DS Review: Imagine Boutique Owner

Okay. With as much as I've whined and complained about the Imagine line of games, you're not doubt asking yourselves why I keep putting myself through this torture time and time again every time they put out a new title. Masochism, maybe? I don't know. And yet, I jumped through hoops to score a copy of this one pretty much as soon as it was released. I honestly can't even answer the "why?!" question anymore.

Anyway... It would have appeared that Imagine finally put out a better title than usual. You play a girl named Katie who inherits the family boutique from her grandfather, and has to keep one-upping and outdoing the city rival, Mr. Cheepo (who looks creepily like Alec Baldwin). This "boutique" eventually turns into somewhat of a mini-mall in which the mayor, the elite (Miss Van der Velt, who looks suspiciously like Paris Hilton), and pop star Ashley all shop at and increase the popularity of. You have to thwart off shoplifters (who are sent to your store by Mr. Cheepo), keep all your customers happy, and generally do a LOT of running back and forth between departments.

I find it interesting that you spend more time having to guess what exactly your customers want to buy than anything else. Even when it fits the bill, there's times when they still don't like what you present them with. What-ever. More curious is in your toy shop, where Katie creates her own stuffed animals, not a single stitch goes into those plushies. You just stick them together willy nilly and they magically hold. (Wow, I hope no kid gets the idea to try this out at Build-A-Bear or anything...) And no matter how you sign your name on your creations - even if you just scribble, it will still use the signature you used on the initial contract you signed when you inherited this boutique. (Better sign it neatly, or it'll mock you in the face every time you sign anything for the rest of the game!)

I guess I have no room to complain here because it's the same way the real world works too, but for every holiday, your boutique gets all pimped out and commercialized for each respective holiday. Which I think is just further perpetuating things a little bit more with the current generation, but oh well. Also, Katie must be awfully uncomfortable. Any time she's not moving around, she automatically strikes a model-esque pose; one leg extended far in front of the other.

Overall, I had very little to complain about with this title. The accuracy of the stylus even seemed to be fixed for this game! The loading screens are a little slow, but anyone can live with that. My only gripe - and this may just have been my cartridge, I don't know - is upon completing the jewelry store chapter, my game ALWAYS locks up. No matter what I do. I even created a new file and started again, and it did it at the same spot, 3 times. If anyone else has had this problem, I'd like to hear about it. Otherwise, I'm going to try and get a refund, or else just sell the sucker on Ebay. What a pity.... I knew there had to be a catch.

Since I don't know whether or not the glitch was because of faulty programming or the cartridge itself, I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume I got a dud here. The game, APART from that, I will rate a big fat 7 cash registers out of 10. Which is much more than I can say for pretty much any other Imagine title I've tried this far.