WhiteHouse

"You can put lipstick on a pig," presidential candidate Barack Obama tells us, "but it's still a pig." Such words of infinite wisdom are rare on the campaign trail where mud paves the way to the WhiteHouse. There's a lot more covering up this porker than just lipstick – some rouge, a little eyeliner, and a rather sloppy foundation are a futile effort to cover up buggy, lackluster gameplay.

WhiteHouse assigns you control over the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, John McCain, or Hilary Clinton. Across seven weeks of campaigning, you raise funds to wage an advertising war in the states of your choosing. Of course, the goal is to capture a majority of electoral votes at the end of the cycle. This requires laying out a winning strategy, which implies focusing on contested states.

You learn rather quickly, however, that the "50 states" campaign strategy put forth by Sen Obama is necessary when tackling WhiteHouse. Linear, reactionary politicking often turns solid blue or red states towards your opponent should they wage an aggressive enough ad war. While this makes for some drama, it's utterly unbelievable and quite frustrating. When you bank of that 20-point lead in California holding and focus on swaying votes in Florida with hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads, only to watch the golden state turn red in two weeks – well, that's aggravating.

To say that's just the nature of politics would be to give too much credit to the game. WhiteHouse drafts too linear a relationship between advertisements and rallies, and votes. According to the game, McCain could possibly snatch Oregon from Obama's clutches by simply holding a rally and throwing ad dollars into the state. Trust me, that wouldn't happen. It's entertaining to consider the possibility, but politics is more complicated than that and a little campaigning isn't going to move solid red and blue states.

Chalk it up to imagination then and save your anger for the real problems. WhiteHouse features one of the worst technical performances of any iPhone game to date. Crashes are frequent – nearly one out of every two campaigns prematurely ends due to the game crashing back to the home page. Quite often, buttons simply don't work in the game. A news tab outlining events occurring through the course of the campaign doesn't function more than two-thirds of the time. Sliders for setting ad dollars in each state are wonky, too.

Like Tuesday's presidential debate, this is a series of missed opportunities. Instead of seizing the chance to craft an intriguing political strategy game, WhiteHouse impeaches itself with an unacceptable assortment of technical flaws. Combined with paper-thin, predictable campaign tactics, this is one piggy that looks an awful lot like a lame duck with all that lipstick on.