Kudos 2

excellent
key review info
  • Game: Kudos 2
  • Platform: PC
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: N/a
  • Reviewed on:

This game should be a compulsory education tool for all those under  the age of 20. I suggest that every teenager between 16 and 19 should be forced to play this extensively for at least one semester in order to understand what can happen once you enter your 20’s. They have to learn that keeping a lot of friends around is costly, that jobs are hard to get if you are not confident. They have to know that you can meet your soul mate while walking in the park and they really have to get it into their heads that developing skills really pays off. Kudos 2 imparts all these lessons and would make it so that the teenagers of tomorrow are better prepared to handle the challenges of that potentially lost decade that goes from 20 to 30.

 

Kudos 2 is an indie effort, created by Positech Games and distributed digitally. It's small, it has no DRM and sports a great extended demo which pretty much shows what the game can offer an interested gamer. You can play it for six hours at a time or for just ten minutes. It's deceiving at first, as it seems simple and straightforward, but there's a lot of depth hidden under the beautifully drawn and animated skin of Kudos 2. It's varied enough to keep a player interested while engaging to make this gamer think of his virtual avatar's Kudos count as much as I thought of my plans for that night. The game really crawls under your skin and builds a nest there to keep you coming back again and again.

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Customizable look
Socially aware

 

Concept

 

You have just turned 20. You are a waiter at the moment and make barely enough to sustain yourself and go out a bit. You have a few friends and there's a possible relationship lurking in there somewhere (be sure to turn on same gender relationships in the Options screen). From this point on, you can do pretty much anything you want with your life.

 

Wait, let's clarify that a little. Doing “anything you wanted” in The Sims sometimes included such heinous acts like putting people in the pool while removing the ladder which allowed them to go outside, putting walls and a pink flamingo all around a character and watching him go into a nervous breakdown while happily kicking the said flamingo or bunching a lot of funeral stones in one character's bedroom.

 

In Kudos 2, the rules of reality are pretty much respected. There are no vampires, no aliens and no one coming to take babies away from you. The big attraction regarding the game is that it manages to make reality fun, by speeding up time and by offering the same range of choices, social, economical and personal, that a young person aged 20 to 30 usually enjoys.

 

This might make the game seem boring somehow but trust me, it moves along at a very good pace and the wealth of possibilities is enough to keep one busy in that “just-one-more-turn” fashion of turn based games. The building up and the subsequent falling out that relationships imply are the highlight here.

 

Kudos 2 is as close to a social life as you can get without having one. After all, the well known stereotype of the videogamer details that we're lacking in social skills and hide in basements, in front of very bright computer monitors. The stereotype is certainly not true; still, Kudos 2 manages to be appealing in a lot of different ways to me as a gamer. And I have a sneaking suspicion that more casual gamers might also be interested in the game. You just need to click around a bit and choose options to begin playing Kudos 2.

 

Gameplay

 

Each night, you can perform one action. On Saturdays and Sundays, you can perform two. The big categories are personal actions, like washing, going for a walk in the park and watching TV, and social actions, like going out, drinking beer or visiting a museum. Believe me, there are enough actions in both categories that a player might need more than a few weeks to cycle through them. For example, being occupied with romancing a particular redhead, I managed not to watch TV for about a month. The big problem was that I also forgot to wash for the same period (please, for the sake of your social life, watch for the flies above your head).

 

In addition to the above mentioned, you can go job hunting, with each category of available positions requiring certain skills and characteristics, and you can also sign up for night classes in order to learn how to cook, act, do kung fu and a myriad of other things.

 

You will have to keep track of the way your character feels; most needs do not have to be addressed as often as in The Sims. Also, you will have to keep your eye out for what can contribute to your promotion and to the confidence of your avatar. Most actions have an effect on your stats which you can check out on the right hand side of the screen. When doing social activities, you can also see the results directly and you can pick up some clues regarding the game world from what the people who go out with you say.

 

The big drawback with the game, for me at least, is that some things seem a bit illogical. For example, you have to pay to watch TV (each time you do it) and even to have a bath. Commute costs also escalate pretty quickly, making it almost inefficient to go longer distances for a better paying job. I'm still not sure which job path is the best, but so far, I played the geek path and always went for science.

 

As years go by, you celebrate your birthday and the game throws some statistics at you showing how popular you are and what activities you liked best. Eventually, you will become successful and you will have a great career, while getting a cat, a girlfriend who loves you and wants to see many romantic movies and a lot of stuff in your home, from MP3 players to a wide variety of books. Or you could end up pretty much broke after going through 19 jobs, with just two friends you recently picked up in the park jogging and with a room cleaned only once a month.

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Spicy
This is success

 

Graphics and sound

 

Beautiful. That's the best word to describe how the game looks. It's not a 3D powerhouse but where The Sims went into the uncanny valley a bit too far in its effort to animate human looking Barbie and Ken dolls, Kudos 2 manages to be “real” enough to allow you to connect with the character you play as while being stylized enough, especially as far as the looks of the various friends you meet, to allow a player to understand that it's all about a world which does not exist, a world created by Chris Hildenbrand and Jamie McKelvie.

 

The character creation screen is a bit Spartan, with the options for each category rather limited. The number of possible permutations is big enough that you can create interesting and wacky characters but it's nowhere near the limitless possibilities of Mass Effect. Somehow, most of my characters end up bald and wearing a pink suit, but hey, that might just be me. Also, the glasses options look very good.

 

The game has soothing ambient music and sound effects but does anyone really play social simulators in order to listen to the music featured? I usually crank up some '80 tracks, mostly hair rock and a bit of disco, as a soundtrack to my quest of becoming the first all bold and pink dressed movie star in the Kudos 2 world.

 

Conclusion

 

Kudos 2 is a good game, with a very nice looking front and interesting options. It might be a little limiting in what you can do and it isn't for those who enjoyed looking at simulated characters move around a house filled with stuff from IKEA. It's for those interested in a life simulator which is close to the real world while also maintaining that “what if?” factor. And it's also addictive. I pretty much played it three or four times a day for the last ten days and haven't even gotten around to playing a female character, which I am dying to do. After all, I like my geeky, videogame guy too much to abandon him just yet. But I really think he should get out more, so I may restart him and try to keep more friends around.

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story 7
gameplay 9
concept 10
graphics 9
audio 7
multiplayer 5
final rating 9
Editor's review
excellent