Posted by Conor Duffy on Jul 8th, 2009
This is a special Big Mean Flash Gamer exclusive to Way of the Geek. While I’m celebrating 100 reviews over on my blog, I wanted to give you guys a special “treat.”
Floating our way on a stream of candy canes, lollipops and sleepy puppies is a title from our good friends at girlsgames123.com, : Mall Flirting. Those fine folks at the website offering “Free Girls Games For Girls” set out to answer the age old question, “What is best in life?”
The answer, apparently, is being a vacuous prick tease. The goal of Mall Flirting, as the title implies, is to run around the mall stealing as many boys’ hearts before the timer runs out. Yet again, given the choice between reinforcing the notion that girls should be weak, bitchy, boy-obsessed morons or providing a game that lets them think for once, the developers have chosen the easier option. It’s actually a real shame, because to create a game that looks as good and plays as well as this one requires a certain level of skill. So it’s not that they can’t make a decent game for girls; they just can’t be arsed.
You play the traditional blonde-haired airhead, running around like a chimpanzee on crack in search for unsuspecting boys whose hearts you can steal. Controls are covered entirely by the mouse, keeping them streamlined and simple (after all, we don’t want to force girls to use the mouse and the keyboard. They might have an aneurysm!)
I’d be very interested to discover the gender of Mall Flirting’s creator, because it seems to give some mixed messages. Flirting with boys and stealing their hearts is awesome, but the flirting technique of our heroine mainly involves electrocuting them with laser beams from her eyes.
So, flirting involves gross bodily harm now? Hey, we’ve all got our kinks, and if these guys have a thing for girls who can kill them just by looking at them, then that’s OK! To be honest, knowing that she could be a member of the X-Men raises her standing in my eyes.
Oh no! There are rivals for the affection of these emo fratboys! Check it out on Page 2.
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Just when you thought the “mall babe” stereotype was finally dead… along comes a game like this.
I actually like shopping malls myself, but after seeing this I’m suddenly feeling a twinge of satisfaction in knowing that those giant concrete-and-glass monuments to Capitalism Unchained are beginning to go the way of the woolly mammoth. The world needs fewer vacuous creatures like this game’s heroine.
I think the game might work as a parody of the stereotype, in the way that Plan 9 unintentionally sent up ’50s sci-fi schlockfests. The only thing that concerns me is that this game appears to be directly targeted at young girls, who might already have developed some serious self-image issues…
That’s my main problem with the game – technically it’s pretty well made, but the concept is designed entirely around convincing girls that the best thing they can do is spend all their money on expensive clothing, then flirt with as many boys as possible. I’m not exactly comfortable with that message being delivered to young girls, especially on a website that focuses on them.
I forgot to mention that you can also play School Flirting – after all, why learn when you can fool around with boys?
I just found a game even more potentially offensive on their site. It’s called “Gogo Diet,” apparently Korean in origin (judging by the kana-forms) and it’s just awful. You play as a girl on a treadmill, endlessly running to lose weight while avoiding food objects coming your way. Every time your girl (who starts off fairly toothpick-like) so much as touches food, she seemingly gains about 100 pounds instantly. Yeah, that’s not reinforcing whatever body-image problems young girls today might have.
As with Mall Flirting, the game itself is fine from a technical aspect (if a bit simplistic), but the concept behind it is just so wrong it can only leave a bad taste in my mouth. Play it here if you dare.
Dang – this site’s gonna keep me in reviews for months.