in and go to whereever you want and it runs automatically, so it's more that you own one.

One thing I love is that you can go visit other places in the game. It's much easier to get to know other Sims by visiting their homes. Also some of the other Sims have items that you might not have unlocked so there are items for fun that you can join in together to not only gain more friends but so your fun level is also effected. There is so much more that you can do with your Sims also such as Tell story/Kiss hand/etc.

This game is great fun and you'll find yourself wrapped up in it for hours and replaying is a definite must because there are so many different careers you can accept and different roommates you can have and so many different jobs you can take to earn different bonus items/special items.

Now for my complaints. Don't get me wrong these things DO NOT take away from my 5 stars I still LOVE this game!!!

As I mentioned I have the Gamecube version, so I don't know about the other platforms, but this one my car was nothing more than something that took me somewhere. I wasn't able to drive or have control over it. I also have been unable to find a way to skip over the driving screen movie/image/whatever they call them. So it takes up a little bit of time.

The ability to allow my Sims to run on their own for a period of time would have been nice too. I mean, I could set up a series of things I wanted them to do in order to accomplish goals such as building skills and you can't just let them run through. While you are at mom's house especially she will nag you and the pop ups keep you having to punch the A button. I'd have liked to turn off or have a button to run on their own. They have the ability to have their own free will, but it's not really that if it keeps asking you to press a button.

Finally I'd have liked the same cheat code feature they had for the previous version so you could enter a cheat code. (But that's just me I love those Cheat codes!!)

I'm editing this review to add that be sure to have a memory card for this game at least the 251 card. I bought the game online and guess I didn't get enough information so when it came I ended up having to go purchase another memory card. Even with that you might possibly want two if you intend of trying to save more than one game. I don't know much about memory cards but really this game requires a big save.

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This is my favorite game once again since the first one Sims! I can't wait for a 3rd console version:)

The Sims: Bustin' Out! Amazon.Com Review

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 15
Date: December 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Hello, and welcome to my review of The Sims: Bustin' Out! I have recently purchased this game, which is also my first Sims game (second if you count the awful SimCity3000) and, although many kids my age describe it as "incredbly kool u will luv it," whatever that means, I must say that this game is incredibly cool; you will love it. Let's begin with some of the things that make the game so incredible.

The first thing that I will talk about is the Story Mode; entitled "Bust Out" in the game. Here you attempt to complete a large amount of goals to keep you busy. Or, if you're like me, as long as you make sure that you feed your Sim and keep him or her clean and happy, you can stay at Mom's house all the time and make all your money via the Great Big Adventure Japanese Arcade Cabinet (unlocked by connecting a Game Boy Advance to the GameCube and turning on the GBA). Explore tons of new locations like Dudley's Trailer, the slob's home, Mimi's Place, the cranky yet playful female's abode, Clubb Rubb, the hit dance club, and the Casa Caliente, the house of romance, in this gigantic GCN title.

Now, let's talk about creating Sims. The female's customization is very limited and even the largest female body size is set to go with America's unnaturally thin standards of beauty. Also, most of the females' clothes available show way too much skin. The male customization is very good, however, and even though they are still unnaturally thin, the accesories and clothing rock.

Now, for free play mode. I have only attempted this "family creator" once before, and gave up when my best attempt ended up looking like a man in drag. However, you can create adult and kid Sims and make the adults fall in love with one of the four Tutti boys or the four Tutti girls.

Now, onto the subject of decorating the houses. The tools are very easy to use and you can have your house looking like something out of a Martha Stewart catalog, something out of her prison cell, or anything you wish quick as a flash. Wall in your yards leaving a couple of easy entances and install burglar alarms on the outdoor walls to keep those cat burglars out of your house for good!

Now, for the other Sims. They seem to have a fairly wide variety of likeable Sims to befriend, although that annoying Vaugn Braugn won't let the SimDay go by without knocking on my door three times and staying for hours until he eventually leaves. He's not the only bad Sim, though. Oh, no. There are three bad Sims to keep out. The first one, the cat burglar, can only be stopped by burglar alarms. The second one, the social worker, will come and take your baby away if it cries for over a SimHour (One minute in real time) twice. Forget greeting her and opening the door; she barges in and takes it! The third and final Bad Sim, the Reaper, will restart you back at your last save point or delete your save file (I'm not sure which) if your Sim's hunger drops too low or they get severely burned/electrocuted by cooking/fixing appliances with low experience. To prevent: Simply keep your Sim well fed and make sure that they have at least one skill point in that job.

Now, for content. For some sexual material, don't buy this for anyone nine and under. Parents, don't worry. The reproductive cycle is not shown. Your spousal Sim will simply ask you if you want a kid after a passionate kiss. Say yes, and the screen goes black fo a second, then there is a tiny baby Sim living with you. It'll take three days to raise it to a kid. Three social worker-free days. After that, all you have to worry about is making sure that the kid gets good grades, or else, hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to military school we go!

Now, is this game right for <person>? This game takes a lot of patience and planning, so impatient people who leap before they look are out. The game also requires you to deal with things, so kids who like to scream at things that they're angry about will be yelling curses at the "Game Over" Reaper or the Social Worker for weeks.

Pros
Excellent radio music. The Smooth Jazz station is the best in my opinion.
Being able to fine-tune your Sim's personality is cool.
Great graphics.
Excellent gameplay.
Controls can be learned in ten minutes with the help of the manual.
Mosaics on all nudity. This is a must for when you accidentally scroll into the bathroom and see Mama Sim in the tub.

Cons
Takes up 161 blocks of memory (a standard $20.00 card only has 251, and third-party cards cause defects).
Eats up your time before you can say "Simoleon!"
Friendships decrease quickly; try to call everyone once per day to make sure that you maintain a steady relationship.
Takes a ton of patience.

All in all, five stars! To get the most of your SimTime, I reccomend buying a Memory Card 251, the official Prima Bustin' Out strategy guide, and perhaps a GBA-GCN link cable and the GBA version of the game.

Game rated T for Teen (13+) by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) for Crude Humor, Mild Violence, and Mature Sexual Themes.

Good game... or is it?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 21 / 31
Date: December 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I am a great Sims Fan, from SimCity, to SimFarm, to SimAnt, and recently The Sims. I simply loved the computer versions, and when I played it on the PS2 for the first time I simply fell in love with it. I got The Sims Bustin' Out for Christmas and have been playing it ever since. (2 days)

I was a bit bummed to find out that to play in the two-player modes you MUST have two memory cards, one in each slot. I found that a bit "not good", since I only have one memory card, because i never needed 2!

The other bummer is that the save file takes up too much space in the Memory Card. Besides that, I still haven't found a way of building a second story, and I'm not sure if you even can do that!

The controls for the Gamecube are also hard to adapt, especially because most of the controls are pressure sensitive. To finish it off, there isn't a way for you to highlight and/or delete the actions in the order that you want, for example if you had your sim to Shower, Watch TV, Use the Toilet, Sleep and Eat, and you wanted to get rid of Use the toilet, you have to delete all of the entries before it. Bummer!

Besides all which I mentioned above, the game is still great and is a MUST-buy for Gamecube owners/Sims lovers. Now keep in mind this review was written for the Gamecube version, so I'm not sure whether the Xbox and PS2 versions have the same features/bummers. Hope this helped!

New & Improved, but with glitch problems

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: April 06, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This newest platform version of The Sims is much improved and loads of fun. The "Bustin Out" portion of the game is extremely goal oriented. You move into various locations and from the beginning you are told how many goals are unlockable at each location and have a basic idea of what you get for unlocking them. I found it to be very satisfying to unlock the goals. Another BIG improvement is that you can switch careers without penalty. Whatever title you have achieved is still yours when you come back to that career. Just make sure you don't get fired, you lose one step in the career AND a point from one of your stats. You have many more choices for your sim's appearance and can change outfits & hair color/style each time you start up the game. You also get some of the money back that you spent fixing up each location, which is nice starting money for the next place you move to. Overall, it's a great game, I have spent many hours playing & haven't even gotten to the free play mode yet, so it's definately worth the Simoleans!
I am editing this to add that since my original review, I have experienced some MAJOR glitches in this game. The first and most problematic was having my game fail to load after a save. It just freezes on the load screen, which forced me to start a whole new game from scratch. I was quite far in the game and this did not make me happy. Some other glitches were:
1. A sim showed up to visit, walked in and wouldn't leave. He slept in my bed, ate my food, etc. I finally had to reset the game.
2. The game consistently freezes when your baby matures into a child, again, a reset situation.
3. My sim was washing dishes in the sink and the sink broke, the sim was stuck with her hands in the sink washing dishes and I couldn't get her to stop. Reset AGAIN..YAY!!!
This is the buggiest console game I have ever played and feel that this game would have benefited from much more playtesting.

One of the Best for Gamecube

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: February 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

When the earlier sim games were out, I wasnt too impressed. When this one came out, I was hooked the first 10 minutes. The game has a great storyline and the new unlockables and social moves are awsome! A few social moves are the moon walk, breakdance, slap yourself, and Burp in Face. You can only unlock social moves by becoming friends with people, so that adds another fun twist. You can make friends for your job and get social moves during it. There are also several new career tracks, and 5 special ones for freeplay. The ones in bustin' out mode are Gangster, Paramilitary, movie star, and alot more. Another neat twist is that as you move up in your career, you move to different houses and unlock special items. To unlock everything, you're going to have to do all the careers. But don't worry, once you choose a different career, if you want to go back to your old one, it will still be there and you wont be demoted.
One of my favorite new things is the cars. You can unlock several new cars after you get your scooter. The last thing I want to talk about is the new design for making Sims. You can now choose skin color, hair, shoes, pants, shirts, body frame, and their colors! It's a great new improvement for the Sims series.

GRAPHICS: 5/5
GAMEPLAY: 5/5
FEATURES: 5/5
IMPROVEMENTS: 6/5
MUSIC (turn on radio): 4/5

OVERALL: 5/5 Great game EA!

A way to spend many hours

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: September 25, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Simply put, this is a great game. The Sims Bustin' Out picks up in a general sense from where The Sims console game left off where Mom married Malcom, the richest sim in town. This time, Malcom and Mom have split up and Malcom is being mean-spirited and is taking things back from all of the sims in town. It is your job to recover these items for your friends and help them in their revenge to force Malcom to eat a few servings of humble pie.

The game provides many locales of which my favorites were Shiny Things Labs, Club Rubb and Casa Caliente because they offered the more unique experiences. Being able to promote through all of the career paths without losing status is unique amongst the various The Sims games. However after going through the first few career paths, the challenge fades because you'll have enough learned skills and friends to progress through the remaining careers and unlock object tasks without much effort. One improvement would have been to have a few career-dependent tasks that were not tied to a getting a promotion. I like the expanded social interactions this game includes and the fact that you have to make friends to learn them. This serves as an encouragement for not ignoring the social aspect of making friends in this game.

The Gamecube version of Bustin' Out interacts with the gameboy version of Bustin' Out. You can transfer your sime from the Gamecube into the Gameboy and play with as well as advance skills of your sim and then transfer your sim back to the Gamecube. This offers a bit more variety of game play as well as being able to carry your sim around with you.

There are a few places where fights occur, however this game does not rely on killing to progress through the plot. Sims can die but this is generally from inexperience rather than malice.

The only significant problem I encountered was during my first game. My saved game started to have problems that would lockup the system and these became more frequent over time. Working with tech support at Electronic Arts, the most likely cause was that I was using third-party memory cards and they weren't able to reliably save/reload the games huge 161-block save file and over time the saved game became corrupted. I restarted using a Nintendo-branded memory card and have not had this problem since.

(Nintendo Gamecube verison reviewed)

The Sims Bustin' Out

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: January 05, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought it and it rocked. So many places to go! I can't wait till the third Sims game to hit the consoles. It has excellent graphics. With the option to zoom in more than on the original, you can truly tell. The first day I got it I was on it all night. It only lets you have 8 save games in Bust Out mode which is the Story Mode. The game is so much better than the original. There are over 120 new items!!! Not including the new social moves, such as sissy fight, slow dance, and one of my personal faves, Towel Slap. I recommend any Sims fan to buy this game immediately.

The Sims

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The Sims Bustin' Out is one of my favorite video games. Having beaten the game at least 3 times (I'll tell you, it took me forever!) by finishing all of the different careers, etc. I had a lot of fun with it. What makes this game the most fun in my opinion is that you can actually get around and move to different locations with vehicles. This was fun to unlock new vehicles and drive to the new locations in the game. My younger siblings liked it as well. My favorite house was Casa Caliente, a new house in which Randy and Paisley live. I would suggest getting into the movie star career or fashion career. This game is great, and it's worth every penny!

EXCELLENT GAME!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: January 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought the GameCube version along with the GameBoy Advance version! Excellent games! A Must have for GameCube fans! The best part is being able to download your GameCube Sim to the Gameboy Advance and take it with you to play! Then when you have accumulated enough money, and experiences... Upload your Sim back onto your GameCube memory card!!! Just make sure you have a memory card when you play this game! Even though we all know the games require memory cards to save games on... This of course doesn't come with one. I think they should have included one with it like Nintendo did with 'Animal Crossing'. Also make sure if you buy both versions for the GCN and the GBA that you have the link cable for the GBA to GCN. If you don't then you are not going to be able to transfer your Sim to and from your GBA. And the link cables are very cheap in price whether you buy the Nintendo brand or a 3rd party brand. Personally... I have the Nintendo brand, and a Nyko brand GBA to GCN cable... The Nyko I found to be really hard to remove from the GBA. The Nintendo brand is easier to remove from the GBA.
But which ever system you buy this game for it will still be fun.
I only bought this one because I had the GBA version first, and I wanted to take advantage of the GCN to GBA link feature.

AMAZON YOU NEED MORE STARS!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: March 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I love this game so much! It has a classic touch to it, when you start out, you are in your mother's house, and she keeps nagging you to get a job, which makes it feel like it is real, I can't believe that the sims creator ever changed this!

And then when you get a new job, whoever you need to move in with, will give you the scooter, but in the future, you can upgrade it to a car, and other things I don't know. I haven't completed the game yet, I just went straight to play the sims mode right away (R1 R2 L1 L2) all at the same time and then enter in sims.

It has a nice feeling to it, there are public areas, houses, that you can visit, and the mom should never had been changed! Now she doesn't even look like a mom! She looks like a green monster, I liked the previous mom. :'(

OVERALL GET THIS GODDAMN GAME!

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