That means moving out of your mom's house and getting a job in hopes of finding fame and fortune at the various locales in the game. You create a Sim and then send him/her out into world to try his or her hand at life. As the name implies, Bustin' Out doesn't confine the Sims to the household domain. Of course, most of that's all been done before ' the new Bust Out mode is the real meat and bones of the single player experience. It's sometimes difficult to track down the Sim you need in order to advance a quest, and the dialogue is maddeningly repetitive, but otherwise, Bustin' Out is engaging, original, and just plain fun. All the while, you have to keep your Sim clean, fed, well-rested, entertained, and so on. Earn money by playing simple, amusing minigames like fishing, pizza-making, and lawn-mowing. You'll curry favor with fellow Sims by completing multipart quests, like reopening the closed-down polka club: You must get permission from the previous owner, pay off the club's taxes, and print and distribute flyers for the grand reopening. This baby plays a lot like a role-playing game with Sims trappings, and it works brilliantly. The fascination of watching simulated people is gone, but don't worry, that oT Sims magic remains. Directly controlling your Sim's movements and actions means no more spontaneous lovers' spats, no more fatal cooking accidents-and if they wet their pants, it's your fault.

In shrinking The Sims to fit a smaller system, EA has surprisingly shucked the simulation. It's monotonous, mundane, and frightfully addictive-just the way I like 'em. But the multitude of fun unlockables (like an incubator that creates mutant housefly-eating plants) and cool locations (including a nudist colony) motivated me to keep playing, and playing, and playing. When I first started playing, I thought completing one career would satisfy me. Also, since you can play all the careers with one Sim, there's tremendous replay value. Adding this amount of freedom and variety really livens things up. Need more friends? Hop on your scooter and go visit your neighbors to beef up your social roster. If you're having trouble getting promoted, you can move back to Mom's for a while and work on your skills. Your Sim now has total mobility in Story mode-you can switch locations and careers at any time-and it's an excellent change.

And if you're someone who can't get beyond that, you won't like this version any more than last year's. To the casual observer-and even perhaps to some who've tried the game-it all seems so terribly.um, let's see.boring and stupid? I'll admit that The Sims can get tedious, what with all the clicking and pointing to direct little creatures living in a virtual dollhouse to eat, pee, chat, go to work, and sleep. Some of you will never understand The Sims.

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