Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover: Style Pack I

• Release Date: 1998
• Genre: Home
• Style: Fashion and Beauty
• Similar Games: Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover (Hybrid Windows/Mac), iStyle Personal Makeover: Uncover a Whole New You (IBM PC Compatible), Barbie Digital Makeover CD-ROM (IBM PC Compatible)

Game Description

Stop imagining the new you, and make it reality (virtual reality)! Change your hairstyle, color, highlights, makeup and try out new eyewear and hats with the add-on pack to the virtual salon experience, Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover. Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover Style Pack I improves on the home salon experience by adding new styles and features. This Hybrid CD-ROM functions for both the PC and Macintosh, but can only work if you already have Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover installed.

Like the original, the first thing you need to do is transfer a color digital image of yourself (or anyone you feel needs a makeover) into your computer. You can do this in one of a number of ways, including using regular photos processed on disk or CD-ROM (instead of slides or prints), using a scanner or downloading images from a digital camera.

The image of the person you are going to makeover should be devoid of any makeup or jewelry, with hair pulled back tightly from the face. A range of image files can be used, including: JPEG, BMP, PICT, Kodak Picture Disk, Kodak Picture Disk Plus, Kodak Photo CD, or Kodak Flash Pix CD. The faces that you store in your system's hard drive will now become Virtual Makeover Models for your styling pleasure.

For any picture you have a number of options available to perform virtual magic. These include basic and styling options. The basics are: Load (choose a virtual model), Save (save your masterpieces with all your modifications), Options (select to select music type and view creator credits), Tips (beauty secrets and guidance from the editors of Cosmopolitan and others), Product Line (information on Cover Girl and Kodak products), Slide Show (show off your digital makeovers!), Preview (get a glimpse of your work before it is complete as the face of the model will appear in a larger portrait size. From here you can track the makeup you have chosen so far and print), Internet (automatically access the official Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover website for updates and downloads), Quit, Clear All and Help.

Styling options allow you to make detailed changes and modifications to your virtual model's faces, even men. Represented by icons on the right side of the screen, these include, Hairstyles (try over 150 styles, change hair length, color and more), Foundation & Cover-Up, Eyebrows (change color, shape and thickness -- all without tweezers!), Highlights, Contacts (change eye color), Blush, Eye Shadow, Beauty Mark and Lips (use lipstick and liners to find that special look).

The features added by Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover Style Pack I include 50 new hairstyles (18 targeted specifically for African Americans), Paula's Hatbox (15 fashionable hats), Luxottica Eyewear (50 brand-name glasses and sunglasses to use on your virtual models) and more colors for hair, highlights and contacts.

You can also access color palettes, make custom colors, download new styles from the Internet, print, use a variety of brush sizes, camera zooms and much more...

Roots & Influences

This product is an add-on pack to the virtual beauty salon Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover.

Review: Overall

While using Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover, did you feel like you were exhausting the possibilities for customizing your virtual appearance or get frustrated at not being able to upgrade your visage with some fashionable Luxottica eyeglasses? If so, Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover: Style Pack I might just be the add-on for you. With its all-new hairstyles, makeup options, eyewear, and hats, this expansion pack adds up to 90 megs-worth of new customization alternatives.

In an obvious attempt to expand the user base as well as attain political correctness, the program now includes some African-American hairstyles which were noticeably absent from the core program. The added eyewear includes frames from Yves Saint Laurent, Persol, Vogue, Anne Klein II and Brooks Brothers. Makeup options are still limited to choices between Cover Girl products and core cosmetic products that come as part of both the original and expanded programs.

Is the add-on pack a worthy upgrade? Not really. You do get 50 more hairstyles to try out and a few more color options for makeup but the core program provides so many shades of red initially that adding more seems redundant and commercially suspect as a silly way to vacuum up consumers' loose dollars. It seems as if the types of things included in this add-on pack should be available at the advertised downloads section at the game's official website www.virtualmakeover.com (not functioning at the time of the review). Had this product been used to upgrade the functionality of the core program in addition to adding some new styles and colors, perhaps it would be a welcome add-on.

As in the initial title, a problem still exists in terms of carrying your selections from one area to another while trying to accessorize. In a somewhat buggy manner, the program occasionally lets a few changes slip through. For instance, you can sometimes (not always) keep your beauty marks while venturing into the eye shadow section; normally, though, you can't see the whole "new you" unless you back out to the main menu area.

Also, while the new hats, hairstyles and eyeglasses are very fashionable and fun to try out, you still can't combine them -- it's either a hat, a hairstyle or a pair of shades but never all three (or even two of the three) together. Lastly, the add-on has a rushed, low-quality feel to it mainly because the facial hair and new eyeglasses don't quite line up with the models' faces.

Despite the decent amount of fashion and beauty options added to the core program by Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover: Style Pack I, there's not much to recommend it. The original program offers more than enough to try out and the new eyeglasses and hat options don't really enhance the product in terms of utility. With the wide-ranging availability of dedicated broadband Internet connections, breaking down the contents of Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover: Style Pack I and offering them for free download from the website would make more sense.

Review: Enjoyment

The additions are numerous but they don't compare to the options provided by the original program. Plenty is added in terms of makeup, hairstyles and so forth but this product would have served the customer better by addressing some of the functionality shortcomings of the original.

Review: Graphics

Essentially, it's easier to see details of the lighter-color hairstyles, as was the case in the original program. The new hats are not only cute, they're also silly, which adds to the fun. The eyeglasses don't quite fit correctly, however. Otherwise, the program is remarkable because many of the hairstyles and makeup that you can "try on" actually look real onscreen.

Review: Sound

The add-on provides no additional music or sound effects. This was a problem with the original that should have been addressed with the add-on pack.

Review: Replay Value

It's annoying to have to pay to add a few colors here and there and add some fun to the program with the new accessories. The fun accessories should have been included with the original or made available as a free download their official website. Many of the glasses look the same but the hat additions are fun to play around with. But the real merits of the program lie with the ability to subtly enhance your eye color, hairstyle and complexion for the sake of perhaps visiting a beauty salon and making your vision a reality. This add-on pack doesn't take you much further in that direction than the original program.

Review: Documentation

The core program offers an abundance of beauty tips, thorough documentation and smartly targeted advertisements that garnered it a maximum score. {*Cosmopolitan Virtual Makeover: Style Pack I} comes with the standard installation instructions -- about equal to what the original offered -- and an ad for Luxottica eyeglasses but the total documentation package doesn't feel as tightly integrated with the product as the original.

Production Credits