Platform: PC
Developer: dtp young entertainment GmbH & Co KG
Publisher: Viva Media
Release Date: October 30, 2009
Genre: Simulation
Nerd Rating: 3 out of 10
‘“OMG, did he just look over?” Viva Media’s MY BOYFRIEND will make every teenage girl’s heart beat faster. Flirting, jealousy and dating are the name of the game in Viva Media’s new adventure designed for girls only!’ – Viva Media’s Virtual Pressroom Site (http://pressroom.viva-media.com/my-boyfriend)
THIS GAME IS DESIGNED FOR NOBODY. My Boyfriend is one of the most insulting pieces of garbage that has ever come across my line of vision. It is boring, lazy, and all over a crap game. When I first spotted it on the shelf at Microcenter for 50 cents my thought was “Oh, that would be a funny and stupid game to review.” Not even close. Not only did I waste a perfectly good 50 cents on this anus of a game, I was left enraged that such an insulting game was developed specifically for my gender. This game was intentionally developed and marketed towards 13 to 17 year old girls. Fun Fact: it was also developed in a toilet at Burger King.
Okay, Viva Media, here’s one thing you need to understand: Teenagers aren’t that dumb. Yes, they do stupid things, but they recognize a bad game or movie when they see one. You have absolutely no justification for publishing this vomit.
I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s dig in and find out why My Boyfriend made me regret spending 50 cents.
See that? That’s the installation of regret.
So the first minute or so of My Boyfriend is a scrapbook magically flipping its own pages while a soulless voice over explains that its summer vacation, you’re on a resort, and you may even get to bone some schmuck- I mean, “find everlasting love.” And with that being said, here’s the first thing wrong with this game:
Wait, THERE WAS ANOTHER ONE?!
I’m sorry, but I seem to be lost. The cover clearly says “My Boyfriend,” so why does the title screen read “My Boyfriend 2?” Are we in a different dimension? What game am I really playing here? The first or the second? Did the main character get whacked upside the head and develop amnesia? Did I get whacked upside the head?! My ultimate conclusion is that someone was feeling cheap and decided not to waste ink printing the “2”, or it was just a horrible mistake. Either way, whatever is on the box, should be the game on this disc.
Okay, trying incredibly hard to push that one flaw aside to get through the rest of the game, we are prompted to “customize” our main character by giving her a name, deciding what color her hair should be (her face pretty much stays the same), and the little variation in clothing style. I ended up with this lifeless blonde zombie, who I named Shellie because she kind of looks like my mom.
I’m sorry, mom.
You can also customize your future boyfriend, but since I don’t believe in changing the people you care about for your own benefit, I left him the way he was.
I just gave him a shitty name. Also, sorry for the quality of this pic, my computer was acting up and I had to use my phone.
The game begins with your character (for the sake of this review we will just call her Shellie), and her best friend, Vanessa in a bungalow on a beach resort. They are on vacation alone with no parents, surrounded by bars and teenage boys. That’s a great setup… Luckily, Vanessa and Shellie are as wholesome as whole wheat bread and are only interested in toasting their buns on the beach, getting enough food, and extra activities like dancing at the night club or step aerobics at the gym. On the way to the beach, Vanessa and Shellie are approached by a stranger that just so happened to be standing outside their bungalow.
I love it when random strangers approach me on vacation, too.
Rob only appears to explain the activities on the resort and then disappears, never to be seen again, like a magical uninteresting genie. Once Rob leaves, you’re free to explore this open world resort… that is extremely boring. There’s no background music, it’s eerily quiet except for beach sound effects, Shellie walks slow as hell, and doesn’t get much faster when she runs, and there’s these really confusing side missions where random dogs sitting on bungalow porches will follow Shellie. These dogs will follow Shellie everywhere for as long as you want until bringing them back to their bungalow for a small reward. Usually about 5 dollars. Woohoo. There’s also these NPCs that walk around that ask Shellie to bring them certain items like juice or a newspaper, but they don’t stay in the same spot. They also have clones. So once you acquire whatever item it is they need and then go look for them, you could be chasing down two of their clones that don’t even need said item.
“Have you met Jacob and his brother Jacob yet?”
When you finally catch up with Vanessa on the beach, she immediately wants to go talk to the guys standing around the surf school because they’re cute. This leads to Shellie having a first conversation with her future boyfriend, Poop. I should probably mention here that the dialogue and the voice acting for My Boyfriend is terrible. I truly believe that the people in charge of casting just followed a co-worker around all day and recorded them saying different things during the day and hastily edited it together. There are even some occurrences where the voice on a character completely changes from the one they had before. For example, Shellie may recieve a drink from one of the bars and instead of her voice saying “thank you”, it will turn into a man’s voice exclaiming “thank you!” Do not look towards this game if you want a top-notch story and believable voice acting.
Also, there are these incredibly creepy parts where Shellie will talk to herself. And not just normal “what should we have for dinner tonight?” kind of talking to yourself like we all do, but a genuine monologue that’s a paragraph long.
This was followed by a loud DING DANG DONG! sound that sent me hiding under my desk.
Also Shellie, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOUR HANDS?!
So yeah, the setup is as expected, very cheesy and very lazy. As is the gameplay. Playing this game was one of the most boring experiences I’ve ever had. Shellie walks incredibly slow and her running isn’t much faster. The other characters walk faster and it makes following them very tedious.
There are also sidebars that keep track of various aspects of general health like fitness and relaxation, but there’s never really any true danger of these health bars getting too low because they take forever to deplete. And some of them don’t even have any point, like beauty care. You raise your beauty care stats by putting on make up, but there’s no consequence for applying it correctly. Relaxation took me forever to figure out. The only thing Vanessa told me was to do it every once in awhile in order to enjoy vacation. My relaxation bar was slowly going down and I started getting frustrated. It wasn’t until I was with Vanessa on the beach that I figured out I could sunbathe to relax. Which, you can safely assume, is very boring. The whole activity is just lying there in awkward silence next to Vanessa while your crack fills with sand and your skin becomes crispy and delicious.
“This clown make-up will make Poop love me!”
And that’s not all. There’s also a confusing as hell inventory system. The various items you are given or you buy are stored for you, but it’s awkward and confusing. You click an item and the icon for it shows up in the top left corner. You can either click on it or press space bar to use it. It sounds simple but it put me off how there was no written option to use it or junk it. And forget about retrieving items for NPC characters, because they are hard to catch and don’t automatically take the item, so you’re forced to quickly whip out the inventory item before the other character walks away from you. That sucks because it’s also a strong way to earn money since walking people’s dogs doesn’t pay that much.
I think I’ve filled you in enough on what’s wrong with this game, so let’s talk about the good stuff: the graphics are actually surprisingly decent for such a crap game. Sure, the mouth movements, walking, and even the character’s hands are really awkward, but the resort itself it actually pretty well done. The other good thing about it is that there’s really no game-breaking bugs or glitches that you would come to expect from something so low budget. It functions smoothly.
Unfortunately, those are the only good things I could pick out from My Boyfriend.
*sigh*
I can see, however, how this game would appeal to girls under ten years old. And that’s about it. This game is forgettable, mediocre, and insulting. If you want a decent game for a young girl that involves stuff like fashion but also has mystery and action, try Secret Agent Barbie. I’m not joking, a Barbie game has more substance and entertainment than My Boyfriend. Maybe if the focus was less on the good graphics and more on story, dialogue, acting, and worthy gameplay, Viva Media would have a game that is worth more than 50 cents.
*I would like to give credit to my very good friend Alexandria Schwinck for drawing up the awesome feature image at the top of the page. Thanks again, Allie!*
