Chrissy Games

Style Savvy girly game

2009-11-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

Stylist Rachel Zoe and actress Dakota Fanning at the Madison 3rd Street flagship promoting Nintendo’s new Style Savvy game for the DS. Dakota Fanning told the LA Times alltherage, "Usually video games are more action packed, more masculine. I'm really girly; this is the first time I'm interested." The $29 Style Saavy, lets you indulge all your fashion and shopping fantasies, persuading potential customers into buying outfits, acquiring fashion inventory, and improving your balance sheet.

Cloudy Meatballs game review

2009-10-27T21:46:00.000-07:00

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is the 3D animated movie currently in theaters. There is already has a game based on the movie released for the Wii.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs game review

In case you didn’t see the movie the premise of the game follows the adventure of the Flint Lockwood. Flint is a gifted and very eccentric inventor who creates some of the most bizarre inventions you could imagine. One of his most amazing inventions is a device that creates food from the moisture in the air. With the device stationary over Flint’s hometown the sky is literally raining with food. It’s up to Flint to help the citizens in the game and to ultimately stop his invention before it destroys the entire town.

The gameplay in Meatballs centers upon platforming and puzzle-solving elements. You control Flint as you explore each stage taking out bad guys (usually twisted food creatures such as gummy bears) and solving puzzles to keep progressing through the stage. A second player can jump in at anytime to control Steve, Flint’s pet monkey who can talk thanks to another invention created by Flint.

Gameplay: 7.5
While the later stages offer some nice challenges with using your gadgets and figuring out the puzzles, the early levels are rather easy and repetitive.

Graphics: 5.5
While plenty of Wii games look washed out on HDTVs I didn’t expect for this game to look as bad as it did. I could barely tell certain characters apart from other and the objects didn’t look any different either. We need a HD Wii now or developers need to find the strengths of getting the Wii to look clearer on an HDTV.

Sound: 6.5
The voice actors do a solid job of replicating the voice actors from the movie (they sound almost the same to my ears). The music didn’t really do much for the game and some of the voice work will be repeated over and over again.

Difficulty: Easy/Medium
The early levels are easy enough but the later levels will pose a challenge to younger players.

Concept: 7.0
I like how the game gets you to use all of the gadgets in different ways to keep you progressing in the game. If only the levels had more variety in them.

Multiplayer: 6.0
Really the only multiplayer is for a second player to control Steve at anytime during the game. The player controlling Flint can keep on moving without worrying about leaving Steve behind. The computer will automatically move Steve close to Flint if Steve is lingering behind.

Overall: 6.5
The game might not be for everyone but the unique puzzle-solving uses of the gadgets and one of kind setting (I don’t see many flying spaghetti tornadoes in other games) will keep fans of the movie entertained.

Professional female gamer

2009-10-19T01:22:00.000-07:00

Ashley Jenkins, known by her gamer avatar as Jinx, says, "The first time I really got super addicted to playing games was with Myst, a game for the PC. That came out and I got a copy for Christmas. I was just shell-shocked: it was just beautiful and the puzzles were insanely hard. After that I was hooked and bought them and played more and more."
Girls play games too
"I played Everquest and I thought all the female avatars were played by girls – which caused me a lot of trouble later on when I had all these girlfriends that turned out to be dudes. It took me a long time to realise that it wasn't a common thing for girls ... and by then it was too late and I didn't care."

Jenkins believes that for the most part female gamers are respected by male gamers, but you still hear, from time to time, stories about guys being jerks to female gamers. Ashley Jenkins is the founding member of the American all-female professional gaming team, The Frag Dolls.