Bratz

"Lipstick Lesbian Lust On Your GameBoy Advance"

What the hell am I doing, reviewing a game whose target audience is twelve-year-old girls? Well, my niece recently got this title for her Game Boy Advance, and after trying it out for a laugh, I decided to review it.

What in the world is Bratz about? They're some kind of dolls for little girls. To everyone else reading who's as clueless as I, all you need to know is that Bratz deals with several bubbly teenage girls. You know, mall-type cheerleader chicks with lots of makeup.

The gameplay in Bratz for the GBA seems to be a cross between the Konami hit Dance Dance Revolution and Sega's uber-cool Samba De Amigo. On the left half of the screen, you have a girl who dances around to the music playing. On the right half of the screen, you have a star surrounded by four arrows on the left, right, top, and bottom. Coming out of the star in the center towards the outer arrows are more arrows. What you must do is hit the correct direction on the D-pad when one of the arrows coming from the center goes over an outer arrow. In later levels (or harder difficulties), A and B button presses are thrown into the mix as well to help keep things challenging. You also have a bar on the bottom of the screen. When you do well and keep hitting the proper keys at the right time, the bar will increase; if you should do poorly and miss too many, the bar will decrease. Then it's game over.

Finally, during certain parts in each level, you'll enter a little freestyle dance screen. You must hit the right directions at the correct time in sync with flashing arrows. These sections feel cheap and slapped in, unfortunately.

For characters, you get to choose from five (each with two different outfits) future single welfare mothers. Sadly, all five girls seem to play exactly the same. Would it have killed UBI Soft to make each character play a little differently than the others?

There's really nothing much for playmodes here either. You simply get a standard Contest mode, a Practice mode, and a multiplayer link up. Other then that, about all the replay value you're going to get is the games three different difficulty settings.

Graphics 6
Ok, dance games aren't usually known for their mind blowing graphics, and Bratz is no exception. All you get here is your rendered character—she animates fairly smoothly—and a flat wallpaper background.

The only serious complaint I had about the graphics, though, was that the little arrows and whatnot are a little difficult to see on the tiny GBA screen. Unless you have perfect eye sight (or some sort of magnifying device), you may have a tough time keeping up.

Sound 4
Aren't music games supposed to have good music? What the heck happened here? About the only music you'll find is some really boring techno tracks. Out of all the tracks I heard in the game, only one of them caught my ear. Other than the dull music, there's nothing—no vocals, and few sound effects. The GBA doesn't have great sound capabilities, but it is capable of far more than this. Just take a look at games like Dave Mirra or Castlevania. Both have amazing sound. Ah, well...You get what you pay for in most licensed titles, especially when they're aimed at prepubescent girls.

Controls 8
This is tough to score, as you don't actually control your character. Other than that oddity, things seem to control pretty well, given the type of game it is. Again, if your eye sight isn't perfect, you may have a difficult time seeing the arrows. Nothing else to say here.

Overall, I only recommend Bratz to young girls who are interested in the dolls upon which the game is based. If you're not an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl, stay away; there's just not all that much game here. (If you need a good dance/music game on your GBA, you're out of luck; there's nothing besides this available.) I just hope that Konami plans on releasing a GBA version of Dance Dance Revolution. No doubt it won't be as good as the arcade version, but it'll certainly be much better than this.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/10/03, Updated 06/10/03