What’s Her Face is
a new PC game that is intended for girls age 5 and up. The premise of this
title revolves around a new TV adventure show starring four fashionable
youngsters: Hip, Glam, Cool and Sweet. The role of the player is to put
together a exciting TV show based on customizable categories like theme,
fashion, background, dance moves, music, and dialogue which can be recorded via
a microphone. Basically What’s Her Face provides all the necessary tools to
reenact a wide assortment of popular daydreams like making a pop star video or
going to a Hollywood party. Unfortunately, the interface may be a little too
convoluted for a 5 year-old to fully grasp, it is explained how to play in
snippets as you start clicking around but the objective of the game is never
fully explained.
The game starts
out with a menu of 15 different themes to choose from, including a concert, a
talent show, interview with a star, a birthday party, and the ultimate
vacation. After deciding on a theme the player is prompted with a vertical list
of six categories relating to the different facets of the show, like the
background image, props, a wardrobe to style the stars of the episode, dance
moves, music, and voice-recordings. At any time during the creation of a scene
the episode can be previewed by clicking on the play-button. The wide
assortment of different fashions, music, and locales will keep younger gamers
busy for quite some time, but a lot of that time will also be spent figuring out
how to navigate through the many available scenes and menus. Luckily, each
screen is explained in a simple-to-understand way as the player is introduced to
new functions.
Once you have put
the finishing touches on an episode it can be viewed in its entirety replete
with a 3,2,1-theatre-introduction, flashy transition graphics, and title screens
stating the name of the show and “director” of the episode. Seeing the finished
product of an adventure, after all the tweaking that is required to finish an
episode, will undoubtedly be very satisfying for younger gamers. But it is
unlikely that more than one episode will be created since filling six scenes
with dialogue, props, dance moves, and characters can be very time consuming,
and the payoff of watching a finished episode just doesn’t seem worth it.
Graphically,
What’s Her Face looks great, each character is fully 3D and can be viewed from
any angle, though the same can’t be said about the environments or objects. The
various fashion styles that can be mixed and matched for the actresses are all
very colorful and detailed, the clothing even reacts realistically during the
dance sequences. The music is quite diverse and it’s also customizable, chances
are good that the younger gamer will find a few tunes that are to their liking.
Voice-overs, narration, and sound-clips are all done well, and the ability to
record your own voice-overs is definitely an interesting addition.
Overall, this game
should keep your youngster busy for a few hours before its appeal begins to wear
off. Producing all six scenes will prove to be somewhat frustrating for kids
around age 5, especially if they have an unusually short attention span. This
game seems more suited to children age 7 and up. The ability to fashion
characters with a plethora of styles will undoubtedly be the highlight of the
experience, adding props and backgrounds just seems like functions that were
added as an afterthought. Nevertheless, there are a few things, like adding
dance moves, music, and voice-recorded sound-clips, that are interesting enough
on their own merits.
Gameplay: 6.8
Moving around from
scene to scene and coordinating them all into one cohesive package may be a
little tricky for younger gamers, for the most part things are straightforward
though.
Graphics: 8.2
Bright, colorful, and well animated, the developers definitely made sure that
the graphical presentation was up to snuff. The 3D character models are the
most visually impressive facet of What’s Her Face.
Sound: 8.0
The musical clips range from classical to hip-hop and everything in between, it
may take some searching but there is enough diversity musically to appeal to a
wide range of children.
Difficulty: Medium
Most kids won’t have much trouble producing an episode or two but the finer
points like scene transitions, dance move coordination, and voice-recorded sound
clips, might take some time to get used to.
Concept: 7.4
This game allows children to play out a variety of adventures in a fun and (for
the most part) simple way, unfortunately the outcome of most episodes is rarely
worth the amount of work that goes into it. Great idea, mediocre execution.
Overall: 7.2
Making a TV episode complete with music, dance moves, exciting backdrops, and
customizable fashions can be very worthwhile, after a few times through though
there just isn’t much new things to see. There are a few things that are very
likeable about What’s Her Face but I can’t see this “game” being played for more
than a few hours.
