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Gamertell Review: Mean Girls: High School Showdown for PC
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We keep hearing over and over how women make up the majority of the casual gamers. So it should come as no surprise that game companies are going to use the research to their advantage to try and create games that will appeal to women.
Legacy Interactive and Paramount Digital Entertainment have decided to take this step, by teaming up to release games based on popular chick flicks. So far two casual games in this OMG! High School series, Clueless and Mean Girls: High School Showdown.
Begin as a pawn, try to become a queen.
If you’ve seen the movie Mean Girls, you know where the game is going. If you haven’t, don’t worry. Mean Girls: High School Showdown will take you through everything and you won’t be left out.
Players are inserted into the role of Cady from the movie, though here you get to choose your avatar and enter in your own name. After being home schooled and living in Africa, you’re attending public high school for the first time. Immediately, you learn there are cliques in the school and, just like in the wild, there are dominant alphas that lead and influence the other students. You end up taking various quests to learn about the Plastics, the head girl clique, and possibly take them down. This is done by beating your opponent in match-3 puzzles. You’ll also get to take on side-quests to assist other students or become stronger.
Initially, you’re an uninformed bystander caught between what seems like a tiff between the outcasts Janis and Damien and the popular Plastics. As you progress and grow stronger, you’ll rise up the social ladder.
Nothing fundamentally wrong, just seen it all before.
Mean Girls: High School Showdown doesn’t really do too much wrong. It follows the movie storyline pretty faithfully. It has clear icons. The tutorial, though a tad overbearing at times, does a thorough job of introducing players to the game. The puzzle challenges against characters have a good, gradient difficulty level that gradually increases as you progress. It just seems overly familiar at times.
It does possess two unique concepts that make the game more interesting. First - you can win matches in two ways. You can make the opposing character your ally by matching heart icons and building up his or her loyalty to you, or you can tear down your opponent’s stamina by matching whip icons. Depending on how you win - the nice loyalty way or the stamina destroying mean way, your character’s affinity changes from nice to naughty.
If you’re a guy, then you may get turned off by Mean Girls: High School Showdown. It’s a game definitely designed for girls. When picking an avatar, there isn’t even a gender option. It’s understandable, since you’re playing through the events of the movie as Lindsay Lohan’s character Cady. Just, the whole game is presented in shades of purple and pink. It can be a bit overwhelming.
Somewhat “Fetch,” but ultimately forgettable.
Mean Girls: High School Showdown is fun to play, and you can get caught up very easily in the puzzles and challenges. I especially enjoyed the concept of your character being good or bad based on how you win the puzzles. If you love casual games, match-3 puzzles, puzzle RPGs and have double X chromosomes, it’s worth investing in.
The problem with Mean Girls: High School Showdown, is that it’s been done before. And, to make matters worse, it’s been done better. It isn’t the worst match-3 Puzzle Quest clone I’ve ever played. To be honest, I found myself spending two or three hours caught up in the story. But it doesn’t compare to the original puzzle-RPG.
Site [Mean Girls: High School Showdown]
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