Speed Date
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| Speed Date

We've never been speed dating before, so we're not sure how it's supposed to work in real life. But if this game is any indication, all the women look like Barbie and all the men look like Ken. And they sit around playing mini-games, the success of which determines the future course of their relationship.

Actually, we lied; we have been speed dating. The basic idea is pretty sound – meet a complete stranger and try to impress them in a couple of minutes before moving on to the next one – and we quickly learned that women who can appreciate a Wookie impression are few and far between.

With this game, players must first pick a gender (either Barbie or Ken), and then customise their appearance using a series of menus. A vague resemblance to yourself is possible, minus the broken nose and the yellow teeth, but it's more fun to design an avatar that better represents your inner beauty. Or lack thereof.

Plunging into the Story mode, then, we're given a brief tutorial about how a date is conducted. Revolving around the principles of body language, eye contact and listening, players must impress their dates by demonstrating their proficiency in each area. This is done through mini-games that symbolise each principle, of which the eye contact is the most humourous. Failing to make eye contact means you will inadvertently stare at your date's breasts or over her head, neither of which is a promising sign.

Afterwards, depending on how each of the dates went, you can whittle down your selections and take it to the 'next level'. That's to say, playing more of these mini-games with a smaller pool of dates, but they become a bit more discerning and the mini-games become a bit more difficult.

Each mini-game bout is interspersed with flirtatious dialogue, and while it won't give Shakespeare any cause for concern, it's certainly surprising. Players respond to questions and statements by choosing from one of three possible answers, and from there the chatter branches off into quirky tangents about your date's background or emotional states or what colour their socks are.

In this respect it's very much like an interactive soap-opera; we're venturing into Hollyoaks territory here, and we're not entirely sure if that's a good thing. Perhaps the developer was trying to simulate the feeling of a spontaneous conversation, where the laughter and smiles are as free-flowing as the wine, but we were a bit creeped out by the idea of flirting with a fictional entity. It feels like the mobile gaming equivalent of an inflatable doll.

In any case, despite the pretty graphics, the sum total of the game's activities is a handful of mini-games and reams of chatter to work through. This is fun in a way, but in pure gaming terms there's not enough to see and do. Plus, at the heart of Speed Date there's a dubious message: telling the object of your desire only what they want to hear is the best way of getting into their pants.

Speed Date

Pretty graphics and polished presentation but, because of the limited selection of mini-games, the fun is mostly over before it's begun. A game that's better suited to a one-night stand than as a long-term prospect, then
Score
Bulent Yusuf
Bulent Yusuf
Bulent Yusuf is a ladies man, man's man, and a man about town. His endless barrage of witty anecdotes and propensity for drink makes him a big favourite on the dinner party circuit. He likes writing, he likes gaming, and with Pocket Gamer he gets to do a bit of both.