Game Review: Kendall and Kylie

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Picture Illustration(Melissa Blasquez/Lincoln Lion)

The Kardashians are pretty much always in the media spotlight, and most recently the younger sisters, Kendall and Kylie Jenner. They just recently launched their new app , Kendall and Kylie, a new game that Android and iPhone users can download from the play store

Last year I had tried out the Kim Kardashian app, which to my dismay was not very interactive, just a highly decorated avatar who goes around the L.A. area working retail jobs. The basis of the game centered around gaining more fame and popularity, was achieved by the amount of energy you had to do certain tasks, amount of clothes, and people you knew, same as the new Kendall and Kylie app made by Kim’s younger sisters.

In the game, you can either customize or get a random character. From there on, you meet your “landlord,” in a Malibu apartment, and start working for her friend at a salon. Each task requires a certain amount of energy, and you only have a set amount of energy in the beginning and it takes a long time for your energy to replenish fully. So, instead of playing a game to waste some time while you’re waiting in maybe, a doctor’s office, or taking the bus home, you are essentially trying to fit the game in every time possible throughout the day to get as many points in the game as you can with the amount of time and “energy” provided.

Of course the game has the two stars that the game is based on, featured in it. “You,” meet Kendall and Kylie Jenner, and as the game progresses you became “friends” with them. The main goal in the game is getting a high ranking profile on the popular, real life app, Instagram. Your character’s goal is to gain as many followers on Instagram as possible. This in turn will make your character more popular with the fashion, entertainment, and media obsessed consumers of today’s society.

Picture Illustration; Dating in Kendall and Kylie game(Melissa Blasquez/Lincoln Lion)
Picture Illustration; Dating in Kendall and Kylie game(Melissa Blasquez/Lincoln Lion)

Like every game today, the app has in app purchases that help boost success in the game a lot faster. You can buy more energy, more “K” gems, which buys you certain clothes in the game that you can’t just buy with your fake earned money, which you can also buy with real money. There is, however, an option where you can watch other app’s advertisements to gain one free K gem, which is pretty ridiculous considering most things bought with these gems are over 50 gems, the average around 200 to 300.

In the game you have the ability to date fake members of this virtual world, where it is very much just like any other task in the game. You can date either gender, which is nice (I’ve played games where they wouldn’t allow you to “date” the same sex). If the date is finished with a full ball of hearts, you get awarded 40 points to level up, 1 K gem, and more followers. When you buy more clothes, you get points and also level up a bit. Practically everything you do on the game gets you some kind of point in a way, but it takes a long time to actually achieve anything.

Like I said earlier, the whole goal of the game is to gain more followers on Instagram, and to pretty much earn fame. If the game were more interesting, and challenging in a way that’s fun, (not just impeding your success because of refusing to spend actual money on a virtual world) then it may have been more fun. Of course, most of the time, people will play games to either preoccupy their time, or mind, and be in a “different world,” so to speak. The game succeeds in this sense by allowing the gamer to play as a “rising star,” meeting celebrities, buying fashionable clothes and gaining some sort of status.

As I mentioned before about the Kim Kardashian game, the goal is to gain fame. But, considering today’s society, most people can feel a bit , or a lot of pride in the amount of likes or followers they get on their social networking profiles. We’ve all seen profiles with a huge amount of followers and likes, but these people we sometimes see are not necessarily famous, just “Instagram famous.” But I’m sure most of us can admit, it feels nice to get complimented, or liked by people, even if we don’t know them that well, or at all.

Picture Illustration; Podcast in Kendall and Kylie game(Melissa Blasquez/Lincon Lion)

This game idealizes the theoretical popularity that some of us may want to have in our real social networking lives. It makes it seem as though our number of followers or friends on a social network actually compare with the amount of popularity we have in real life. So the game literally is imitating internet fame, something that seems to be idealized by this generation.

Rating: 4/10 stars

My overall opinion on this game; it has pretty and colorful graphics, but other than that it doesn’t seem to have any substance to it. It’s not fun, but it was addicting for awhile once you start to get on a higher level. If you have the patience to wait to play your game, and don’t really care if it’s interactive or not, then you may like the game. No promises though.