DS Review: I Love Beauty: Hollywood Makeover

Once again, I bring you a game review of yet another makeup simulation game. (Yawn.) For how many seem to be out there, it tells me one thing: give these little girls some real makeup to play with and have done with it! But, alas, amidst the waves of tweens dressing skankily (whom I still refer to as 'prostitots'), parents are still reluctant to let their girls play with real makeup. (Rather ironic, when you think about it.) Anyhow, I digress. I bring you a genuine, L.L.P.-patented review for I Love Beauty: Hollywood Makeover by City Interactive.

City Interactive? I can't say as I'd heard of them before, so I took a gander at their website to see just what else they'd done. A first glance at their game list looked fairly impressive...until I noticed two things. One, one of their titles has a blatant spelling error right in the name! How did THAT pass through without anybody noticing it? And two, of all these fairly good-looking games...every last one of them except for 3 are for the PC. The only 3 for DS are Sushi Academy, Chronicles of Mystery: Curse of the Ancient Temple, and of course, I Love Beauty: Hollywood Makeover. Comparing the two lists, I came to the conclusion that with the exception of that second title, they feel that boys play computer games, thus putting all the badass games out on PC only, and then the other two games left for DS are blatantly sexist toward female stereotyping. (My interpretation? 'Women are only good for doing makeup and getting back in the kitchen'. See what I mean?) Of course, this observation has little to nothing to do with the actual gameplay of this game, so I'll set that aside now that I've gotten it out of the way.

You're playing the role of a new, yet prestigious Hollywood makeup artist who gets clients from all facets of the industry. As you satisfactorily complete their makeovers, you unlock more missions you'll need to complete, as well as new clients altogether. Sounds simple, right? In this case, you're wrong, for you see, this game does not allow for any mistakes, no matter how minor. If you barely smudge some makeup, you'll have to entirely start the whole makeover over from the beginning to even attempt to get a 5 star rating. That hardly seems fair! In real life, you can just wipe it away and do it over, but you can't do that here, for some reason. It quickly becomes infuriating, and for that, it's another one of those games I can only manage to get through maybe a couple of makeovers at a time on before having to put it away and not think about the game for a week or two. (Thus why it's taken me since September to complete a game that, had I just kept at it, might have only taken me a few days.) Now, what could be so difficult about accurately applying all this makeup? Well, for starters, they demand such a level of accuracy that you might as well be playing with real makeup... I'll go through step by step, detailing every portion of the makeovers.

• Hair Dying - Cover the whole hair with dying foam and wash with water afterwards. This is pretty straightforward, although... SInce when does anyone dye their hair with foam? I've only seen it in liquids, powders, and gels. Hmm.....
• Brushing Hair Out - Take a hair brush and brush the hair thoroughly. Sounds simple, but oftentimes, even when you think you've gotten it all, you'll only get a "very good" rating instead of a "perfect" because you missed one tiny little swipe with the brush where you should've gone over it just one more time.
• Hair Curling - Curl the hair as nicely as you can. Be careful not to overdo it. You take a curling iron and curl each section of hair, but if you leave it on for longer than just a couple of seconds, you can and will burn the hair. Getting the timing just right on this is maddening.
• Hair Straightening - Straighten the hair as nicely as you can. Be careful not to overdo it. Basically just like the hair curling levels, you'll easily burn the hair if you leave the straightener on even a fraction of a second too long.
• Hair Spray - Spray the hair as thoroughly as you can. Be careful, there is not much hair spray left. All you do is just spray the whole head of hair with spray and watch it change color.
• Jewellery - Match the jewellery to the makeup the way you like it. There's no way to get this one wrong.
• Foundation - Use the foundation to match the effect from the example. Try to avoid eyes and lips. Easier said than done...get too close to the mouth, it'll count it as going over it. Don't get close enough, and it'll register as though you forgot a spot. This one is really luck of the draw in how it ends up working.
  
• Powder - Use powder in the right places to get the same effect as shown in the example. In actuality, this is blush, not powder.
• Eyeshadow - Paint the eyelids as shown in the example. Again, be careful not to smudge outside the lines.
• Eyeliner - Remember the example and draw a similar line on the eyelid. This is what I'm talking about with needing to be so accurate that you may as well be doing real makeup, folks.
  
• Curling - Warm the curler. If it gets too hot, switch the hairdryer to cooling. Close the curler, but not for too long. ...Did I mention we're talking about eyelashes here? We are. And it's even harder to get correct than curling the hair. By the way...who ever in real life has warmed their eyelash curler with a blow dryer first?
• False Lashes - Move false lashes on the eyelid and place them in the right order. ...Since when do false lashes come in segments of four pieces for a single lashline? This is absolutely and utterly ridiculous. I thought I'd love this part of the game, channeling a bit of Minnelli into all of the clients who request this, but...ugh, nevermind!
• Eyebrow Drawing - Change the eyebrow contour with the eyebrow pencil. As long as you go nice and slowly, this should be easy.
• Tweezers - Find unwanted hairs and remove them by gently moving them in the direction they grow.
  
• Mascara - Paint the eyelashes as shown in the example. Be careful not to glue them together. ...Easier said than done. I'm pretty sure putting on real mascara is even a million times easier than completing this level accurately.
  
• Lip Liner - Remember the shape of lips and try to draw a similar one. Like with the eyeliner, you'll be tracing a very thin outline here, but it's even trickier, as a singular line isn't thick enough to fill the outline, and if you don't fill it just right, it will dock you down a rating point. But in going back to fill it in, there is a high probability you will go outside the lines.
  
• Lipstick - Put the lipstick on carefully to get the same effect as shown in the example. Don't smudge outside the lines, lest your client end up looking like she's got herpes. (Learned this the hard way...)
• Gloss - Paint the lips with the gloss. Try to get the same effect as shown in the example. Pretty much, as long as you stay inside the lines and don't miss any spots, it's hard to mess this one up.
• Nail Polish - Polish finger nails by moving nail warnish across them. ...Except that this game LIES and you're not polishing the nails at all, you're buffing them with an emery board! What is this?!
• Nail File - Smoothen nails by moving the file along their edges. Ew.... I hate these things in real life, and the thought of the rough scratching they make sent shudders right through me even just VIRTUALLY doing this. EW!
• Painting - Paint nails and dry them by blowing.
• Decoration - Decorate nails the way you like them. Pick a decoration and slide it towards a nail. There's no right or wrong way to do this, as long as it makes it on the nail. They don't even have to match.
• French Nails - Paint all the entire nails with the chosen color, then paint the nail edges white. Nevermind that the edges will look like you painted them with Liquid Paper.
• Acrylic Nails - Choose an acrylic nail matching the shape of dot and move it over a finger tip. ..."The shape of dot"? Really guys? Couldn't you have used proper grammar? :p Anyhow, I HATE this level with a passion, because even eyeballing it to the best of your ability, chances are you'll ALWAYS get at least one or two wrong.

As you continue to progress through the game, there will be three makeup competitions you'll have to compete in to complete the game. Each consists of three makeovers that you'll have to complete perfectly, lest you have to start over from the beginning of the first one again and keep on doing this until you get it right. Eventually you'll complete all three, your friends will throw you a party, and it's the end of the game. A rather disappointing end to the game, at that.

I must say that while on one hand, I do enjoy that this game's a bit more challenging than most of its competitors on the market - it's not quite as mindless to play - but on the other hand, I hate the fact that some of the levels are almost impossible to complete with a perfect score, even as an adult. I'm sure there's a suitable middle ground that could have been struck here. I'm going to rate this game a 6 out of 10 lipstick tubes. A very forgettable game...