The Sims Bustin' Out N-Gage
Product Information
Product Details: The Sims Bustin' Out
| Genre | Simulation |
|---|---|
| Style | Life Development Sim |
| Platform | N-Gage |
| Release Date | 2004-05-14 |
| Number of Same Screen Players | 1 |
Product Description: The Sims Bustin' Out
The control scheme in this portable version has been designed to match the NGage's button layout. One big difference in controlling the game concerns the way players move their Sims from place to place. As in the Game Boy Advance version of the title, players take direct, driving control of their characters, instead of clickqueuing a string of actions for Sims to follow in turn.
More similar to the console than the home computer versions of the game, The Sims Bustin' Out focuses on a single character who gradually develops through a loosely scripted story line. Player characters begin the game living in a barn, so there's nowhere to go but up. As they develop skills and meet certain goals, characters can unlock useful objects, move into nicer homes, and improve their lifestyles as players see fit. ~ T.J. Deci, All Game Guide
User Reviews: The Sims Bustin' Out
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7.5
, October 26, 2006Reviewer:
Mr.Anji V.I.P - See all Mr.Anji V.I.P's reviews
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Pros: Graphic,virtual life playing, lots of staff
Cons: easy get bored
The Sims Bustin' Out for the N-Gage is a fairly direct port of The Sims Bustin' Out for the Game Boy Advance. The game takes much of the fundamentals from The Sims for the PC and then streamlines the experience by removing some of the sandbox aspects of the gameplay, thus turning it into more of a traditional game, complete with predefined goals, minigames, and the like. The end result is pretty different from Maxis' original lifestyle simulation, but it's still a laid-back game that carries some inherent appeal, despite the presentation's rough edges.
-chips vendor (appropriately named Olde Salty), a burly biker named Dusty Hogg, and an aspiring politician named Nora Zeal-ott, among many others. Since the encounters your sim will have won't vary too radically, the replay value for Bustin' Out isn't great. However, the core game is long enough that this isn't too big an issue, really.
...
You start the game as a sim--a rough approximation of a living, breathing person--who has moved out from the big SimCity to his uncle's farm in SimValley for the summer. You'll define the basic characteristics of your sim, which includes physical stuff like gender and hair color, as well as personality traits, like cleanliness, sociability, and zodiac sign. These stats will factor into the basic needs of your sim, which include food, hygiene, sleep, social interaction, stamina, bladder, entertainment, and homesickness. These needs are represented by a row of bars at the bottom of the screen, and as your sim goes about his or her business, these bars will slowly drop. If a bar gets too low, your sim won't function correctly. Micromanaging these needs has always been one of the fundamentals of The Sims, and quite frankly, it's not particularly fun. But, to its credit, The Sims Bustin' Out does a fairly good job of making these needs easy to fulfill, which means you can spend more time running errands, rearranging the furniture in and buying new furniture for your living space, chatting with the other sims, and meeting goals to advance your sim to the next level.
But as much as you alter the basic makeup of your sim, the characters that you'll encounter in SimValley don't really change much from game to game. As a result, you'll generally meet the same group of sims, which includes your Uncle Hayseed, a salty old sea captain-turned-fish-and
Conversing with the other residents in SimValley is a big part of the game, since your talks can lead to occasional errands. More importantly, though, these dialogues build stronger relationships with other sims. Basically, these conversations are driven by a short list of statement options, which have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on your relationships. However, it doesn't take long to figure out the different effects various statements will have, and since the statement options recycle with great frequency, this aspect of the gameplay turns into a rote mechanic before long.