New York Nights - Success in the City Review

Anannya Sen’s Review

Can you find success and love in New York? Check out this fun strategy game to find out!

New York Nights - Success in the City (or NYN as I'll be calling it from now on) is a strategy game a bit like the SIMS where you control your character's actions to try and find success and love in the Big Apple.

Now I can't find success or love in London so what hope do I have on this game? Read on!

First off are the graphics. NYN is a cartoony style game and the graphics reflect this. They are well drawn and look pretty apt for this type of game. The screen contains a fair amount of detail for each location and the developers have obviously spent a while on the graphics. With the vibrant colours and ability to personalise your character, the graphics add a lot to the game.

The sound. Hhmmm. Well, on my phone there were only two sounds. Firstly the intro tune which is not that bad. Gameloft always put some music in their games and should be lauded for their efforts. In NYN you get the intro music and this also plays briefly when you're dancing, but other than that all I got was the ringing of the phone when someone calls you. It vibrated as well, so at least it's a bit realistic but I did feel that the sound could have been improved. Maybe some tunes for each location or some effects when you did an activity. Some romantic music on your dates also could have been nice. Overall, the sound was just about adequate and isn't one of the key selling points of the game.

The controls are simplicity itself. Use the D or key pad to move your pointer around and when it moves over something you can do, like talk to someone, read the newspapers etc, then press the main button to do it. The shoulder buttons access your menus. Move the pointer to the exit square to exit to your next location. You should be able to pick up the controls in about a minute.

The playability is actually pretty good. The objective of the game is to get to know people and eventually get a good job and if you're lucky, find true love. Ok. Back to reality here. The basic premise is to have conversations and increase your friendship with people. You can talk about a lot of things, some they will like and some they won't. You have to figure out what is good and the higher your friendship stat, the more stuff you can do with them (ahem - I'll get to that later). Also you have specific stats for your health, beauty, humour, culture and popularity. These can be increased by doing different activities such as going down to the gym, seeing a film etc. You have 40 nights to achieve your goals and your friend Lucie will help you through. I have to admit that I enjoyed playing the game quite a lot as you have complete control over what you can do. The game does shepherd you along in terms of jobs and getting a date but during the days and nights you can do whatever activities are on offer. It's pretty sad but I even kind of developed a set routine of eating breakfast, reading the papers and maybe going to see a film. Each activity and location takes time to get to and the speed with which time passes can be controlled. Also, after you go to sleep the game gives you the option to save and continue or quit. It was a lot of fun watching the character doing the different things and then changing their appearance where possible.

The lastability is ok. I got through the game after 26 nights and so had 14 left. Once you get to that point, you can either start again or just roam around the city doing whatever you feel like. The game can be saved but you have to exit the game for the memory to be retained, basically my phone has lately developed a habit of turning itself off for no reason and if I was mid game or it was suspended and my phone went off, I'd lose the progress up to the last point I'd saved and actually exited the game. You get what I mean. Anyway, I spent a few solid days playing it and once I found true love with the future president of the US, thought that was it. It's quite funny when you go out with them and can invite them to your apartment and also into your bed! A '.....' appears the next morning. So I thought that was it, but I kept playing and am now trying to see if I can have two lovers at the same time and wondering what my 'hubby' will think of it. I haven't got that far yet as the friendship takes a while, but I'll let you know when I do.

My only gripe about the game is the fact that you play as a woman (and so a few of the activities are purely aimed at women) and also in New York (what's wrong with good old London Town) but then I suppose if you played as a guy the objective may not be to find true love but charm as many women as possible! Still a fun game to play if you like that sort of thing and hopefully our female readers will enjoy it!