Developed by Liquid Entertainment (DragonShard makers), Desperate Housewives is a lifestyle simulation PC game based on the top-rated, Golden Globe-winning ABC-TV series, produced by Touchstone Television. In the game you take on the role of a new housewife who moves into Wisteria Lane and unlocks the delicious scandals hidden in the seemingly 'perfect' neighborhood. You will join the likes Susan Mayer, Bree Van de Kamp, Lynette Scavo, Gabrielle Solises, and Edie Britt as you cheat, lie and scandal your way to becoming the most popular (and hated) mistress on the block.

The game plays out like your typical PC life-simulator. Think of it as The Sims 2 with substantially fewer housing customization options and an adventurous single-player campaign that tells an original story in the vein of something from a season of the TV show. The storyline is divided into 12 episodes, each with new points and secrets waiting to be uncovered. Get the truth behind some delicious scandals -- and reveal some shocking secrets of your own. You begin by creating yourself (your main character is always female), your husband and your son. A few options are in place when crafting your character, such as hair style, hair color, and wardrobe, but nothing too extravagant. Additionally, your husband and son are not customizable at all, rather haphazardly generated to your liking. To complete the game, you are assigned primary goals which must be fulfilled to finish the episode. You are also given secondary goals that you can choose to ignore in order to focus solely on primary goals and game completion. Objectives consist of making dinner for your family, calling your son's student teacher to unravel why his grades are dropping, and upgrading your estate.

Even the minigames aren't half-bad, although some feminists might have an issue with the suggestively distaff nature of the busywork :-) Mini-games include cooking, gardening, and Texas Hold'em poker with the other wives Features original script from Desperate Housewives writer Scott Sanford Tobis Brenda Strong reprises her role as narrator Mary Alice Young.I would say the cooking mini game is really fun and a bit challenging once you get up to the Culinary Artist category.

My one complaint is that I would have liked to keep playing the family I created. Once you have completed the game, there is nothing you can do but re-play the last episode or start from scratch. (I suggest saving to a separate file somewhere in the middle of the game)

The super-simple controls, drama-filled thematic scenes, and $9.99 (game originally costed $19.99) price point may appeal to the casual GIRL/WOMAN gamer :-) Just make sure you have a computer with plenty of memory (1GB ideally), and some patience to wait between episodes.

Minimum system requirements: Windows XP SP2, Pentium 4 class or Athlon XP processor 1.4 GHz or greater, 256 MB RAM, 128 MB DirectX 9.0c-compatible video card, 32-bit color (NVIDIA GeForce 3 or equivalent), 16-bit DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card, 2.5 GB Hard Drive Space, 8x CD-ROM drive