Life Is A Fiesta
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| Life Is A Fiesta

Small. Compact. Manoeuvrable. Reliable and cheap to run. Strong residual values on used, low-mileage examples.

Hmm. We're failing to see quite how life is like a Fiesta, if we're honest. True, ours is pretty ho hum right at the minute, which would certainly satisfy any comparisons to the 1.1 Studio model we can see on the local garage forecourt around the corner from Pocket Gamer Towers. But little else in the equation seems to hold up to sustained scrutiny.

Not even Life Is A Fiesta, the mobile game. Part of the growing genre of life sims, joining the likes of The Sims (which started it all), The O.C., and our favourite and yours, Miami Nights, it enables you to roll back the years to that time when you were a college freshman back in California.

Oh, you weren't a student of Cal Tech or UCLA? Our mistake. Nevertheless, that's the life you're able to lead here, albeit vicariously, as you indulge in all the partying, studying, nookie and pranks that American higher education has to offer.

You play as one of six characters, three male and three female, who fall into three basic personalities: the hunky sports jock, geeky bookworm, and a middleman / woman who bridges the societal divide between the two.

As your chosen alter-ego, it's up to you to engage your fellow students, make friends, attend classes and generally get on in life. Progress in all of these fields is measured by a series of personal ratings covering sociability, looks, intelligence and more. Partaking in certain activities will raise some ratings while decreasing others, and it's up to you to work on your weak areas while not compromising your strengths.

For example, if you're brainy but have the body of a twelve-year old, it'll be a good idea to hit the gym. But spend too much time in there and your IQ will plummet. Maybe there's an illicit steroids ring on campus, or maybe it's a way of making Life Is A Fiesta more challenging.

You also need to make a splash on the social scene in order to complete the game, as well as tackling various tasks that crop up along the way. These tasks are influenced by your character type, so the sports jock will need to get on the sports team and the middleman character simply needs to not get expelled.

How you go about reaching this goal is up to you, as Life Is A Fiesta is very open-ended and you can do whatever you want within a few constraints. Lectures are beneficial but not mandatory, for example.

It's nice to have that level of freedom. But once you realise that this flexibility is the game's only saving grace, you begin to wish you could trade it for something else.

The looks of Life Is A Fiesta let the side down first of all; while the backgrounds are bright and detailed, they're a bit too blocky and lacking in charm. The characters themselves are also devoid of the latter; they're clumsy and hard to feel any sort of empathy toward. The setting is also nowhere near big or entertaining enough, either, a problem that also dogged The O.C.

After playing it, we can't help but suggest that Life Is A Fiesta is a poor imitation of Miami Nights, which set the benchmark for this type of game. It's certainly an easy crutch on which to lean, as what Miami Nights got so right, in every respect Life Is A Fiesta comes across as a substandard copy.

We're willing to give the developers the benefit of the doubt; maybe they started work on this before Miami Nights hit the streets. But we're certainly not going to stretch as far as recommending Life Is A Fiesta ahead of its Florida-based neighbour.

Life Is A Fiesta

More like a Fiesta than was probably intended, this is a lightweight, underdeveloped game
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