Too Long; Didn't Play: Kim Kardashian Hollywood

Time glammed: 17 hours what is wrong with me!?

Sponsored By: It’s free to play, and I haven't spent any money on it. Yet.

Kendall Review

I am a deeply flawed person. I am also fabulous.

Kim Review

Originally I hesitated to write about Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Frankly, I was ashamed of how much I'd let myself get sucked into it. Then I looked back at some of the stuff I've written here. Shame and I go together like peanut butter and motor oil. If I was going to stop writing because I'm ashamed of liking something, the time to do it was twenty years ago.

I don't have the luxury of shame now. I might as well own this. You want to know why? Because Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is, in its own bizarre, borderline exploitative way, surprisingly fun and quite satisfying.

At its heart, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood is an RPG. You complete quests to earn experience points and level up so you can do more quests. On paper, it's not all that different from Fallout 4, except that one takes place in a horrible, dry wasteland filled with dangerous psychopaths and the other is a game from Bethesda.

I tell that bad joke not just because I like hearing you groan, but also to illustrate what you can expect from Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. It's easy to the point of thoughtlessness. All you have to do is wait for the game to tell you to do something, then tap things until you run out of energy points. The more energy you spend on a mission, the more stars you get awarded and the faster you level up. Eventually the missions take more energy than you can store at once, so you have to decide if you're going to wait for your energy meter to replenish itself, or if you're going to spend star points to buy more energy. Star points are awarded in paltry quantities for finishing missions or watching ads, but the main way to get them is to pay real money.

And therein lies the real challenge of Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. How do you play it without spending real money? As it turns out, you can play it for at least seventeen hours without spending money. The trick is to alternate between crippling obsession and complete indifference. When you are not actively doing anything, it pays to not care at all. Your energy recharges whether you're there or not, and any job not taken will wait indefinitely.

When you commit to a mission, though, you'd best be ready, because if you fail to complete a mission in the allotted time you will … suffer barely any consequence whatsoever. At worst, the faux Twitter feed on your character’s cellphone will announce a mediocre review of your latest escapades, and you won't level up as fast.

Unfortunately for me, I just love watching numbers go up, so I can't let a fashion shoot stand at three stars. I need the full five stars, or I might as well not be playing at all. This little quirk of overachievement has led my coworkers to suspect that I have IBS, because I have to go somewhere when my phone buzzes and tells me I only have ten minutes left in a mission, and the bathroom is the only room where people won’t accidentally see what I’m doing.

I said I didn’t feel ashamed, but I’m not completely oblivious to social conventions.

The light RPG mechanics all act in service of the story. Some of you might be old enough to remember the old Anita O’Day song about Hollywood, where “any office boy or car mechanic can be a panic, with just a good looking pan.” That’s Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. You start as a lowly store clerk who gets discovered by, you guessed it, Kim Kardashian, and then you begin a whirlwind, rocket ride to the stars.

It’s an sanitized version of Hollywood, with fewer vagrants and no casting couches that I’ve seen, but it’s not without conflicts. Early on you find yourself engaged in a Twitter war with some rival celebrities who try to ruin you in an attempt to maintain their own status. At one point you clash with a higher-tier celebrity over a table at a restaurant. How you respond to those attacks doesn’t seem to have much impact on what jobs come up in the game. Whether you stand your ground or respect your betters, they still Tweet the same smack about you, and you still lose the same amount of celebrity status. Fortunately, it’s all in who you know, and either way Kim comes to the rescue and boosts your status in a future mission.

I think what keeps me coming back is the social aspect of it. Not the “social gaming” elements where you link your character to your real-life Facebook account to improve your score, but the interpersonal relationships in the story. It’s a game where you have to be good at networking, which is something I’m absolutely terrible at in real life. It’s fun to visit a world that I can pretend to be good at existing in, without actually having to live in it.

You know, just like Fallout 4.

Keep playing?

I don’t see why I’d stop now. I’m already 17 hours in, and I’m hovering in the bottom of the C-list. Why wouldn’t I want to climb my way to the A-list?

If only to shove it in Dirk Diamond’s face. That guy’s a jerk.

Is it the Bloodborne of gamifying Linked-in?

I mentioned earlier, there’s nothing exactly hard about this game. The gameplay consists of tapping on things and watching one meter go up as another meter goes down. The story is completely on rails, and you’ll ascend the ranks whether you’re a nice person or an actual Twitter user.

The only hard part is watching the same bad cover of Bonnie Tyler’s “I Need A Hero” a billion times because watching ads is the quickest way to get in-game currency without spending money on it. Since you can mute the ads, even that isn’t that bad.

Call it a 3 out of 17 on the ever shifting Bloodborne scale.

Important Announcement:

I've gotten some good suggestions from you, but we can still take more! If you want to see a specific game from my library reviewed, you've got until April 15th

All you have to do is pick a game from my Steam library that shows fewer than thirty minutes of playtime, and that I haven’t already reviewed here before. If there’s a game you have your heart set on that isn’t in my library, PM me anyway and we’ll see what we can do. Maybe it’ll be something that I wanted to buy myself anyway. (No gifts received after April 1st will be considered.)

Just PM me your pick (one per customer, please). I will send the list to Station Management, and the Conference Call crew for the April 20th show will select four winners by whatever means they see fit.

There's still time to get your request in! Just send me a quick PM, and you could see your request up on blocks in my front yard!

Comments

The trick is to alternate between crippling obsession and complete indifference.

That pretty much sums up how to not spend money on (mobile) games with energy bars.

garion333 wrote:
The trick is to alternate between crippling obsession and complete indifference.

That pretty much sums up how to not spend money on (mobile) games with energy bars.

And how to survive marriage.

Have you truly not played Civ IV? O.o
(yes, I'm a filthy front-page skimmer)

But I really wanted to say that this line is pure gold:

On paper, it's not all that different from Fallout 4, except that one takes place in a horrible, dry wasteland filled with dangerous psychopaths and the other is a game from Bethesda.
sometimesdee wrote:

Have you truly not played Civ IV? O.o
(yes, I'm a filthy front-page skimmer)

But I really wanted to say that this line is pure gold:

On paper, it's not all that different from Fallout 4, except that one takes place in a horrible, dry wasteland filled with dangerous psychopaths and the other is a game from Bethesda.

Thanks. It's always nice to hear when a joke goes over well.

As for Civ IV, nope. Haven't played it. I just noticed that my steam library says it has 1.6 hours on it, which is untrue. I think I launched it once, but never got to play because of circumstances.

That means it's eligible for the May contest, if anyone's keeping score.

Yeah, when I looked, it showed no time at all. I hereby request a review.

So when does the petition to cross-over Duke Nukem and Kim Kardashian begin?

sometimesdee wrote:

Yeah, when I looked, it showed no time at all. I hereby request a review.

You got it.

ccesarano wrote:

So when does the petition to cross-over Duke Nukem and Kim Kardashian begin?

Duke already did Hollywood in Duke Nukem 3D. Duke doesn't look back.

When I saw this article on the front page, I have to admit I got a little excited. Spot on, DoubtingT, loved the review. And yes, for those of you who want to know, I enjoy this game, I think I spent 3 bucks on it once (and being ad free is great), I'm level 32, and I'm on the A++ list. Which means I've climbed to the top twice, before scrapping it all and starting over (a new game + mode, if you will, you get a couple of bonuses and a permanent increase to your energy cap).
Forget Dirk Diamonds, though. I really want to stick it to insufferable Crystal and Chad and become the number one couple.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

Duke already did Hollywood in Duke Nukem 3D. Duke doesn't look back.

Now *this* is pure gold.

Ooh. No time spent on Knights of the Old Republic 2? That's totally my jam, and thus my review request.

As for the Kardashian game, I played about that much of it too - it fell into the same category as Fallout Shelter, where I didn't feel like the reward cycle was playing out quickly enough to keep me going. I'll stick to slightly faster paced oatmeal, thanks

I've just had a thought. I need friends! DoubtingT, are you playing on iOS? Are you on GameCenter?

Eleima wrote:

I've just had a thought. I need friends! DoubtingT, are you playing on iOS? Are you on GameCenter?

I actually had to quit because I found that I was having trouble balancing the complete indifference and the crippling obsession. It was starting to feel unhealthy, and I wanted to catch it before it starts affecting my out of game character, so I deleted the app, 17 hours of progress and all.

No worries, though, I'm sure I'll get obsessed with another free to play app soon, and I'll drop you a note in game center.

FYI, if anyone cares to compare leaderboards, my Gamecenter ID is DT396

Money attracts more money, and all kardashians know it haha... marketing genious