Makeout Mania is like popping a mint before making your move. It's refreshing and brief enough to free you up for the real fireworks.
There's not much to this cute kissing game, and that's the point. Running toward first base faster than a teenage boy on prom night, Makeout Mania embraces its brevity as a badge of arcade gaming goodness.
Jocks, geeks, hippies, emo kids - high school rivalries are cast aside because everyone wants to steal a kiss and your fingers deliver them with taps of the screen. Tapping any of the adorable characters fires off Cupid's arrow, which sends them into a kissing craze.
This is more than just pubescent eagerness: once struck, a character runs about searching for a partner to kiss.
Eager beaverTime these strikes right and you can ring up multiple kisses or combos in which one of the pecked partners kisses someone else. Naturally, you score more points for managing higher combos and more kisses.
In Mania mode, your sole goal is to score as much as possible. As the screen scrolls through the various floors of the high school, you're able to let loose arrows from an unlimited supply while a clock counts down the seconds.
Things are less lustful in Puzzles mode, where points are primarily used as a means to unlocking new levels. Cleverly constructed stages are more concerned with testing your ability to time the firing of your arrows, figure out how to navigate past obstacles such as school officials and locked doors, and even find ways of getting emo guys and gals to smooch in spite of immunity to Cupid's prick.
It's all in good fun, and by the time you've cleared all 24 levels and rounded the bases in Mania mode you're sure to be spent. Makeout Mania is undeniably cute, and its novelty makes its shortness a strength rather than a weakness.