The player's objective is to complete each career track, unlock and buy back everyone's many possessions, and become rich enough to evict Malcolm from his mansion and move their own Sim in.

[1] Intended as a "bigger and better" sequel to the 2003 console port of The Sims, Maxis project designer Mike Perry stated that Bustin' Out was created to build on player feedback from the previous port, aiming to introduce "a bigger world to explore" by expanding the number of locations and integrating better multiplayer features.

Thierry Nguyen of Official PlayStation Magazine characterised the feature as a "huge gameplay change" with the variety of lots to live in adding replayability to the game.

[48] Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer commended the "wonderful variety" of people and places to visit, and the increasing scale of the game's locations "from boring to exotic".

[17] Mary Jane Irwin of IGN critiqued the travel mechanics, describing them as an "active load screen" due to the inability to see the map or alter any aspect other than the selected destination.

[25][29] Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer found the game's presentation to be slightly dated and exhibit "ropey" performance, lacking transition animations and close-up details.

[25] Mary Jane Irwin of IGN found the visuals to be serviceable but "not outstanding" and broadly similar to the previous year's port.

[48] Andrew Park of GameSpy considered the game to have made "solid improvements" on its predecessor due to the additional gameplay features.

[25] Mary Jane Irwin of IGN noted the game lacked new features and did not introduce "revolutionary" changes to the series.

"[49] The Village Voice gave the PlayStation 2 version a score of nine out of ten, saying, "The devil's in the details ... mundane or fun, everything recedes into a heartbeat of flushing, snoring, and Simlish.

"[50] Advance noted that the game was not a "faithful conversion" of The Sims due to being "substantially cut down" in features, comparing it more closely to the Harvest Moon series.