Who could have thought that rummaging through the trash would bring you fame? For a long time The Sims Freeplay was the game that I loved to hate. I got several reviews out of that game, and I was proud of how long I played it without ever giving in to the constant ploys to spend more money. That game doesn’t make me half as mad as Stardom : Hollywood does. It manipulated me twice into falling onto in game purchases.
I wouldn’t mind as much if it was for guilty pleasure or gamers impatience, but it was because the relationship aspect of the game is flawed, and in order to save a relationship, where I was forced to break up the only way to preserve the hours of gameplay that went into it, was to make a purchase of the rarer currency on the game, which happen to be stars. Complicated, as well as annoying.
All Freemium games have some way to get you to purchase at some point. But in Stardom: Hollywood it was more like some sort of emotional doll blackmail. Many times when games tempt you it is for premium currencies like gold or crystals. Such as in Infinity Blade. Even the Garfield game had those. They are usually incentive based, such as being able to obtain better outfits, or home decor items for the characters.
The Problem with Addison
The Oz Oddities began once I downloaded the newest update for Stardom: Hollywood, a tie in with the latest Oz Wizard movie. It screwed up the game. When I would make progress during a TV or Movie shoot, the stars I had earned would keep disappearing. What was worse was what it did to the relationship points that I had built up. When I was about to go on a date with my fiancé Addison, six pink menu bars opened up saying ‘On A Date with Addison’. When I would earn hearts, it would not count. Being on six dates with the same girl simultaneously broke the relationship program. There was no way I could fulfill all of those missions simultaneously. After that even if My character spent the night at her apartment, took her on three dates in one evening, or filled the big spender goal, she still was not happy and wanted to break up.
Even after I broke up with her and started having my character date Khloe, Addison was still in the apartment building with the heart on the door, no matter how many times I told her I wanted to break up. And there is no way to delete her from the contacts in my character’s iphone. The other weird thing that happened in the relationship part of the game after the update was that there was an audience inside Addison’s or Khloe’s apartment. Silhouettes of people were seated tables laughing and drinking, while she is inside her apartment.
Although Khole’s character’s remarks were always complimentary, in contrast to the acerbic Addison, that relationship fell onto the same glitch. The menu bar expanded with many dates simultaneously. Then following the end of a movie shoot, she called saying that I ‘never spent any time with her and that we should break up’. To ‘Charm’ her, it would require that I pay up twenty stars. The only way to get stars is to level up, which awards exactly one of them per level. And very few other actions provide the sought after premiums. I only had one on hand. Inviting her on a date, and making up only cost two stars, but I only had the one left, after finally using the 25 I had saved up to adopt the stray cat. It was like the game knew. And perhaps it did?
Another weird thing I noticed about the relationship problems in the game is that Evelyn and Khloe could not seem to get past 1149 points to 1150. I remember the Star-news in Addison’s dialog saying that they were engaged at some point, but it has not with Khloe, at least not so far. I am sticking with it to see if the two female characters can get married. Which so far has cost ten dollars that I did not want to spend.
It seems as though developers wanted to avoid any physical contact in the game, or nudity between the characters, so they went in the other direction making them frozen non emotive dolls, who could never be alone together. What harm could come from making characters who could hold a cup and drink the coffee that has to be paid for, or mime eating the meals, or sitting down in a couch? Or even a giving a peck of a kiss?
The characters can’t even walk. It’s more like a card game. There are little to no animations. Dialogs are repetitive. Sadly I found very few outfits considering it is a dress up game. No costumes are employed, even when doing horror or sifi movies. Which is a lost opportunity. It will say check makeup, or put on motion capture suit, but nothing happens. Why do the same outfits or jewelry in different colors cost more charm points or cash than the other. The exact same top in white or green costs double as one in blue?
At first I could not tell which edition of Stardom was the first. The original game has better graphics. There are more opportunities to tap on the graphics and get points and little bolts of energy that enable your character to perform each and every action. Anything she does, costs some of these lightening bolts. Without amassing those, the character is dead in the water. Something like frozen Charlotte dolls you can dress them, but they don’t move. They won’t sit in a chair or eat, sleep or kiss. But all of those “actions” cost energy points.
For the most part it’s a side scroller. The environments generally are not interactive. Swiping back and forth over and over is tiresome. Graphics are generally sloppy and there is little attention to detail in Stardom: Hollywood. The faces have improved, but the backgrounds suffered. And fewer objects are tappable. Thankfully they lost the odd twisted lipped smirking characters from the first game.
The goals end at level five. There is no further incentive to play once you get only as far as level five. Little replay-ability value. The on screen interface is over crowded, in Stardom, with too many widgets. When you want to tap the items that fall down when you tap the action buttons, they clog the corners where the menus are. If those are triggered accidentally you loose the time bonus for picking up the items. It also deletes the items when it frequently lags and crashes. It has an online component if you want to add Facebook people to it, but it does not give you the option to shut it off, so even if you are interested in a single player experience, it will still lag and crash when you want to play offline. Game Center continually comes up and wants you to sign in, even after you disable it. Just making yet another obstacle to having any fun with this tedious game.
At most a diversion.