I have to say that high school was both thrilling and terrifying. Hormones ran amok, existential crises were everywhere and you faced possible social rejection every time you left the house. Survival of the fittest (or should I say the most popular?) was the name of the game. Heaven forbid that you would have the time and/or emotional energy to actually learn anything. When I saw that Mean Girls had become a game, I was instantly overcome by flashbacks from the world of teenage angst I had so eagerly escaped many years ago. Shudder.

The game is inspired by a movie of the same name released in 2004. The beautiful and funny Tina Fey wrote the screenplay, which is based off of a book by Rosalind Wiseman. It is a witty, hyperbolic look at life in high school and, luckily, some of this humor shows up in the game. You get to play the main character and navigate through a storyline based roughly off of the main narrative of the movie.

After growing up in Africa, your parents decide to move to the States and enroll you in North Shore High. Talk about culture shock! On one hand, it's awesome that you get a fresh start. On the other, you have no idea what you're doing. Some of the people you meet seem to be nice, but can you ever really know for sure? You are enlisted to help take down "the Plastics," a group of allegedly mean girls that rule the school.

The first person you run into at the school is Janis, who helps you by giving you a tutorial. She starts by asking you to pick an avatar. Your choices are an artsy gal with paint spots and a beret, the awkward nerdy girl with glasses and six pieces of flair, the wild child with tattoos and a belly-baring T-shirt, and the alternachick sporting blue streaks in her hair. I went the alternachick route. The next big decision to make is the distribution of your stats, attributes and perks specific to your character. You have 15 points to allocate to strength, luck, endurance, intelligence and charisma. If you are feeling lazy, you can choose to have the game distribute the points for you. Finally, you get to pick a skill — a technique your character uses to get ahead in battle. Initially your options are pretty limited, but not to worry, you'll earn more as you gain levels.

Janis then introduces you to her friend Damian. He's the homeroom diva, apparently, and love-love-loves your shoes. You get to use him as a punching bag to try out your moves in a showdown. The battle screen displays the skills, loyalty, health meters and a puzzle board for you and your opponent. Your goal is to match three or more tiles in a row, either horizontally or vertically. The tiles have different attributes and affect your adversary in different ways. You can be mean and attack their health meter, or you can go the nice route and try and win them over with your fabulous personality (loyalty). As you match tiles, you'll fill up their corresponding skill meters. When they are full, you can use one of your skills (but only after a skill has been unlocked).

After your training, you meet "the Plastics" and are sent on a thousand different errands by various characters in the game. Inevitably, each errand results in one of more showdowns. It starts to feel repetitive; I kept thinking, "I don't wanna battle. I want to find out what happens next!" This is indicative of one of two things: Either the story is fantastic, or I got bored with the battle interface. Most likely the latter. Though I enjoyed the fact that the majority of your social encounters were framed as battles (it seems appropriate in the vicious world of teenage popularity, after all), the battles themselves became dull after awhile. Though puzzles can be addictive, this one grew old a few rounds in. It needed more variety — either by adding more random elements to the board or increasing the complexity of the gameplay. As it stands, the battles feel like an annoying interruption to the exploration of the story. They made my experience a bit disjointed and, as a result of boredom with the battles, I failed to finish the game.

The concept is cute, the storyline is engaging and there is fun to be had. Unfortunately, the puzzle battles were repetitive after awhile and eventually they began to take away from the gameplay. Since showdowns are the main interactive elements of the game, the overall experience suffered quite a bit. I give Mean Girls a, "meh." It's not bad, but it's not great either. If there's ever a free trial, go ahead and give it a try. Otherwise, I would give it a pass.