Nitpicky Gamer: Mission: Runway

In every Nitpicky Reviewer post, I put on my critical top hat, wave my elitist cane, and chauffeur sarcastic verbiage with full intent to tear apart a piece of media as if it were supposed to be art. True, I'll never realize that criticizing games made purely for dollars doesn't mean anything.

The last few times I reviewed a game, I took notes while I was playing. This time, I'll be making notes directly into the blog. Hopefully I'll end up with a post that does not feel like a rewrite and hasan't forgotten any jokes.

First thing I thought when assigned Mission: Runway: 'Ah shit, at least I'll get a decent blog post out of it.' I'm pretty sure this game is about modeling based on the reality TV show Project Runway. I just finished another review for a game based on a TV show, Dancing with the Stars, the worst game ever released to the public. And the public was charged for it.

First thing I thought when the splash screen came up: Hotties! Hell yea, I get to look at models all week. Wait. Why is there a stoned, tired, sick-like-an-overdose, hippie princess lurching in the back? She looks lost, high, sad and beaten, and like n evolved form of the little girl from The Ring. She's even wearing the same white dress. I can't mix sexy and nightmarish. I'll get sick or feel really guilty.

The girl in front, the main focus, isn't even real. She has more Photoshopped brush strokes than a Van Gogh rip-off. Her eyes look swollen and her hair copy-and-pasted. Her boobs look flat even though some digital artist tried to make semi-circles above her dress line. She has a certain Gestalt: the sum of her pieces is a paper-doll project from a fourth grader with a pole-dancing mother.

I've never seen a girl so real and so airbrushed.

Upon entering the main menu, I was instructed to create a profile. A flashing asterisk at the bottom of the interface tells me I should start typing. Instead of the default mouse cursor, the simple arrow, I wave around a severed hand. Not the Adobe white glove, a fucking dismembered, I-love-The-Addams-Family, calloused and thick man hand. Ready to slap a bitch that missteps on the runway. That hand could tear up the whole game with the full-hand or backhand slap command. Shit, how awesome would it be to play game where the goal is to slap through terrible user interfaces, beating their structure, smashing their poorly chosen fonts, and eventually wringing the neck of the apathetic jackass that programmed them.

Clicking on the highlighted row does nothing. Less than nothing.

So. The beastly five-finger I'm waving around keeps highlighting all the rows in this interface, even the one with my instructions. Usually something highlighted is something to click, but what about the flashing asterisk. The game has temporarily stunned (not awed) me. Not being one to click around, or go with the easy solution to just start typing, I sit, stare, and just think about what I want to do. Do I click? Do I just start typing? Which will serve me better? Which am I supposed to do? I don't know, so I just sit there. I actually start to feel a little fear, a nervous ping on the backside of my melon; I want to find out what happens when I click on a highlighted row, but I have this wary feeling that I'll fuck something up.

I do it anyway. I'm both saved and extremely disappointed; clicking on any of the highlighted rows does absolutely nothing. I proceded to type my name: Leggy Blond. (Flight of the Conchords, baby).

Now I'm choosing my avatar. Honestly, I'm still blown away by how much better this is - looks, feels - than Dancing. My point of view is nested in the center of a circle of wannabe models. Or wannabe 3D models. Maybe the designers were self-deprecating, the models aren't supposed to look good because they aren't actually models. An arrow pointing left and an arrow pointing right are fixed by each side of the focal model. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THEY DO. Fortunately, the game designers thought ahead, realizing that the large portion of their audience would be confused by such a little-known convention; a hint box appears when my mouse rolls over an arrow.



In case I didn't know what to press after deciding which model to represent, the 'Check' button also has a hint box.

Really, though, does 'OK' tell you any more than the check mark? I imagine: "Alright, I'll play with this girl. What do I do now? Oh my God, I'm so confused. How do I continue in this game?? This game sucks! I don't know what to do! Wait, there's a huge check mark. I wonder what it does. I don't want to press it because something terrible might happen. What if it exits the game? I'll just let my mouse hang over it while I think. Oh, a hint! OK, it says. OK what? I'm going to kill myself."

After selecting my avatar, I am brought to the list of episodes I will compete in throughout the season. The name of each episode is some kind of pun. For example, the first episode is called 'Freestyle Style.'

Others include:
Miss Mission Runway
Alternative Reality, an episode with alternative-style fashion
Everyday [sic?] a New Design, an episode focused on everyday clothing styles
Business Sense, an episode showcasing business formal.

Will somebody tell whoever made these titles that a pun isn't a pun IF YOU USE THE SAME WORD. A pun is a play on words. Not a play on word.

Thankfully, I'm not completely disappointed. There's an episode called Fashion of the Opera. Ok, I am disappointed.

To the Stars is another episode dedicated to designing an outfit for the Oscars. I kind of get it, but I think it should be For the Stars.

One episode name makes up for them all: Life's a Beach. That's right, punned the phrase 'Life's a bitch.' It's for the kids, mother, it's for the kids.

I select the first and only available episode: Freestyle Style. The host introduces my competitors, and, oddly, I can't tell if they are standing or sitting. They have slightly bent legs, but look like they are standing and leaning forward. Kind of like they're about to shit.

The instructions are given in paragraph form at the bottom of the screen. Halfway through the first paragraph, it flashes to the next. And when I say flashes, I mean the whole screen skips and refreshes, not just the text box. I may have finished the first paragraph, but I was steudying the setting. There's a check box at the end of each paragraph, so I assumed I would click it when I finished reading and that it wouldn't continue without me. So much for conventions. Maybe that's why there's a hint box on everything. The outsourced programmers just don't know our conventions. It confuses them, they over-reinforce us, and then they still get it wrong. I blame on the company that chose to outsource.

In the introduction to the first episode, 'everyday a new design' I am told, in a block of supposedly-spoken text to dress normal... but not be limited by my imagination. I'll let that sink in...

After the show's introduction ends. it's time to dress the model.

Wait. I just realized that I don't play as a model in this game, I play a fashion designer. I just voided half the jokes I've used so far.

So, I want to spend time trying out different outfits, seeing what the game has to offer, but the model is just standing in her underwear and I feel like a fucking pervert in a room full of game testers guys. Any second, I'm going to get a hand on my shoulder followed by the words 'Move on Chris, it's just a character model'. Fuck you, buddy- she's hot!

The interface is surprisingly, fairly intuitive. Yes, it is surprising that it appeals to any bit of my intuition. Fortunately, the interface uses pictures instead of words - clothing lists would really become tedious. Unfortunately, the pictures don't match clothes. For example:

Here's what I chose:
And here's what I got:


Also, take a look at the buttons that designate clothing styles:
1) Obligatory raonbow gradiant.
2) Skull for 'Alternative' clothing
3) Flower for 'Girly' Clothing
4) A hand-fan for glamrous clothing? No one's used a fan like that since Shakespeare died.
5) A golden star for... being good in class? I don't actually remember.
6) A douchey smiley face with a baseball cap giving you a huge thumbs-up for being such a bad ass. That woud be 'street wear.' Only those with the baddest asses rock out in street clothing. Congratulations for having the balls to be the poorest-looking model in town.

I wanted to see what the model looked like from different angle, so I clicked and dragged around her - a norm in most character creators. Nothing. Above the model are two arrows, one pointing to the right and one to the left. They look like perfectly good rotation buttons. I click to the right and my model turns black! Wait, no, this is a new model now. See, there's a new name above her head, in obscure, white font between the arrows. The girl looks identical, except her skin and the sound of her name are more black.

I cycle through the models. They all are the exact same height, have the exact same hairdo - it must be fake on some of those girls - and nearly identical jawlines.

Four small buttons hide in the bottom right of the screen: zoom-in, zoom out, rotate left, and rotate right. Rotating the girl reveals that the game's 3D modelers are either ignorant foreigners or feminist revolutionaries. I'm staring at a model with a big booty. I'll go with... outsourced unprofessional. And I guess outsourced implies a certain ignorance to the target audience's culture.

Fuck it, let's walk the runway.

First let's reinforce how stupid the developers think we are:


After tooling around for so long in the dressing room, I am supremely curious on how the game plans on judging my choices. In the ideal fashion game, the artificial intelligence would probably have long lists of clothes that don't match; an algorithm that judges poor color combinations; and, of course, some simple check to see if I wore the correct style the episode called for. I don't have those expectations for this game.

After confirming that I do, in fact, want to strut my junk down the runway, our mute announcer spells out: "We've seen some great designs [sic] now lets see how each model fared on the runway!" But momm-y, they haven't been on the runway yet. What's this lady talking aboouutt? I think they were going for 'fares on the runway.'

My model walks the runway first and then each model from each other designer follows, one at a time. The techno was pumping and both the judges and photographers were excited.

What can I say that they aren't saying right now?

Most photographers handle the boredom by taking pictures of their rivals on the opposite side.

The walks lasted about a minute and a half each and looked like they had been edited by the programmer's toddler. Random frames of disarray appeared between each cut. Some shots would linger and some were cut short - but don't get me wrong, there was no sense of flow. At one point it even cut to the same angle. You could tell because it skipped, as if were cutting away, and then the same angle loaded back up, a few pixels off center.

It wasn't until the third walk I realized my dismembered hand was covering the click-to-skip button. I must have saved half an hour when I finally used it.

This girl is a professional waitress that just fucked up her chance to be a real model.

This doesn't mind showing up in her jammies.
This girl's booty is so fly, it makes straight lines go jagged.

Now the judges will tell me how I did...

Holy shit, they just ripped me apart. What the hell did I wear that got me booted off the first show?

For a second, I thought they were going to murder me on stage.

Back at the main menu- hey wait a minute. Where did all of these options come from? Now I can practice dressing models outside of competition, look at my currently-empty photo album, and examine my wardrobe, complete with the design that just got me booted. All this for losing! And... when do I get to take photos? It says it is empty because I have not taken any photos in the photo booth. So, where is it? Maybe I have to win first. Or at least pass the first week.

This game is going down. I begin my second tour de campaign mode in the same episode: Freestyle Style; normal clothes. This time I'll follow a simple rule: pick clothing from the same category. This time, my model will only wear clothes from the 'Girly' category.

Delving deeper into the clothing styles, I see that there are actually quite a bit of designs, though they all look like variants of wrapping paper.

Moving on to jewelry... I take everything back. There's only one necklace to pick from. Wait. Ok, help me out here.

In the make-up section, my eyes feel like a 256-color processor trying to differentiate between a million shades of peach. My eyes can't tell the difference between these colors. I'm clicking the right arrow button, cycling through, and I can't even tell what I've looked at and what I haven't looked at. Sometimes the shades will cycle whole rows at a time and sometimes it will rotate over only a few shades at a time. I honestly can't tell.

Well, now I'm curious. I screenshot the first row and then click the right arrow. Comparing it to the screenshot... it moved one square to the right. I click the right arrow again, and it moves back. I can't believe it. The whole time it was rotating over one color.

Next time, just cut out the last color.

The ability to change models' hair style instantaneously is unsettling. I find myself wondering if all models are bald and they just change wigs every day.

By the way, this is what spiked hair looks like:
Yes, it cuts right through the hoody.

I submit my second design. Once again, the judges are stupified.

The model walking after mine wore an outfit designed by 'Tiffany,' a girl with no crotch.

I skip through the rest of the models to the judges.

What the fuck? What did I do wrong this time? My outfit looked way better than those other bitches.

I was so apparently bad that two of the three judges said the exact same thing. "Who will be the first loser? Sadly I think it will be you."

How do you win this fucking game?

Wait. Woah! I'm moving on to the next week! They didn't boot me after all! They booted some dude with a pink cowboy hat. What a scare. Two of those three judges really had me going.

This game accurately portrays the lack of emotion in the fashion world. The judges are stoic. The photographers and respectful and the crowd quietly golf claps. When my avatar is criticized, she puts her hands near the front of her face, does a shake left and a shake right, but is otherwise OK. When a designer is voted off, he or she just sits silently, staring off into a depressing void.

I think I've gone on long enough, I'm going to try and beat the game now. I don't seem to be getting very far - I've been told I know how to pick out a good outfit when shopping with girls - maybe it's all the movies I've watched - but it doesn't seem to have translated over to the game. On the other hand, maybe I just don't understand the subtle complexities of fashion. In any case, I'm Googling a walkthrough.

(A few days later.)

I'm on the second to last 'episode' and I am totally stuck. The two other models have been wearing completely different outfits each time I try to beat it, so I'm not picking up on the style I'm supposed to use.

I'm on the 'pick out an outfit for your host to wear out at night' show. How 'bout a black trash bag and duct tape. Shit, this isn't anything like the 'Life's a Beach' episode in which I just have to put on some kind of swimming suit to pass. I don't know what they're judging! I wore a bunch of 'alternate' clothes and 2 of the 3 judges gave me a thumbs up. I tried it again the next round, only changing a few things, and all the judges dumped me.

So, now, tying desperately to win, I start copying the other two contestants. I recreate one's all-silver outfit. Amazingly, randomly, the model wears the same outfit again, right after I've re-created it. There we are, walking the runway with the exact same outfit. Guess who gets voted off. Me. This fucking game.

I mean, you can't expect much from a game that isn't even proof-read: (You may need to click on the picture to read it; I'll have my own site one day, but for now, bear with me.)

Itit? Re-tarded.

A bit Dj Vu?

"You really took it to the mountain?"

I think he meant Hasta Manana. And since when are Spanish words capitalized?

Finally, after 20 hours of wages that will never be earned back by the game, I beat it. Celebrate with me.