Developed by Disney Interactive Studios and published by THQ, Bratz: The Movie revolves around four girls named Cloe, Yasmin, Sasha and Jade. These teens with a self-proclaimed "passion for fashion" live and work above a stripmall in the town of--wait for it--Stylesville. Their lives consist of cruising trendy boutiques for new threads and then writing about their harrowing experience in their publication, Bratz Magazine. The girls lead a pretty sweet life that's only occasionally disrupted, mainly by rival fashion editor Burdine Maxwell, creator of Your Thing and doppelganger of Barbie (or is it Vogue's Anna Wintour?)
The game is divided up into various chapters, each with its own storyline. In every chapter you're given control of one of the four Bratz girls and must complete a series of shopping tasks that will be written about in the magazine. Assignments include snapping up popular designer labels, roller blading around town picking up coins and missing items, and catching up on all the latest gossip. Expect no in-depth storyline here. The game is aimed at tweens and makes no attempt to hide it.
Of course, the lack of a story won't matter much to little girls, who just want to dress up their Bratz dolls and enjoy upbeat music about girl power. We wish we could give gameplay a thumbs up for at least being mindless entertainment, but unfortunately it's even more tedious than the vacuous storyline.
For those of you want to spice things up a bit, you might be disappointed to know that you can't rename your Bratz Paris, Britney, Nicole and Lindsey. You can however hit the mall so that the girls can at least dress the part. It's alarmingly easy. Every shop has a wide variety of hot pants, mini skirts and tight T-shirts. Shoes consist of strappy heels and calf-hugging boots. All that's missing is the naughty Catholic school girl outfit, which you can make after taking a few design lessons. You can even buy a dog or cat and dress it up too. Admittedly this ability to mix and match different looks is entertaining. For awhile. But it will quickly become apparent that that's all the game really has to offer besides the occasional non-shopping related activity. Even a Bratz-adoring child will quickly get bored going from shop A to shop B and back, only to be told to head for shops C and D and then return home. No educational value to please parents and no entertainment value to please fans of the franchise.
Another issue with gameplay is the camera, which has the turning radius of a rusty pinto with a broken steering wheel. You'll end up having more conversations with walls than people since that's all you see while trying to talk to NPCs. And using the game's camera phone is equally annoying, since in order to take a decent picture you have to be at the exact right angle. Frustrating doesn't even begin to describe it.
The only positive thing to say about the gameplay is that the HUD is easy to access. It's cleverly disguised as a cellphone the girls carry around with them, and each option is clearly labeled and accessed with a quick press of a button. The layout of Stylesville is pretty confusing, so it's nice to be able to find stores using the location tool. It's also handy to be able to keep track of assignments by consulting the phone's planner, since you can do multiple activities at once.
The graphics in this game are pretty poor, which isn't unexpected for a game of rather low caliber, but it's still frustrating to have to deal with everything from major texture ripping to jittery frame rates. One example of this is a scene where one Bratz doll is standing in the middle of the screen talking; she suddenly teleports several inches to the left, then reappears in the middle. This happens quite a few times in the game. The cutscenes are spared this oddity, but are still low-grade, meaning they're passable and nothing more.
Not all the news is bad though. The music is light-hearted and full of positive messages (be true to yourself/be an individual), and there's a pretty healthy selection of tunes to choose from. There's also a change in scenery every once in awhile (for example the girls jet off to London to do a celebrity interview), and this keeps the environment from becoming too stale. Neither of these things is enough to make up for terrible gameplay and faulty framerates, but it keeps the game from being a complete failure.
