Dream Salon

Don't let the pretty color-scheme fool you--it's a total ripoff. Horrible graphics, no variety in gameplay...it's bad.

User Rating: 1.5 | Dream Salon DS

By darlene_vile | Review Date: March 19, 2011

Dream Salon pushes developer Zoo Games even closer to usurping Ubisoft's title as the most consistent peddler of video game crap targeted at females. Lately they've been filling the shelves at Wal-mart with new DS and Wii games at an alarming rate, and the 'Dream' series of games (Dream Dancer, Dream Dance and Cheer, Dream Salon) are the most abundant--and the most awful. Specifically, Dream Salon is so terrible that you start searching your mind for possible reasons why Zoo created and published this disaster. Were the Zoo employees under a lot of stress? Did they crank the game out before it was done? Did mad chimpanzees storm the building and seize control of the games development department? No, I think even the chimps could have done better.
The first major flaw of Dream Salon is the graphics. The color scheme is actually really pretty, with the hot pinks and purples, and all. But the characters are blocky, blurry, and ugly, in that bad 3D poorly computer-generated way. Not one of the small selection of models you dress up are attractive at all--and strangely the hair colors get mixed up. If you select a blonde, you almost always get a brunette. Not that it matters, they're all fugly as hell.
Second major flaw is the game play and lack of variety. You get to do about 3 things to the model. You can put on makeup, which comprises of lipstick, blush, eyeshadow, mascara, all of which share a 4 color pallette: red, yellow, blue, and green. Thats fine for eyeshadow, but unless you want to look eff'ed up, why would you want yellow blush or green mascara??
After you do makeup, you choose a hairstyle. Again, very small selection of ugly blocky hairstyles that make you wish bald was an option.
After that, you do the photography part. Your model kinda shambles around a set while you snap photos of her, trying to get the best shots possible. No challenge here in the least, and I don't think you're even graded on it or anything.
Then its over, and you are sitting there staring at your DS trying to will it to do something else, anything else, cause that can't be the whole game. But it is, and you realize you've been scammed out of 15 bucks.