| Difficulty | Easy |
| ESRB Rating | Unknown (probably E for Everyone) |
| Concept | 75% |
| Controls | 99% |
| Gameplay | 65% |
| Graphics | 85% |
| Sound | 80% |
| Overall | 84% |
Review Computer: Laptop, Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 Ghz, 4 GB Ram, 256 MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330, and Windows 7 Home Edition.
My Life Story is a 2d time management game. It simulates real life, though it primarily covers career and education. There's no social interaction, and there's only a handful of statistics modeling your character.
This game is obviously intended for the casual market, and its interface is appropriately easy to use. The graphics and sound are both acceptable for a modern casual game.
The concept of simulating real life with a time management game isn't a bad one. This sort of game can let you live the life you want to have, rather than the life you actually have. You could be able to do exciting things that are too dangerous or unprofitable in real life. This game could have been truly great.
In fact, this game is quite entertaining... for a little while. Unfortunately, it becomes mind numbingly repetitive before long. There isn't enough variation. Taking a class at the university is exactly the same every time. You don't learn new skills, though you eventually select a major. If it actually mattered which major you selected, it could be more entertaining.
Similarly, every job is almost the same. Different jobs affect your statistics differently, pay different amounts, and give you different amounts of experience. This doesn't change the fact that whatever job you're doing, you're just staring at some statistic bars changing values with a timer counting down until you have enough experience to get a new job. I was particularly disappointed that becoming more educated didn't seem to advance me to jobs that had anything to do with my education. I was working on an engineering degree, and my job options were things like "Dog Trainer" and "Movie Actor". Eventually, I did get some kind of "Assistant Technician" job, which may have been related to engineering somehow.
Keep in mind that I was somehow making $44 per hour at the dog trainer job. It wasn't that I wasn't getting paid enough; it was that I was training dogs. While it's realistic for someone to have that sort of job during college, it's a real drag to go through all that education and just become a dog trainer. If I wanted a job that had nothing to do with my college education, I would just stare at the wall because that's my real life.
Your education tracks nothing but how many classes you've completed (and your major, which doesn't seem to matter). One class is the same as another. Your job experience winds up being just a number. For example, you don't develop a special skill for taking care of dogs if all your jobs involve dogs. There should be separate skills that you make you good at different things. This would make the game more complicated, but it would give you something to do.
There are other things you can do in the game. Primarily, they include buying food at restaurants and engaging in recreational activities at various locations. These activities exist primarily to fill up your statistic meters, which are used only to take classes and work. Since taking classes and working are relatively pointless, this makes these other activities pointless as well.
There are a couple of minor features I haven't mentioned yet:
Even though the gameplay gets old fast, it might be worth the $6.99 I paid for it at Big Fish Games. It all depends upon how much your money is worth to you. I don't feel that many people would invest the time to play this game to completion, but it is interesting for a while. My recommendation is to buy a more complicated life simulation game, like Kudos 2. My Life Story seems like it would be worthwhile only as a shorter and free game.
Copyright (C) 2010 Steven Fletcher. All rights reserved.
