By the time I got to the TV to see about getting a bigger one, I had a knock on the door. In walked – without invitation – the local real estate agent, and she proceeded to make fun of my TV.

The bitch.

But I get ahead of myself.

First off, pleased to meet you gentle reader. My name is SeanMike. I am a 30 year old engineer, single white male. My interests include video games, my 2001 Harley Davidson, guns, reading, writing, whiskey, beer, cooking, and cigars. The only network shows I watch on anything approaching a regular basis – other than cartoons – are Heroes and the two Law & Order spin-offs, SVU and Criminal Intent.

Thus, I’d heard of Desperate Housewives, but I had never watched the show. I’m not going to lie and claim I knew nothing about it – I did know something. I know that Teri Hatcher, I thought, was much more attractive back in “The Adventures of Lois & Clark”, that Marcia Cross was attractive but there’s something about her that just makes her look so very, very evil, and that Google-ing Eva Longoria was a good way to waste many hours (as long as you’re not at work). I also knew there was some controversy about one of the blonde women from the show and an intro to Monday Night Football a few years ago involving Terrell Owens, but to be honest, I hate T.O. with the undying fire of a thousand white hot suns, though I do get distracted by his escapades when I can’t avoid them no matter which sports talk radio show I listen to or which sports show I watch…

But I think I’m digressing.

When no one volunteered to review this here video game, I did so. As I said, I know, well, next to nothing about the show, and figured I’d help out the editors at GI.net. Little did I know what kind of suburban hell I was virtually getting myself into.

And so here I am. Sitting outside, typing the review, smoking a fine AVO cigar, sipping a Dalmore Cigar Malt scotch, with some Green Valley Wild Hop Lager for a back if I need it. I’m wearing the t-shirt from my favorite NFL team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, and feeling rather secure in my masculinity despite having played this game, having to write this review, and having the gay steel mill episode of the Simpsons stuck in my head.

Oh, and by the way – if you are thinking of trying the Dalmore Cigar Malt, it’s not bad, but I do suggest dropping an ice cube or two into it, or it can be a bit overpowering.

I’d originally thought I should get into the mood, the flava, if you will, of the game, and dress up in my best Sunday dress (note: for purposes of the review, the dress may belong to my brother’s girlfriend, who is 6” shorter than me and weighs less than 40% of my body weight), get a glass of white zinfandel (note: for purposes of the review, I may have to replace white zinfandel with Milwaukee’s Best Light), and sit down in a nice bistro setting to write the review (note: for purposes of the review, bistro setting may mean the small table next to my 120,000 BTU gas grill while making hot wings on it).

Then I remembered there’s no way she’d let me borrow one of her dresses, I hate white zinfandel, and I’m on a diet so the hot wings would have to be hot boneless skinless chicken breast strips.

But I think I’m digressing again.

The game is obviously not aimed at men. Or, at least, it’s not aimed at men unless they relish the thought of playing a housewife. Given a lot of the other players I’ve met in MMORPGs, that might actually be a fairly key demographic.

You start off with a nice little movie showing some of our main characters – though not exactly listing who they are, I found, with careful scrutiny, I could differentiate between all but the two blonde women. That’s not a knock on the graphics, mind you, as I can’t see who is who in the blondes on the front cover. I’m sorry! I’m just not a “blondes” kind of guy. I did find myself wondering if Marcia Cross’ devil horns would show up in the full motion video, and I did very carefully analyze Eva Longoria’s leotards as she stretched out or danced or something. I really, honestly, have too much free time sometimes.

The first thing you have to do is create your family. Now, of course, by “create your family” it really means “create the housewife” – you can pick her face, hair color and style, etc., but really, can’t customize your husband or extraordinarily goofy looking kid very much.

(I mean, was Caesar Augustus so bad? He did get the month of August named after him, and that is a very, very wonderful month as that’s the month that football starts. Again, I think I’m digressing.)

So we start the game. My husband is a doctor of some sorts (actually, a general practitioner, but let’s not even start in on the doctor jokes), my son is a high school student, and my job is to take care of the house.

Well, that, and get into the various intrigues of Wistaria Lane! Yes, I do now know the name of the street or neighborhood or whatever in the show. I can’t get it out. Maybe it’ll help me when a trivia contest or something.

In fact, there’s a lot of trivia in the game, because they put trivia questions on the loading screens – and dear lord does loading take a long time.

Perhaps I should’ve been warned when I tried to register the game online and it wasn’t in the list of games. Or in the stuttering, not-so-hot animations and scrolling in-game despite the fact that I was playing it on a hyperthreaded 2.8 GHz Intel machine with 1 GB of RAM and a Geforce FX6600 with 256 MB of memory.

I actually tried to load it onto my work laptop, which is the same speed processor but with 256 MB of RAM, a Geforce Ti4200 with 128 MB of VRAM, and Windows 2000 instead of XP, and it wouldn’t let me. It said the OS was too old – uh, sure, I guess – and that I didn’t have enough video RAM, though it said I only had something like 31 MB. World of Warcraft and EVE Online didn’t have those problems.

Since the game is clearly designed to appeal to the mythical “housewife” gamer, I had to wonder about those system requirements. Would they have it? Would they have to borrow their husband’s or son’s Alienware?

What if they were just playing for the coupons that are sent via in-game mail to you?

Perhaps that’s a bit of a digression as well. Perhaps I need more scotch, too. I know if I had to put up with the harpies on Wistaria Lane, I’d definitely be hitting the scotch. (And at least one of the housewives, but we’ll get into the “Seduce” versus “Kiss” functions later.)

So what kind of game is it, you might ask, if you are thinking about getting it? (And I can wonder about that, too, because despite the very nice help Buena Vista Games gave reviewers with the game, I wonder how many of the target audience for this game will take the time to go to gaming websites in order to read reviews of it before buying it. I mean, it doesn’t seem like you’re really weighing the purchase of “Desperate Housewives” against the wisdom and intellectual masterpiece reviews done by SeanMike (who is also sexy and handsome, mind you), are they? Do they say, “oh, no, I was hoping for an RTS or an FPS based off Desperate Housewives, as I’ve always wanted to build a zerg army to take out Marcia Cross, or put that darn real estate agent lady between the crosshairs of a Barrett M82 .50 caliber sniper rifle”? I think I may be digressing.)

Basically, this is a combination type game. It’s important to remember that, because you have to really combine the two parts of the game. The first time I played, I didn’t, and I think I got really stinky and everyone thought I was a pushover (but a nice one), and I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off and only succeeding in breaking the storyline elements.

Not that it was hard to do that or anything.

So, yeah, the two parts. The two parts are sim game (think “The Sims” but without the added bonus of interacting with online people who are, most likely, asshats) and part roleplaying game (think, uh, the linearity of an old text based role playing game, only without the added bonus of interesting inventory items or leveling up).

The storyline elements are, perhaps, the easiest to describe, and thus, I’ll do them first, because I am a very, very lazy man often prone to procrastination. (Just try and find my Age of Conan preview from DragonCon – it’s still sitting in my bag! Honestly, though, I’ll do it, if only to clear my “guy conscience” after doing this game, but maybe I’m digressing, especially if I start talking about mass formation combat and siege weapons, and how Ophelea knows the parts of a catapult better than I do.)

You basically go through a number of “episodes”. These, I’d assume, would match up with the kind of fun “stuff” that happens during an “episode” of the “TV show”. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s fun for you, the erstwhile antagonist of this almost Machiavellian social network, as a character, but it is intended to be fun to you, the player, dutifully wishing that your social life was anywhere near this interesting while very happy that it is not.

Each episode involves a few subplots. For instance, the first episode is basically “learn about your neighbors and how to do a few things”. You walk around, you talk to people, you learn who is divorced, who has wild kids, who is a bitch (all of them), etc. etc. This is the “tutorial” episode, and it’ll also show you some of the beginning aspects of the game.

As the game goes on, you’ll get more and more into the storylines. If anything, there are some characters on the street, and you’ll be dealing with a varied number of issues – infidelity, violent video games (man, how I wish for one of those right now – well, physically violent, not the mentally/socially/emotionally sort of violence that scars you right through the monitor when you think “WHY EVA LONGORIA WHY?!” with whiskey-induced tears rolling down your cheek…not that, uh, that happened or anything LET’S MOVE ON), up through even more intrigue than some Cold War spy games that I’ve played (to my regret).

Most of them seem to only have one real resolution path, though some give you a choice of two. That’s nice, I guess. The biggest thing you’ll want to remember is that you don’t have to do all the elements of an “episode” in one day, so take your time!

Because the other element of the game is the “sim” part, and if you don’t devote time to that, you can’t succeed in the other part, too.

How is it a sim?

Well, buddy, I’m going to tell you that, believe you me.

Mini-games.

Not…completely. But that’s a big part of it.

First off, you need to keep your various attributes – such as appearance – up. That means you can’t run around all night (indeed, everyone goes to bed at 10 PM, those lame, sorry, sons-of-…nevermind). When you are doing things during the day, you’ll want to hit the shower and the vanity. You’re going to be wearing the same clothes all the time if you don’t buy more, so take your husband’s money and GO BUY MORE!

Which, as a bit of a side bar, brings me to something else. When you take a shower, your character becomes pixilated, and naked, and gets in the shower. Now, as a game obviously aimed at women, do they have to hide it? I mean, I guess it’s not titillation to them, unless, you know, they’re into that kind of thing, and that’s okay, but I was surprised to see that, and honestly, the first thing I wondered was if there was a, uh, a mod, to fix that. But then again, I’m a sad and lonely…I mean, handsome, virile, and intelligent…man, and a few computer generated boobies would just be throwing me a bone, man.

(And come on! GROW UP! Don’t take that joke that way! I’m somewhat quoting Austin Powers! Not…gah. Well, if you’re reading this far, you probably deserve it. Or didn’t get it to begin with until I pointed it out. Sorry.)

So you have to keep up your appearance, I think that was what I was saying. When you go to bed, you strip down to bra and panties, which is what I guess women on Wistaria Lane wear to bed. I’d comment more on that, but honestly, I’m probably treading a very fine line with my editors as it is, but I can honestly say I have NEVER gone to bed wearing a bra and panties.

(sober)

You also have to do other things. For instance, you need to cook for your family. Oh, sure, if you’re lazy, and YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY, you can call catering. (lazy!) But, if you truly love Delmar and Augustus, you’ll fix them a nutritious, home-cooked meal. Of…uh…a vegetable platter.

Look, I’m just a novice chef, leave me alone!

Basically, you have mini-games for some of the chores in the house. For cooking, you need to cut the ingredients – that’s really the hard part, though it’s very “loose” in making sure you clicked at the right time – stir the ingredients together, cook them, etc. As you do well in lower “level” recipes, you get access to harder ones. Oh – and you’re timed, too.

So – yeah. I guess you do level up. Like you do in gardening.

Gardening is also a bit of a mini-game. Each plant has a health meter and a water meter. Doing things like spraying the plants with insecticide or letting them dry out is bad for them. However, you need to kill the bugs that are running around water them, but don’t water them too much. As you do better, you can buy better plants, and it helps to plant them in the right order.

You also play “Texas Hold ‘Em” poker with the girls – but they cheat. Seriously. And so do you. You can play online, I guess, if you need more money.

And while you’re online you can do web searches. The web boards in one of the early episodes, where you’re investigating your son’s obsession with an online video game, definitely shows the signs of programmers under strain, or maybe, just maybe, programmers with either too much time on their hands or too amused with themselves. If you’re one of those programmers, and you’re reading this, let me know.

Seriously. I’m interested.

Each of the other residents on Wistaria Lane also has two ways they feel about you. One is friendliness – how friendly are you to them, and vice versa – and the other is respect. Cave to their every wish, and they’ll like you, but you’re a spineless dweeb to them. Slap them around – and you can do that! – and they’ll respect you, but hate you. That real estate agent – yeah, I don’t like or respect her at all. But that’s just me, and I’m a bitter, vindictive kind of guy.

It’s not just talking to people that causes you to gain or lose those. You can slap or hug the other women on the street if you want. At first, when playing, before learning about the respect part, I wondered why you’d use the “Slap” button, but now I know. That’s not all…

When dealing with men, you also have the “Seduce” option. What really got me, though, was the fact that while you could seduce random men, your husband only has the “kiss” option.

I mean – well – come on! I go into my husband’s office, he’s got some kind of floozy working for him who is OBVIOUSLY hitting on him, what better way to mark my territory…err…be proactive in my industrial-marital complex relations by using that seduce button on the husband while his secretary is in the next room. But, oh, no, all I can do is kiss him.

But, that, of course, would break the storyline. You don’t need to do all that to break the storyline – because all you have to do is maybe it is move too fast, or too slow, or click in the wrong order, and you can’t finish certain episode subplots.

Which leads, I guess almost inevitably, to some of the problems with the game. It’s not just the resource requirements, but it completely seems to max them out, running slowly, and simply not taking advantage of them as well graphically as other games. I’ll caveat this, though:

Caveat: If the game is really aimed at non-gamers, then of course it really wouldn’t behoove it to attempt to take advantage of high end graphics cards that wouldn’t be installed necessarily on a stereotypical home PC. However, the fact is – the game still chugs and stutters for showing below-average graphics.

Is a caveat a digression, or am I digressing?

The music isn’t bad, but the sound effects – eh. Honestly, I don’t know if the real actresses do their own voices, but it kind of sounds like them I guess. (Like I said – I don’t watch the show.) In general, they’re fairly low key, but thankfully all the dialogue is also subtitled.

The mini-games aren’t especially hard, for the most part, but it is, at it’s heart, a sim game. That means the hard part isn’t, necessarily, completing the games, but keeping everything balanced.

If you’re looking for a game that replicates the show – I’m, well, going to guess this does it. If you’re not a fan of the show, you might be interested in trying it out if you like sim or some roleplaying games – but it is fairly limited as an RPG and a sim. On the other hand, it is a different type of game, and a lot of people might be interested in playing it. If you are a fan of the show, you should give it a shot.

Me, personally, I’m going to just go and get a shot instead…