When you hear the name America's Next Top Model, what do you think of? Probably things like fashion, glamour, vogue... The series itself is a hit or miss; you either love it or you hate it. I personally don't care for it much, but I can appreciate it for what it is. Now... when somebody makes a game of a show, you expect it to at least be a little bit relevent, right?Wrong.
Who knows if this game was even licensed...Tyra Banks doesn't make a single appearance in the game. And ANYONE who's ever seen the show knows how central she is to the series. There's an immediate docking of points right there for me. Second...well, to put it bluntly, this game sucks. You start out in your chic, modern NY (I assume) apartment, where you'll find your fashion consultant (who does absolutely NOTHING), a personal shopper (who also does zilch except stand there and look pretty) and....that's your whole team. Great, isn't it? You'll also find that navigating through your apartment is SO much more difficult than need be and that they should've just cut this entirely from the game. The only actual things you do here are you check your PDA each morning to see what your schedule for the day is, and you eat a bowl of fruit on your way out the door. You aren't allowed to leave your apartment until you do so. Now, I can understand the reasoning of this - I'm sure it's a subtle anti-anorexia ploy by the game developers, knowing that young impressionable girls will be playing this game. However, your fashion consultant insists you eat an apple before you leave...and your model eats the whole bowl. Um. Prelude to bulimia, anyone? (I mean, she is a model. She just binged. Her manager would probably force her to go purge if they found out.) Honestly, they could have entirely done away with the apartment scene altogether and nobody would be any the wiser. (Anyone who's played the game would quickly tell you that it'd be better without it.)
That aside, there's only four things you do in this actual game. You go by the schedule of a work week, Monday through Friday, so one of these activities WILL be repeated at least once throughout your week. You have four options:
- Makeup
- Creating outfits
- Photoshoots
- Practicing your catwalk
In each of the makeup rounds, you're given a model, and are supposed to make her over in 3 minutes or less. Nevermind that the application process in this game is slow, tedious, and it takes trial and error to even figure out if you're even close to getting it right. You get a tiny picture in the corner of the screen that you're supposed to copy. ....HA. HA HA HA HA HA. That's funny. You can copy it EXACTLY, and you'll still fail. You have to watch the style meter on the left screen (oh, did I mention this game requires you to hold your DS sideways like a book? ...I didn't? Well, you do. Which only adds to my annoyance with this game even more.) and if you have the wrong shade of makeup, it won't move. If you have the correct shade, keep applying it until there's nowhere else to put it, so the bar keeps raising. Simply going by the reference picture will NOT help you achieve this, I found. Now, you also have to apply about 2 or 3 coats of each type of makeup. RIDICULOUS. This has got to be one of the most stressful, yet nonsensical makeup games ever.
Then we have the outfits you throw together. This is at least a little bit easier...you just pick a top, a bottom, and shoes. You're thrown a general style to try and create an outfit for, but again, following that won't give you top marks. It's pretty much trial and error...go down through the pieces, see which ones raise the style bar the most, and use them. Usually, the pieces look TERRIBLE together, but you get reviews such as: "Oh! That is so fresh and modern!" *eyeroll*
Then, photoshoots. I thought this would be the best part of the game, but no. Nooooo. All you do is you trace your stylus over a weird pattern that shows up on the right screen, and if you get it exact, you get a top score for that photo. Miss a little of the pattern (which is often what happens, since you only get THREE SECONDS to trace them) and you get half points. Don't make it to the end of the pattern, and you fail it. You have 10 photos to take each time. Meanwhile, on the left screen, your model does the same few poses over...and over...and over...
Finally, this brings us to the catwalk. In addition to practicing it throughout the week, you'll also be required to finish off every week with a catwalk faceoff. Now, in the practice mode, you walk the catwalk 3 times. At the end of the week, you only get one shot. Anyhow, you must tap your stylus back and forth in time with every step perfectly so your model doesn't trip. Then, like with the photoshoots, same thing: tracing designs in 3 seconds or less to hit the pose. (Also, you may fall down if you miss in this one.) Then you get your evaluation at the end.
There's no real elimination process in this game. You never even meet your "competition", nor does your performance seem to affect the outcome of the game. It seems impossible to fail out. The whole game seemed to be put together very quickly and cheaply, if you ask me. Especially for one with such a big name show backing it. Overall, I was extremely disappointed with this title. If I were you, I would NOT waste my time playing it...none of it's even fun. Rating it a 2 out of 10 runways.
No comments:
Post a Comment