The guys at Penny Arcade (specifically, Tycho) put it about as well as I possibly could:
Where the hell did this Zanzarah thing come from, Germany? I never know what you guys are going to do next. For the uninitiated, Zanzarah is a 30/30/30 combination of Magic: The Gathering, Quake One, and Pokemon. The remaining ten percent acts as a reservoir for cream. It's nuts, and the production values (especially on some of this audio!) are through the roof. I had a hell of a lot of fun with the demo, although I'm not sure if they had me in mind when they made it. Playing a girl who captures fairies in a magical forest is not something I would tell my psychologist I spent my weekend doing.
Only managed to watch the video and check out the artwork my own self. The demo laughs at my onboard video. Then starts crying. Then removes itself and asks me not to bother it again.
It's very, very pretty, though. In a disturbingly femme sort of way.
Maybe this is a good thing. The avatar looks more like an actual, human-proportioned 18-year-old than, say,
Lara Croft is the monstrous offspring of science, an idealized eternally young female automaton, a malleable, well-trained techno-puppet created by and for the male gaze.7 The popular Nuderaider patch, a game add-on that strips Lara Croft's clothing is evidence of this gender-subject configuration. The fusion of femininity, death and technology in characters like Lara Croft is a lucrative and enduring formula in capitalist market-based economies, a potent combination noted as early as 1951 in Marshall McLuhan's essay, "The Mechanical Bride"8. Lara Croft traces her lineage to the female robot in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis", mannequins, blow-up dolls and comic book heroines. She is a product of the mechanization of bodies beginning in the Industrial Revolution9; her fetishized beauty resides in her slick and glistening 3-D generated polygons, evolved from clunky robotic metals into more appropriate attire for Information Society.
Footnotes in the source article, Switch-Does Laura Croft Ware Fake Polygons by Anne-Marie Schleiner.
And speaking of Penny Arcade, I worry that this particular strip was designed specifically for the Red Headed White Devil.
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