Kitty Powers Matchmaker – Review (PS4)

Kitty Powers Matchmaker – Review (PS4)

As a young boy growing up I had dreamed of becoming a Fireman, a Policeman and even a window cleaner. Never in a million years did I imagine becoming a matchmaker at a dating agency working for a drag queen. Yet here I am playing Kitty Powers Matchmaker and doing exactly that. Being asked to review this game I had a reaction, I expect, much like what you will be thinking right now. What the hell is this game, why is it and thing and how much am I going to hate it?  

I completely expected to hate this game and bring you a review full of scathing criticisms and boredom. I was ready to go through all this pain so that you guys didn’t have to. The thing is though, I don’t even hate this game at all, and in fact I had a fair amount of fun during my time with it. The biggest problem I had was awarding it with a score (I gave it a 6, in case you missed it). I’ve never had trouble giving a review score in the past and I’m still not sure I’m happy with what I have given. Read on.  

Booting up the game for the first time saw me instantly hired by the dating agency, after making my Avatar. The easiest job interview I have ever had. I was given a personality test to see what my new employers had gotten themselves into, turns out I am pretty useless and lazy, at least I felt that way given the multiple choice questions that were put before me and the answers I had to give. Thanks Kitty. What made the test more enjoyable was the fact my avatar and his choices/personality are all saved online and can be used at anytime as a prospective date in someone else’ game. I enjoy knowing that my avatar can give people a hard time in their game.  

The actual point of this game, and your job in it, is to match clients up with prospective dates and hope they can find love. The ultimate goal of a dating agency being to get rid of your clients as quickly as possible, strange when you think about it. Anyway, I started by advertising the agencies services in a certain point of town which resulted in geeky clients coming through our doors, thus beginning the actual main portion of the game. There are many different types of people who walk in and each want you to find them love. To do this you need to read their profile and check what activities they like and what eye and hair colours they like. Armed with this information you just have to find a date that best matches their likes.

To start with I spent too much time trying to cater for my actual client and their needs instead of the people they would be dating. The whole matching process became more fun when I thought of it as a two way process.   Once the match has been made its date time. Job done, right? Wrong. Kitty Powers dating agency is quite possibly the most invasive dating agency of all time. As well as picking the dates you have to guide your customer through them via a hidden ear piece and CCTV cameras that have been installed in the restaurant especially. Each date is a series of memory mini games, luck and silliness. The actual restaurant itself is picked at the start by watching a series of spinning envelopes, following the food destination you want and picking it. Conversation is picked by a quick pull of the, ahem, love handle that will spin and bring up a choice of 3 different topics to chat about.

Being in charge of the answers we are given the choice of lying to try and make the date go better. For example telling someone how great their haircut is when in reality it looks like they wash it and in the toilet and have it cut by an arthritic hedgehog. Telling a lie forces a spin of a roulette wheel that will decide if you get away with it or fail and risk upsetting the date. Make sure to remember the initial dating profiles though as often the conversation will bring up the likes and dislikes of both parties. Forgetting what was written and selecting wrong answers will annoy them even more and as the game employs a 3 strikes and you’re out system it’s imperative to answer correctly. If the dates aren’t ended early by your own (my) stupidity than there is a choice to be made. Ask for a relationship, ask for a second date or just be friends. Choose carefully as coming on too strong, or indeed not strong enough can lead to heartbreak.  

KPM is a simple game, I haven’t even described what it looks like, there is no need, the pictures here say it all. Despite its simplicity there is constantly something to think about as one false move can cause a strike against you. As well as keeping the conversation going you have to work out the correct amount of tip to give, remember the taxi number as your dates phone has conveniently run out of battery (all day on Tinder I assume, pig), you even have to listen to the type of food the date likes and pick it for them. Get it wrong and they get really angry even though they didn’t want to pick it themselves. Quite often I did look at the date and think to myself what a horrible person they were. One date I told my client to tell the date how great their hair was, he loved the compliment, so far so good.

A second later he went to the bathroom and came back having dyed his entire hair and beard a completely different colour and then questioning what was different about him. I’ll tell you what’s different buddy, the fork in your eye. There are plenty of memory and mini games to work through, I haven’t even mentioned the hi-low game that see’s if you can hold in flatulence or not. The point is the entire game is a basically a series of memory tests, I could list out every single thing that can be done but you’ll all know if that’s your cup of tea or not.   I myself did have some fun, I enjoyed the whole process of trying to find them love in a voyeuristic Sims type way.

A nice touch being the letters you receive from your couples later down the line telling you if they made it to marriage, children or if they just ended up as friends. There is also no gender bias here as any combination of people are accepted, M2F, M2M, F2F, a nice touch and a lesson in equality. The more happy couples the better, especially as successful dates earn you reputation and coins. These can be used to upgrade the dating agency, buy new restaurants, allow more customers into the books and also purchase items in the salon that can be used to make people more stylish.   Kitty herself is just what you’d expect from a drag queen in the vain of someone like Julian Clary. She will pop up every now and then to sprout humorous remarks and put downs with practically every other line being an innuendo. She does have some funny moments though, as does the game itself. I found an Aliens reference, which is always nice.  

Obviously the game isn’t without problems. Parts that can seem funny to start with will get annoying after a while. The odd little noises that the people make are all well and good until you hear them for the thousandth time, or accidently leave the controller down to do something and the continuously babble on. The gameplay does get pretty repetitive and doesn’t warrant hours and hours of continuous play, not a problem when the game is clearly designed to just pick up and play every now and then for short periods of time.

The problem is the game was released on mobiles a few years ago and is a much better fit on the portable system making me hard pushed to recommend this version over the IOS or android one.   None of these issues helped my dilemma of scoring Kitty Powers. Overall I would say to most people to at least give it a go. Clearly anyone who isn’t a fan of memory games, campiness or innuendoes are going to struggle to find much enjoyment at all and can easily take a point or 3 off of the score, however, anyone who does enjoy these could easily add a couple of points. As with all games the score is subjective, I’m really just finding it hard to be definitive. What I would say though to anyone thinking of picking this up, try the mobile version. It is cheaper and a much better fit darlings.

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