The Sims Bustin’ Out

Maxis' popular Sims franchise made a successful transition to home consoles with the simply named The Sims last year. The console versions of the game managed to bring the core gameplay mechanics of the PC game to the GameCube, PlayStation and Xbox with nary a hitch. To follow up the successful debut, Maxis has gone back to the drawing board and cooked up an ambitious sequel that handily tops its predecessor by building on the solid foundation it provided. This time out, the game--aptly titled The Sims Bustin' Out--takes some assured strides toward achieving a unique identity that's far more console-oriented than its predecessor. We had the chance to get an exclusive look at the PlayStation 2 version of the game and are pleased by what we've seen. Whereas the original Sims console game was a bit on the conservative side in terms of tweaking with the established Sims formula, Bustin' Out is shaping up to be a much more confident evolution of the series.

Does this make me look fat?

For anyone unfamiliar with The Sims phenomenon, the franchise revolves around the care of a virtual person, called a "sim." In the PC and last year's console game, you played the role of an omnipotent caretaker who tended to a sim's many survival needs. Surprisingly, despite the rather needy nature of a sim, who required much management on the part of players, the franchise has become a juggernaut of "Energizer Bunny" proportions. As mentioned earlier, last year's console game was a solid, albeit somewhat conservative, evolution of the franchise for home consoles. Some minor tweaking was done to the core mechanics of the franchise, such as the inclusion of a dedicated single-player mode, a two-player mode, and the introduction of unlockable items. However, the game still bore a very close resemblance to its PC brethren. For The Sims Bustin Out, Maxis has gone and overhauled every aspect of last year's game, and, while the ultimate goal of the game is still to end up living a fabulous life in a palatial home with a lot of cool stuff, the journey leading to that has changed.

The first thing you'll notice when you fire up The Sims Bustin' Out's single-player get a life mode is that both the interface and graphics have been overhauled. The new interface does a fine job of highlighting the plethora of new options available to you as you create your sims. As always, you'll have to pick a gender, as well as decide on various attributes to assign to your sim's personality. You'll also be able to customize many aspects of your sim's appearance. Bustin' Out features a meaty character editor that surpasses last year's entry by leaps and bounds. Not only do you have more options to tweak on your sim's face, but you'll be given many more parts to choose from as you try to create just the right look for your virtual self. The creation screen also serves as an excellent taste of the new graphics engine for this year's game, which pumps out bigger and better animated sims that have much more personality. You'll notice the new animations the moment you start changing clothes on your sim, as they'll react to the new outfits as you cycle through them.

That's going to hurt.

Once you've settled on the right look for your sim, you'll start the game in a fantasy sequence that finds you at a nightclub. Your brief interactions on the dance floor offer a brief taste of some of the advanced behavior you'll be engaging in later in the game. As in last year's game, just when things start to get interesting, dear old Mom sucks you out of your daydream and back to your reality of being an adult sim living with your parent.