DS Review: Drama Queens

You know, from a company such as Majesco, I tend to associate them with high quality level games. Silly sometimes, but usually pretty awesome. These are the people who brought us such titles as the Cake Mania series, Age of Empires (well, the DS version, anyhow...), the Cooking/Gardening Mama games, Operation Vietnam, just to name a few of the large myriad of games they put out. But, for every game company out there, there's bound to be duds. This, sadly, is one of them. A HUGE one.

My suspicions were already raised just from the fact that the cover art for this game looked like a cheap knock-off of the Bratz line (another bad influence for kids, but I digress...), and it was being touted around EVERYWHERE prior to its release. It was on tv, it was on internet ads in kids sites like Neopets, Nick.com, Stardoll, Gaia Online; you name it, and chances are it was there. I noticed there was a huge lack in these ads showing any gameplay or telling much of anything of what this game was about...just that there was a LOT of hype surrounding its release. I figured I'd try it out.

There's a reason you never really heard about this game again after it was released.

It SUCKED.

I'm not saying that to be catty, I'm not even saying that because it's a HORRIBLE influence for kids, I'm saying it because it sucked hard, plain and simple. So, all that cutesy cover art on the box? Forget about it. The only time you'll see it in the game is during the storyline sequences (which are vague, at best). Everywhere else in the game, you'll be subjected to a craptastic barrage of TERRIBLE 3-D art. I thought I'd seen bad in the Imagine line, but good lord. This ranks right up there with it.

The gameplay itself is more or less a virtual, 3-D board game. Every single level is laid out in a fictional mall, with more moving parts than the inner workings of a clock, and so many vibrant colors that it looks like a gay pride parade threw up all over the place. The game spaces span over multiple floors and have elevators and escalators to move between them, as well as shops every so many spaces where you can buy job promotions, BFFs, and/or hot new boyfriends. Okay, I cannot be the only one who thinks that this is a horrible message to send to little girls! Want that big job promotion? Buy them off! New friends? Lavish expensive gifts on them and they'll love you! Hot boyfriend? You can buy those too! Horrible. HORRIBLE message. But what can one expect in such a consumerist society anyway?

Add to this that all during your gameplay, you have to withstand terribly annoying music and even MORE annoying random voice clips that seem to have no rhyme or reason with the characters they're paired with. I had to play the game with the sound off because they annoyed me so badly. Imagine being stuck in a room with 4 valley girls who only say the same 4 or 5 phrases over...and over....and over... It gets on your nerves.

The rest of the gameplay is fairly straightforward. You spin a wheel, move however many spaces that the wheel lands on, and you'll either gain points, lose points/BFFs/boyfriends/secret cards, or have the option to shop. You get a goal at the beginning of each level to complete before the end of the round (oh, did I mention there's only 5 turns a round?) and if you fail to complete this, you'll have to play it all over again until you do. Sometimes your secret cards may help you, but usually...not so much.

To be honest, this is one game I couldn't play all the way to the end. It drove me so nuts with how incredibly stupid the whole concept of the game was. I played through the first 5 or 6 rounds and finally gave up after seeing that it's just the same thing over and over and really isn't even fun. The other 3 girls in the game will do nothing but take every excuse to backstab you at every opportunity that presents itself , and one ends up feeling quite victimized after playing. How exactly does that spell out fun? I'm giving this game a rating of 2 out of 10 raging hormal teenage brats.