After a weekend of playing lackluster jewel games and too many cutesy side scrollers and finding nothing worth mentioning for a game app review, I found Modern Girl. Once that had showed up I could not allow it to pass without comment.
It’s a feminist paradox. On one hand the premise of the game, using diamonds to pay for dates with men, so that they will buy you gifts, is disgusting. The guy characters are basically male whores. The female role that you play is superficial, materialistic and detached. If we ever have artificial intelligence with software written like this, the robots will take over the planet without compunction, if they are thinking like the characters in this game.
Everything is based in a numeric evaluation. Style points get you into clubs and on dates. Energy points allow you to work and earn cash. You need to have the right amount of style points to be allowed into work, or on a date. It makes acceptance unambiguous, but it’s blatant sexism. So much so that it may be an over the top send up.
On the other hand, it has fun character generator with hair style and color, and skin tones. Dress up games are fun and this one has enough shops and clothes to keep you happy. Once you run out of any of the stats such as Energy, or Diamonds, you are immediately offered a new batch and are taken to the App Store to spend real money. It isn’t cheap either.
You can get free energy though by tricking your iPad or iPhone. What you do is to go into Settings, and then Date and Time and change it from automatic to manual. Then adjust the time two hours into the future. Go back and open the game app, close it, and then go to Settings and return the clock to the correct time. When you open Modern Girl, the energy bar will be full.
The energy can be used to earn more cash that your character can spend on her dates, clothes and accessories. The dating aspect of the game is very simplified, and almost nonexistent. It isn’t very interesting and the dates are the same. The same dialog boxes repeat over and over for the dates.
Unless you are really into dress up games, you might want to skip this one since it could get very expensive to play, if you are impatient.