This is something that really should have come out weeks ago (what can I say, I am King of the Procrastinators!) but it's coming out now, so that's just how things are working out.
A couple of weeks ago, Palaverous released his first game, The Lost Hound. I, perhaps unreasonably so, utterly loved it. It had flaws that I know intellectually were poor design decisions, but the game struck a nostalgia bone in my body that made me either forgive them or actively enjoy them.
The reason why I like this game so much requires some explication. As a kid, my parents bought me a ton of Fighting Fantasy books, which, if you don't know, are like a D&D adventure in a book. A particular favorite of mine was the Island of the Undead, which I played pretty much obsessively, and when I actually started playing D&D with my friends I'd subject them to constant adaptations of said adventure.
Me: You wash up on an island.
Friend: Maybe an island... of the Undead?
Me: *groan*
When my family moved from my motherland of New Zealand ever-so-long-ago, I lost access to my beloved Fighting Fantasy books. For whatever reason, the books were scarce in the United States, so many years later, with the magic of the Internet, I still eat this stuff up. An illustration: one of the few phone apps I've ever paid for was Inkle's Sorcery series, and that's because my parents bought me only Part 4, ignorant that there were three other books in that wonderful series.
The Lost Hound just hits that spot in me exactly, except there's also sex, and well-written sex to boot, so Palaverous could write a game half as good as this and I'd still love it. That said, I think there's plenty here to love other than nostalgia, so I'm not saying that's the only good thing to the game.
My first playthrough was hilarious. I missed everything. The faerie, the tree house, the faerie queen, the monastery. Name an optional encounter, I missed it. Somehow, I stumbled into the fire world without landing on a single random encounter. I'm pretty sure this was obscene luck rather than a bug. I was really confused when I was getting crushed by fire elementals and the like.
My second playthrough I got the best ending. I really took my time, exploring and grinding like you really ought to. I bagged the faerie and her queen, and the succubus, Kimiko, and eventually Aura at the end. Getting the best ending was very rewarding and I really felt like I'd earned it.
The sex is pretty well distributed -- it comes as a steady reward for good exploration, you never lose interest from too little or too much, and every female interest has a different appeal. Aura is a great character -- vividly illustrated and just enough out of reach where you chase her like Pepe le Pew. I have a special weakness for bad ass ladies (which is why Taki was my favorite character from P:AF) so the fact she was at a demigoddess power level was only a plus for me.
I don't mind the random encounters, partly because they reminded me of the Fighting Fantasy books, except I would quibble at the level-up grindiness of it all. The point of the encounters in Fighting Fantasy books was to encourage resource management. Monsters didn't provide XP, a long encounter would just drain your stamina for the future, so it was better to avoid them if you could. Granting XP actively encourages players to find and hunt monsters... and in The Lost Hound, grinding is an absolute requirement if you want to get ahead. I don't like that, in these sorts of games exploration should be rewarded, not combat! So I would have preferred non-random encounters that could be avoided with intelligent play, and where your character becomes more powerful as they find items and powers, not levels.
I ended up enjoying the story, even knowing it was fantasy schlock. There are parts in Star Trek where they say technobabble that sounds vaguely scientific, like "We have to disable the fusion power cores or we'll have a resonance cascade scenario!", "But Captain, the fusion power cores helium coolants are at critical levels!" and my sense is that The Lost Hound does the same thing with magic. I don't have issues with this so much as I recognize it, and there's a lot of it. But the characters were enough to keep me interested even in the magic babble, and it just made enough sense where I could navigate it.
It was a little odd that the setting vacillated between straight fantasy and a Discworld-esque parody. I did find the God of Non-committal Good pretty fucking hilarious, I'll admit, and there's a lot of good humor and genuine laugh-out-loud moments that broke up the game. I'm of the opinion that a fantasy setting played totally straight is an unrealistic fantasy setting, since stupidly funny things happen in the real world all the time. That said, the humor didn't always mesh well with the straight-laced stuff, especially since the story touches on some serious themes of self-sacrifice.
The author calls his work "monumentally wordy". I don't really agree with this. Wordiness is something you get from bad prose, the feeling where your eyes start to glaze over because the writer is filling space with bullshit. Herman Melville is another author who is very, very wordy, but the man can write about gutting fish like it was poetry, so you don't care. I'm not saying Palaverous is on the same level as Herman Melville (fuck man, who is?), but like Herman Melville you don't get a sense the Palaverous is just trying to reach a certain word count. The only parts of the game I glazed over was some of the books, which really were short stories in and of themselves.
So... 10/10, and I demand a sequel!
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Monday, November 10, 2014
Thoughts on Master of the House
Let's get some bookkeeping things out of the way first. Since ExLibris has gone on vacation, there is something of a need for
people willing to write in-depth reviews. I don't really want to fill
that role, sometimes I just don't have the patience to, but I will the
best I can. The point of these semi-reviews is not to give recommendations for the AIF community on what to play, although that might be a happy accident. I'm really writing these for the authors, a little acknowledgement that writing AIF games is difficult, and that every game at least deserves a serious response even if it doesn't get one. Even if I write a bad review, it's not to crush the author but just to show that someone took it seriously enough to think about it.
Of course, that wasn't a prelude to me reviewing Master of the House badly. This is a positive review, I really like Master of the House, though I must admit I didn't finish it for reasons out of the author's control. It is a highly-refined sex romp, in the sense the gameplay elements are really well thought out and breaks a bit of new ground. And, to boot, it has good writing. An important thing in text games. In any case, this review is months overdue already, so let's get into it.
The story is nothing to write home about. A young man goes on a quest to become the "Master of the House", an ubermencsh with a harem of sex slaves. Including your own family, of course. An absolute fuckton of incest ensues as you assume your rightful place as the alpha male. None of the characters are particularly deep, but they are entertaining and distinctive, and Abby's determination to make you into a sex god is rather endearing.
MOH has the an odd honor in that much of the sex scenes are threesomes, with Abby often joining you in your antics. This is an impressive feat indeed, considering how difficult it is to write threesomes. There are few throwaway descriptions, and Minterlint never seems to fall into common pitfalls of writing sex scenes. Grammar is sometimes off ("You're hand is never leaving my pussy!!") but it's rarely frequent enough to be distracting. A+.
The biggest issue in these sex scenes is the frustrating disambiguation. It's distracting to have to write "rub abby's tits" all the time instead of just writing "rub tits". It gets even worse, of course, when there are more than two characters. "Abby lick Paige's pussy" is almost more trouble than its worth. This seems to be common in games written with Adrift, but I've played Adrift games that didn't have these issues either. An improvement here would make a huge difference.
Much of the game is about exploring the house, and the exploration stuff is a mixed bag. It's fun finding hidden things, but the fact you're forced to use the "search" command makes exploration more arduous than it needs to be, especially since that's the only way you can find some things needed to progress the game. This is all exacerbated by MOH's big ass map. Shouldn't examining be enough? On the other hand, "collecting" sex moves is really creative and really links the exploration mechanics with the sex stuff in a cool way.
After you've found the requisite items, the puzzles are nice. They usually involve a little more than just giving someone the right items without being illogical, gamey, or overly complicated. Because I'm shit at puzzles, of course, I had to use a walkthrough, but I can easily imagine getting through it (eventually!) without one.
MOH is just a nice romp. It's not the most brilliant thing ever made, but it's damn fun at what it does. I'll finish it eventually, I want to see how it ramps up toward the end, but my playtime so far has been disjointed because of other commitments, and it's hard to get back into IF games once you haven't played it in a month.
Of course, that wasn't a prelude to me reviewing Master of the House badly. This is a positive review, I really like Master of the House, though I must admit I didn't finish it for reasons out of the author's control. It is a highly-refined sex romp, in the sense the gameplay elements are really well thought out and breaks a bit of new ground. And, to boot, it has good writing. An important thing in text games. In any case, this review is months overdue already, so let's get into it.
The story is nothing to write home about. A young man goes on a quest to become the "Master of the House", an ubermencsh with a harem of sex slaves. Including your own family, of course. An absolute fuckton of incest ensues as you assume your rightful place as the alpha male. None of the characters are particularly deep, but they are entertaining and distinctive, and Abby's determination to make you into a sex god is rather endearing.
MOH has the an odd honor in that much of the sex scenes are threesomes, with Abby often joining you in your antics. This is an impressive feat indeed, considering how difficult it is to write threesomes. There are few throwaway descriptions, and Minterlint never seems to fall into common pitfalls of writing sex scenes. Grammar is sometimes off ("You're hand is never leaving my pussy!!") but it's rarely frequent enough to be distracting. A+.
The biggest issue in these sex scenes is the frustrating disambiguation. It's distracting to have to write "rub abby's tits" all the time instead of just writing "rub tits". It gets even worse, of course, when there are more than two characters. "Abby lick Paige's pussy" is almost more trouble than its worth. This seems to be common in games written with Adrift, but I've played Adrift games that didn't have these issues either. An improvement here would make a huge difference.
Much of the game is about exploring the house, and the exploration stuff is a mixed bag. It's fun finding hidden things, but the fact you're forced to use the "search" command makes exploration more arduous than it needs to be, especially since that's the only way you can find some things needed to progress the game. This is all exacerbated by MOH's big ass map. Shouldn't examining be enough? On the other hand, "collecting" sex moves is really creative and really links the exploration mechanics with the sex stuff in a cool way.
After you've found the requisite items, the puzzles are nice. They usually involve a little more than just giving someone the right items without being illogical, gamey, or overly complicated. Because I'm shit at puzzles, of course, I had to use a walkthrough, but I can easily imagine getting through it (eventually!) without one.
MOH is just a nice romp. It's not the most brilliant thing ever made, but it's damn fun at what it does. I'll finish it eventually, I want to see how it ramps up toward the end, but my playtime so far has been disjointed because of other commitments, and it's hard to get back into IF games once you haven't played it in a month.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
Thoughts on 2014 Minicomp
Well, I've just made my rounds of all the minicomp games and this is, briefly, my thoughts on each. Overall, I was impressed by the general quantity and quality of the offerings. It certainly says something hopeful about AIF in general. In alphabetical order:
Amy the Slut
This is one of the three games I failed to finish in this year's minicomp. It's technically impressive in that it's basically a dating sim using Twine, but I just felt no motivation to help Lance get with Amy. The prose is rather spare and to-the-point, as well, leaving very little meat. In the end, I wasn't curious about their relationship and there wasn't enough going on to keep my interest.
Dinner Plans
Wow... where do I start? I loved Dinner Plans. It may be, actually, the best minicomp game I've ever played. The snappy dialogue, excellent writing, interesting concept and well-realized characters all combined for something pretty fucking memorable. The pacing was just excellent, and the transition to the final sex scene in the end was very smooth. That made the game exceptionally hot. AOneHitWonder, I hope not.
Friday Afternoon
This was clearly the best of the various Twine offerings this year. The writing in Friday Afternoon was great, with elegant readable prose, unfortunately marred by a few spelling errors ("cocktails", not "coctails"). What particularly stood out for me were the descriptions, which were very well illustrated. Where it suffered, perhaps was in structure and pacing. I felt a little like I had been dropped among a bunch of different characters I really hadn't been introduced to. I'm told my character is chasing after a girl, but I don't really get a chance to know her before Sex Scene happens. Being a snippet of a larger game, I suppose this can't be helped.
Fucking Monster Bash
Full disclosure, I helped beta test Fucking Monster Bash... and then I ruined it by updating Simpler AIF 1,000,000 times. The best part of the game was the documentation, which called me a genius, something that was sorely lacking in the other offerings this year.
...Ok, on a serious note, I'm not quite a coding genius, since I7 is the only programming language I'm any good at, but it is flattering all the same.
Hanon Ondricek's writing is hilarious. I really thought Briar deserved to win last year's minicomp. Admittedly, I can't say FMB quite deserves that distinction, though I think Hanon has it in him to make an excellent game. I still question the use of Threaded Conversations. I'm not a big fan of the extension myself. As a player, it's very weird and it's effectively a menu-based system without the convenience.
Lark Rise
Unfortunately, I couldn't make it through this game either. The number of errors and run-on paragraphs made it very difficult for me to read through. There is one section where you find some papers, and out pops a massive block of text I immediately glazed over. Eventually, I got stuck after calling Evie to dinner and that was that. Which is unfortunate, because clearly the author is trying to tell some kind of story, but it ends up just getting lost. There could be a good game in here, but it is in such desperate need of proofreading.
One Last Pay Day
Wow. Another mind-blower. This time we're put on an alien planet with a firebrand warrior merc babe, and we need to do exciting shit like pop alien heads. The writing was awesome, dialogue snappy and characters bursting with personality. Some puzzles are a bit easy, by the end of the game you end up making some very headscratchy decisions and serious moral quandaries. The amount of polish approaches absurd. It plays great. Period.
*minor spoilers* Another curious thing about this game is that this is the first game I've played where the main female interest is pretty damn evil. It's definitely a different take. By the end of the game, I really didn't like her very much, which spoiled an otherwise excellent ending sex scene. That's the only bad thing I can say about this game, and it's most a personal taste thing.
Slim Spady Detective
An interesting concept that, unfortunately, just wasn't executed well. The author was clearly going for a traditional IF feel while sticking with Twine. I think the author would have been better served learning how to use one of the traditional AIF authoring systems (TADS, ADRIFT, or my favorite, I7). The rather strange inventory system put me through a loop. Eventually, I kinda just stopped playing.
Snowstorm
An AIF game set during a snowstorm is an excellent concept. But this is more a truth-or-dare game, and the challenge here is to get your partner comfortable enough to have sex with you. The descriptive prose is unfortunately very sparse, but the dialogue is better.
Unfortunately, Emily is a bit odd. She takes it very personally when asked to twerk, for example, and I kinda of felt dealing with her was a bit like navigating a minefield. When the sex does come, the descriptions are very spare. Had they been a bit more padded I think the game would have been more compelling.
Amy the Slut
This is one of the three games I failed to finish in this year's minicomp. It's technically impressive in that it's basically a dating sim using Twine, but I just felt no motivation to help Lance get with Amy. The prose is rather spare and to-the-point, as well, leaving very little meat. In the end, I wasn't curious about their relationship and there wasn't enough going on to keep my interest.
Dinner Plans
Wow... where do I start? I loved Dinner Plans. It may be, actually, the best minicomp game I've ever played. The snappy dialogue, excellent writing, interesting concept and well-realized characters all combined for something pretty fucking memorable. The pacing was just excellent, and the transition to the final sex scene in the end was very smooth. That made the game exceptionally hot. AOneHitWonder, I hope not.
Friday Afternoon
This was clearly the best of the various Twine offerings this year. The writing in Friday Afternoon was great, with elegant readable prose, unfortunately marred by a few spelling errors ("cocktails", not "coctails"). What particularly stood out for me were the descriptions, which were very well illustrated. Where it suffered, perhaps was in structure and pacing. I felt a little like I had been dropped among a bunch of different characters I really hadn't been introduced to. I'm told my character is chasing after a girl, but I don't really get a chance to know her before Sex Scene happens. Being a snippet of a larger game, I suppose this can't be helped.
Fucking Monster Bash
Full disclosure, I helped beta test Fucking Monster Bash... and then I ruined it by updating Simpler AIF 1,000,000 times. The best part of the game was the documentation, which called me a genius, something that was sorely lacking in the other offerings this year.
...Ok, on a serious note, I'm not quite a coding genius, since I7 is the only programming language I'm any good at, but it is flattering all the same.
Hanon Ondricek's writing is hilarious. I really thought Briar deserved to win last year's minicomp. Admittedly, I can't say FMB quite deserves that distinction, though I think Hanon has it in him to make an excellent game. I still question the use of Threaded Conversations. I'm not a big fan of the extension myself. As a player, it's very weird and it's effectively a menu-based system without the convenience.
Lark Rise
Unfortunately, I couldn't make it through this game either. The number of errors and run-on paragraphs made it very difficult for me to read through. There is one section where you find some papers, and out pops a massive block of text I immediately glazed over. Eventually, I got stuck after calling Evie to dinner and that was that. Which is unfortunate, because clearly the author is trying to tell some kind of story, but it ends up just getting lost. There could be a good game in here, but it is in such desperate need of proofreading.
One Last Pay Day
Wow. Another mind-blower. This time we're put on an alien planet with a firebrand warrior merc babe, and we need to do exciting shit like pop alien heads. The writing was awesome, dialogue snappy and characters bursting with personality. Some puzzles are a bit easy, by the end of the game you end up making some very headscratchy decisions and serious moral quandaries. The amount of polish approaches absurd. It plays great. Period.
*minor spoilers* Another curious thing about this game is that this is the first game I've played where the main female interest is pretty damn evil. It's definitely a different take. By the end of the game, I really didn't like her very much, which spoiled an otherwise excellent ending sex scene. That's the only bad thing I can say about this game, and it's most a personal taste thing.
Slim Spady Detective
An interesting concept that, unfortunately, just wasn't executed well. The author was clearly going for a traditional IF feel while sticking with Twine. I think the author would have been better served learning how to use one of the traditional AIF authoring systems (TADS, ADRIFT, or my favorite, I7). The rather strange inventory system put me through a loop. Eventually, I kinda just stopped playing.
Snowstorm
An AIF game set during a snowstorm is an excellent concept. But this is more a truth-or-dare game, and the challenge here is to get your partner comfortable enough to have sex with you. The descriptive prose is unfortunately very sparse, but the dialogue is better.
Unfortunately, Emily is a bit odd. She takes it very personally when asked to twerk, for example, and I kinda of felt dealing with her was a bit like navigating a minefield. When the sex does come, the descriptions are very spare. Had they been a bit more padded I think the game would have been more compelling.
Personal Rankings
(NOTE: This is NOT the official results. These are just the games that I think are the best.)
3rd: Friday Afternoon by Shannon O'Donnelly
The writing was excellent and the concept hot. I can't wait to see it expanded. Unfortunately, it didn't have the same sort of depth of interaction as those that were higher.
2nd: One Last Pay Day by Louys Bilitis
Between the excellent writing and the stunning amount of polish, this game could have very easily taken 1st place for me. Unfortunately, it didn't quite have the level of eroticism as the first place game.
1st: Dinner Plans by AOneHitWonder
It's a bit formulaic, but the great characters, quality of the sex scenes, and outstanding pacing and writing made Dinner Plans the best game this year. I loved it and I can't wait to see if there will be more.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
Thoughts on Emily: Sister Attraction REDUX
So, I was embarrassed by my prior review of E:SA. I think my initial feelings about it were highly colored by my irritation about the age thing, which is definitely not fair on the author especially since he put up the splash screen stating explicitly that people who were offended by E:SA's themes shouldn't play. I still kind of feel that the explicit ages could have been removed without really detracting from the project, but that is the last time I will mention that in this new write up. E:SA is a game with a lot of strengths, while my old review highlighted things that bothered me and breezed past the things I liked. Sure, there are rough edges, but yeah, the game is pretty damn good and definitely pushes AIF in a new, positive direction in terms of storytelling.
Gameplay
E:SA is a love story about two teenagers who happen to be siblings. While the story is pretty linear and, as far as I know, pretty much ends the same way each time (unless you fuck up royally), the player can, by solving puzzles and through interaction with Emily (the titular sister) can effect how the relationship evolves in both a sexual and romantic way. The game keeps track of two scores: Intimacy and Daringness. Intimacy is usually increased by talking with Emily, and daringness is increased by taking bold actions, including, evidently, culling poor insects. Increasing your score, again, won't change the ending as far as I know but is critical for unlocking the MAX SEX CONTENT.
The puzzles range between pretty easy, relatively difficult and irritating. My favorite puzzle involved hunting a bee through your house, and waiting for it to land on something durable so you can smack it. It shows a good bit of technical finesse on the part of the author, though perhaps only AIF veterans would be able to find the newspaper to crush it with. Sneaking around your sister's room and reading her diary is fun, and it's a nice touch that you can't read the entire thing in one playthrough.
The intimacy puzzles more involve a close reading of Emily's dialogue, of which there is a lot. The key here is being able to read Emily's needs and wants, or getting her to open up about her feelings. Some things are pretty obvious, others are really less so.
There must be some real headscratchers in E:SA because in my several playthroughs I couldn't get all the points. Thankfully, for morons like me there is a cheat to give you bonus score, which allows me to pretty much experience the entire game. Overall, the score provides a pretty compelling incentive to explore and try a lot of things. The scenes you are awarded with are well worth it.
Sex
Sex scenes in E:SA sometimes miss, sometimes hit home runs. Palmer's writing is pretty good, but as a scene progresses past foreplay the writing tends to collapse a bit. In the harder actions the prose is kind of impenetrable, and it just seems like "rub tits" and "fuck pussy" have really the same amount of effort put into them. The originality and imagination Palmer shows during the foreplay scenes just isn't present in the full-on sex scenes. The arousal system feels like kind of an afterthought, with the messages just sort of tacked onto the ends of the prose. It's not that I hate arousal systems, done well it can make sex scenes extremely immersive, but if the arousal system isn't properly implemented it's just better to have longer chunks of quality text. Emily's sexual dialogue doesn't feel as inspired as her non-sexual dialogue, and it can get irritating when she hints or asks for something in one line and refuses to do it in another.
The general quality of the first few scenes really made this stand out. The bedroom scene with Emily was excellent, as was the mutual masturbation scene. There is even a scene where Emily starts issuing orders to you, the player, which was pretty imaginative and something I hope we see more of in AIF. That made the later sequences far more disappointing. The dream sequence with that black-haired girl whose name I can't recall was entirely forgettable, and Emily's final sex scene just feels very anticlimactic.
E:SA includes plenty of pictures. They didn't do much for me, but this definitely a personal taste thing. This is partly because (please don't lynch me!) I don't find Emily's model particularly sexy, and partly because I'm slowly finding text and audio more erotic than pictures. I'm beginning to understand how people can feel how images are a distraction, ultimately, I feel like I would have enjoyed E:SA more without them.
Story and Characters
Emily and her brother's relationship is set in the context of what is basically a broken home. Their parents are distant and the siblings have essentially come to rely on each other for emotional support. This is a pretty serious backdrop for what is, basically, a feelgood, lighthearted game. The game's plot is propelled forward by a photo contest, which the PC uses as a pretext to get closer to his sister.
In my prior review, I was pretty fixated on the photoshoot, and I thought it implied a lack of love on the part of the PC. I'm going to backtrack from that quite a bit. I think the photoshoot sub-plot implies stupidity on the part of the PC, but I don't think he doesn't care about his sister because he wants to take pictures of her.
That said, the choice of a photoshoot is not quite a seamless fit with the plot. It feels weird to me that my PC is basically submitting naked pictures of his sister for the world to see. It would fit well in a game where the characters were not so well-realized, perhaps in a sex rompy game like a Pleasantville, but it is an odd juxtaposition with the carefully tended emotional backstory Palmer is trying to develop. A little change would have gone a long way. Instead of a photo contest, why doesn't the PC have a simple passion for photography?
Other than the photoshoot thing, Emily and the PC's relationship is tended to with great care. The dialogue is generally outstanding, and the joking and banter that goes on between them feels very realistic. I could really see people saying what they say. They do get touchy-feely, but teenagers I think tend to be that way so that wasn't a problem for me. Dialogue was only occasionally awkward. The game is narrated in the PC's voice, who is supposed to be telling the story as he remembers it to an interviewer. This is something I haven't seen before in AIF, but I'm not sure how successful it is. I felt like I was being ripped from the action too much and that I was being reminded that the PC is not in the "here and now" as it were. It felt too much like I was reading something rather than being put into the PC's shoes.
Overall, Emily and th PC's relationship develops sensibly. You know they like each other, but breaking down the barriers to consummation is really where the meat of character development lies. Considering the "broken family" backstory of Emily and the PC their burgeoning romantic relationship makes a lot of sense. There is a natural escalation, both sexually and emotionally, which is E:SA's greatest strength and so far something pretty much unique to this game. The execution is good in spite of the rather silly photoshoot subplot.
Conclusion
So, I think this review really more accurately reflects my opinion of E:SA. There is a line between providing constructive criticism and being a dick, and I feel like I was using the guise of giving constructive criticism to essentially be a dick. E:SA is a good game, and you should definitely play it if you're not offended by the game's themes. If you're going to throw a fit like I did, than you should perhaps skip it.
Gameplay
E:SA is a love story about two teenagers who happen to be siblings. While the story is pretty linear and, as far as I know, pretty much ends the same way each time (unless you fuck up royally), the player can, by solving puzzles and through interaction with Emily (the titular sister) can effect how the relationship evolves in both a sexual and romantic way. The game keeps track of two scores: Intimacy and Daringness. Intimacy is usually increased by talking with Emily, and daringness is increased by taking bold actions, including, evidently, culling poor insects. Increasing your score, again, won't change the ending as far as I know but is critical for unlocking the MAX SEX CONTENT.
The puzzles range between pretty easy, relatively difficult and irritating. My favorite puzzle involved hunting a bee through your house, and waiting for it to land on something durable so you can smack it. It shows a good bit of technical finesse on the part of the author, though perhaps only AIF veterans would be able to find the newspaper to crush it with. Sneaking around your sister's room and reading her diary is fun, and it's a nice touch that you can't read the entire thing in one playthrough.
The intimacy puzzles more involve a close reading of Emily's dialogue, of which there is a lot. The key here is being able to read Emily's needs and wants, or getting her to open up about her feelings. Some things are pretty obvious, others are really less so.
There must be some real headscratchers in E:SA because in my several playthroughs I couldn't get all the points. Thankfully, for morons like me there is a cheat to give you bonus score, which allows me to pretty much experience the entire game. Overall, the score provides a pretty compelling incentive to explore and try a lot of things. The scenes you are awarded with are well worth it.
Sex
Sex scenes in E:SA sometimes miss, sometimes hit home runs. Palmer's writing is pretty good, but as a scene progresses past foreplay the writing tends to collapse a bit. In the harder actions the prose is kind of impenetrable, and it just seems like "rub tits" and "fuck pussy" have really the same amount of effort put into them. The originality and imagination Palmer shows during the foreplay scenes just isn't present in the full-on sex scenes. The arousal system feels like kind of an afterthought, with the messages just sort of tacked onto the ends of the prose. It's not that I hate arousal systems, done well it can make sex scenes extremely immersive, but if the arousal system isn't properly implemented it's just better to have longer chunks of quality text. Emily's sexual dialogue doesn't feel as inspired as her non-sexual dialogue, and it can get irritating when she hints or asks for something in one line and refuses to do it in another.
The general quality of the first few scenes really made this stand out. The bedroom scene with Emily was excellent, as was the mutual masturbation scene. There is even a scene where Emily starts issuing orders to you, the player, which was pretty imaginative and something I hope we see more of in AIF. That made the later sequences far more disappointing. The dream sequence with that black-haired girl whose name I can't recall was entirely forgettable, and Emily's final sex scene just feels very anticlimactic.
E:SA includes plenty of pictures. They didn't do much for me, but this definitely a personal taste thing. This is partly because (please don't lynch me!) I don't find Emily's model particularly sexy, and partly because I'm slowly finding text and audio more erotic than pictures. I'm beginning to understand how people can feel how images are a distraction, ultimately, I feel like I would have enjoyed E:SA more without them.
Story and Characters
Emily and her brother's relationship is set in the context of what is basically a broken home. Their parents are distant and the siblings have essentially come to rely on each other for emotional support. This is a pretty serious backdrop for what is, basically, a feelgood, lighthearted game. The game's plot is propelled forward by a photo contest, which the PC uses as a pretext to get closer to his sister.
In my prior review, I was pretty fixated on the photoshoot, and I thought it implied a lack of love on the part of the PC. I'm going to backtrack from that quite a bit. I think the photoshoot sub-plot implies stupidity on the part of the PC, but I don't think he doesn't care about his sister because he wants to take pictures of her.
That said, the choice of a photoshoot is not quite a seamless fit with the plot. It feels weird to me that my PC is basically submitting naked pictures of his sister for the world to see. It would fit well in a game where the characters were not so well-realized, perhaps in a sex rompy game like a Pleasantville, but it is an odd juxtaposition with the carefully tended emotional backstory Palmer is trying to develop. A little change would have gone a long way. Instead of a photo contest, why doesn't the PC have a simple passion for photography?
Other than the photoshoot thing, Emily and the PC's relationship is tended to with great care. The dialogue is generally outstanding, and the joking and banter that goes on between them feels very realistic. I could really see people saying what they say. They do get touchy-feely, but teenagers I think tend to be that way so that wasn't a problem for me. Dialogue was only occasionally awkward. The game is narrated in the PC's voice, who is supposed to be telling the story as he remembers it to an interviewer. This is something I haven't seen before in AIF, but I'm not sure how successful it is. I felt like I was being ripped from the action too much and that I was being reminded that the PC is not in the "here and now" as it were. It felt too much like I was reading something rather than being put into the PC's shoes.
Overall, Emily and th PC's relationship develops sensibly. You know they like each other, but breaking down the barriers to consummation is really where the meat of character development lies. Considering the "broken family" backstory of Emily and the PC their burgeoning romantic relationship makes a lot of sense. There is a natural escalation, both sexually and emotionally, which is E:SA's greatest strength and so far something pretty much unique to this game. The execution is good in spite of the rather silly photoshoot subplot.
Conclusion
So, I think this review really more accurately reflects my opinion of E:SA. There is a line between providing constructive criticism and being a dick, and I feel like I was using the guise of giving constructive criticism to essentially be a dick. E:SA is a good game, and you should definitely play it if you're not offended by the game's themes. If you're going to throw a fit like I did, than you should perhaps skip it.
Friday, March 21, 2014
Loren the Amazon Princess, a review
(I'm going to try and start reviewing some commercial games on this blog that have some kind of romantic element to them, so if you have any suggestions I'd like to hear them)
Loren the Amazon Princess came out on Steam a couple of months ago, a game I'd always wanted to play but hadn't had a chance to. It's made by independent developer Winter Wolves, an Italian developer I believe. Since we all like independents who release software DRM-free, I suggest purchasing the game in the legitimate way, should you choose to. There is a demo with about half of Act 1, featuring some of the game's branching gameplay. There is also an expansion, which adds some quests and the recruitable characters Chandara and Sauzer. Oh and Mesphit.
So what is Loren? It is, in short, a campy fantasy VN/RPG with a great rack and a soul. You play the slave of the Amazon princess Loren, a sheltered but proud warrior armed with two swords and no sense of humor. Soon, you gather your party of up to 12(!) characters in a quest to save the world via turn-based RPG combat, in a world that is very well illustrated indeed. It is more VN than RPG though, and as such it must rely on either story, writing or tits to interest the player. While it doesn't excel in one in particular, it does a decent job in all three and I always wanted to get to that "next part", like I would in a reasonably good book.
First the story arc overall, which is a very cliched "dark lord raises armies of demons" sort of stuff we've seen a thousand times. The choices presented to you, while sometimes dramatic and far reaching, are kind of predictable with a conventional morality reminiscent of Star Trek. The overall theme appears to be about acceptance of others, while I can appreciate that, it didn't really bring a lot of profound insight and sometimes came off as a bit moralizing.
But that is just fine, because the meat of the game is in your companions, who, for the most part, are pretty well realized. They range from incredibly badass (Chandara) to very likable (Draco) to just fucking intolerable (Mesphit). There are 12 different romantic paths, from straight to gay male and female. Some people will inevitably complain about the guy/guy stuff, but it's pretty easy to avoid if you don't want it. The point is, no matter what your preferences are, it's here, and if you happen to be bisexual, you will be very happy. The romantic sequences, while racy by PC gaming standards, are tamer than the tamest AIF game. They are well-written enough to be hot, though, and that's the important part.
Of all the NPCs, Chandara is a clear favorite for me. Chandara is a witch, surly and sultry in equal measure, who only wants to be left alone to practice dark magic and BDSM. I found Chandara to be ridiculously awesome, her wanton, brazen sexuality so incredibly refreshing to see in a commercial PC game. If I knew Chandara in real life, I might possibly want to marry her. She is also the only character with easy access to dark magic, an element a lot of enemies are weak to, so she pulls her weight in battle. Her romantic finale also happens to be the raciest, which just compounds how much awesome is contained in that tight black bodice of hers. Can you tell I really like her? In my first playthrough, I went for the f/f romance with Chandara. I highly recommend it.
On the direct opposite scale is Mesphit, who I hated almost as much as I loved Chandara. Mesphit is a dark elf character written for the segment of the female player base that likes unpredictable, dangerous men who have emotional problems and only need a tender female hand to nurse them. I'm not shitting on what gets people off, but it results in a character who is absolutely pathetic. I'll tell you in the spoilers inside.
There are many other characters who range between these two extremes. Draco is a very likable pyromancer, and flaming in both senses of the word. Amukiki the barbarian nomad is a bit of a miss, having a personality like tanned, muscular cardboard. Karen is a reluctant Amazon Queen with some interesting potential, though she is so different from her daughter it is difficult to believe one raised the other. Myrth, a redheaded elf druid that makes an olive leaf seem like too much clothing, is another romanceable character, though I didn't find her intriguing to pursue. Dora the dwarf and her admirer Ramas were two of my favorite characters, though I kinda wished Dora was romanceable.
As for Loren herself, she begins the game naive, bratty and sheltered but opens up and softens in a way that doesn't compromise her prideful nature. She was well-realized, I think, and when I replay the game I'll definitely go down her path.
There is little to say about the PC. Soren, or Elenor, depending on which gender you pick at the start of the game, is a choice between enviable pecs or eye-popping underboob. They have slightly different backstories, too, Elenor being an elf and Soren a human, so that's worth keeping in mind.
The combat system really provides the bulk of the gameplay, while the romances are the main draw, so I wish Winter Wolves would have provided more choice, or at least more chances to fail, at the romances. You see, occasionally when interacting with a character you are given the options to react in three ways: friendly, forceful and joking. However, sometimes, there is a fourth option: "romance", which improves the NPC's affection for you. That's all. This new style of dialogue, seen in some of the newer Bioware titles, really take you outside of the PC. It also takes a lot of risk out of interaction, since you're never given choices like whether to be diplomatic or bold or whether to be discreet or direct. The absolute best dialogue trees have actually made me stand out of my chair and walk around to think about what I want to say. That's not what I'm asking for, but even a few more options would have been nice.
The combat system works fine. It can be easy at points, but there is enough enemy variety to keep things interesting. Some enemies require radically different strategies, which is nice, though wizards are a bit overpowered compared to warrior and ranged characters. I played on "hard" difficulty and found myself rotating in different characters for different fights. Loren does its best to encourage you to make use of all of your characters, and it does a good job of that. Later fights are pretty heavily reliant on the PC's "ward" ability, which provide elemental resistances to all characters, which are important to defend yourself against some big walloping AOE attacks thrown about.
Loot is a pretty important part of any RPG and Loren puts a large emphasis on purchasing stuff rather than finding it. I rarely go to stores in RPGs, so this is a bit of an annoyance, and considering the huge number of recruitable NPCs it just feels like grocery shopping. I much prefer the thrill of finding an cool item as a random drop, as opposed to buying it.
Loren's character creation is weak. Every character has a "base class", which include wizard, warrior and thief, but also a character-specific class. Your character starts with lots of healing powers, which is an artificial way of making the PC always useful throughout the game. My big issue is that the most obvious class combination with the PC is the wizard, but that isn't made available for them.
On the basis of the Chandara path alone, I think Loren is worth playing, though of course there's lots of other good content. Judging it as if it were an AIF title, I would have preferred it to be more explicit, but it's not a porn game, so what can you do? I understand that they don't want to be labeled an adult developer, but they kind of already have just by making titles that are a little sexy. Still, I don't think there would be much opposition if there happened to be adult DLC for Loren...
Loren the Amazon Princess came out on Steam a couple of months ago, a game I'd always wanted to play but hadn't had a chance to. It's made by independent developer Winter Wolves, an Italian developer I believe. Since we all like independents who release software DRM-free, I suggest purchasing the game in the legitimate way, should you choose to. There is a demo with about half of Act 1, featuring some of the game's branching gameplay. There is also an expansion, which adds some quests and the recruitable characters Chandara and Sauzer. Oh and Mesphit.
So what is Loren? It is, in short, a campy fantasy VN/RPG with a great rack and a soul. You play the slave of the Amazon princess Loren, a sheltered but proud warrior armed with two swords and no sense of humor. Soon, you gather your party of up to 12(!) characters in a quest to save the world via turn-based RPG combat, in a world that is very well illustrated indeed. It is more VN than RPG though, and as such it must rely on either story, writing or tits to interest the player. While it doesn't excel in one in particular, it does a decent job in all three and I always wanted to get to that "next part", like I would in a reasonably good book.
First the story arc overall, which is a very cliched "dark lord raises armies of demons" sort of stuff we've seen a thousand times. The choices presented to you, while sometimes dramatic and far reaching, are kind of predictable with a conventional morality reminiscent of Star Trek. The overall theme appears to be about acceptance of others, while I can appreciate that, it didn't really bring a lot of profound insight and sometimes came off as a bit moralizing.
But that is just fine, because the meat of the game is in your companions, who, for the most part, are pretty well realized. They range from incredibly badass (Chandara) to very likable (Draco) to just fucking intolerable (Mesphit). There are 12 different romantic paths, from straight to gay male and female. Some people will inevitably complain about the guy/guy stuff, but it's pretty easy to avoid if you don't want it. The point is, no matter what your preferences are, it's here, and if you happen to be bisexual, you will be very happy. The romantic sequences, while racy by PC gaming standards, are tamer than the tamest AIF game. They are well-written enough to be hot, though, and that's the important part.
Of all the NPCs, Chandara is a clear favorite for me. Chandara is a witch, surly and sultry in equal measure, who only wants to be left alone to practice dark magic and BDSM. I found Chandara to be ridiculously awesome, her wanton, brazen sexuality so incredibly refreshing to see in a commercial PC game. If I knew Chandara in real life, I might possibly want to marry her. She is also the only character with easy access to dark magic, an element a lot of enemies are weak to, so she pulls her weight in battle. Her romantic finale also happens to be the raciest, which just compounds how much awesome is contained in that tight black bodice of hers. Can you tell I really like her? In my first playthrough, I went for the f/f romance with Chandara. I highly recommend it.
On the direct opposite scale is Mesphit, who I hated almost as much as I loved Chandara. Mesphit is a dark elf character written for the segment of the female player base that likes unpredictable, dangerous men who have emotional problems and only need a tender female hand to nurse them. I'm not shitting on what gets people off, but it results in a character who is absolutely pathetic. I'll tell you in the spoilers inside.
There are many other characters who range between these two extremes. Draco is a very likable pyromancer, and flaming in both senses of the word. Amukiki the barbarian nomad is a bit of a miss, having a personality like tanned, muscular cardboard. Karen is a reluctant Amazon Queen with some interesting potential, though she is so different from her daughter it is difficult to believe one raised the other. Myrth, a redheaded elf druid that makes an olive leaf seem like too much clothing, is another romanceable character, though I didn't find her intriguing to pursue. Dora the dwarf and her admirer Ramas were two of my favorite characters, though I kinda wished Dora was romanceable.
As for Loren herself, she begins the game naive, bratty and sheltered but opens up and softens in a way that doesn't compromise her prideful nature. She was well-realized, I think, and when I replay the game I'll definitely go down her path.
There is little to say about the PC. Soren, or Elenor, depending on which gender you pick at the start of the game, is a choice between enviable pecs or eye-popping underboob. They have slightly different backstories, too, Elenor being an elf and Soren a human, so that's worth keeping in mind.
The combat system really provides the bulk of the gameplay, while the romances are the main draw, so I wish Winter Wolves would have provided more choice, or at least more chances to fail, at the romances. You see, occasionally when interacting with a character you are given the options to react in three ways: friendly, forceful and joking. However, sometimes, there is a fourth option: "romance", which improves the NPC's affection for you. That's all. This new style of dialogue, seen in some of the newer Bioware titles, really take you outside of the PC. It also takes a lot of risk out of interaction, since you're never given choices like whether to be diplomatic or bold or whether to be discreet or direct. The absolute best dialogue trees have actually made me stand out of my chair and walk around to think about what I want to say. That's not what I'm asking for, but even a few more options would have been nice.
The combat system works fine. It can be easy at points, but there is enough enemy variety to keep things interesting. Some enemies require radically different strategies, which is nice, though wizards are a bit overpowered compared to warrior and ranged characters. I played on "hard" difficulty and found myself rotating in different characters for different fights. Loren does its best to encourage you to make use of all of your characters, and it does a good job of that. Later fights are pretty heavily reliant on the PC's "ward" ability, which provide elemental resistances to all characters, which are important to defend yourself against some big walloping AOE attacks thrown about.
Loot is a pretty important part of any RPG and Loren puts a large emphasis on purchasing stuff rather than finding it. I rarely go to stores in RPGs, so this is a bit of an annoyance, and considering the huge number of recruitable NPCs it just feels like grocery shopping. I much prefer the thrill of finding an cool item as a random drop, as opposed to buying it.
Loren's character creation is weak. Every character has a "base class", which include wizard, warrior and thief, but also a character-specific class. Your character starts with lots of healing powers, which is an artificial way of making the PC always useful throughout the game. My big issue is that the most obvious class combination with the PC is the wizard, but that isn't made available for them.
On the basis of the Chandara path alone, I think Loren is worth playing, though of course there's lots of other good content. Judging it as if it were an AIF title, I would have preferred it to be more explicit, but it's not a porn game, so what can you do? I understand that they don't want to be labeled an adult developer, but they kind of already have just by making titles that are a little sexy. Still, I don't think there would be much opposition if there happened to be adult DLC for Loren...
Friday, October 25, 2013
Thoughts on Return to Pleasantville by Lamont Sanford
As of writing, I have not read ExLibris's review of Return to Pleasantville RTP, which I will be interested in doing. Before that, I thought I'd write down my own thoughts about the game.
Peril in Pleasantville was the worst game I ever loved. The writing sucks balls -- there's no better way of saying it. But it has tons of pictures and bucketloads of girls to sleep with to make up for it. Peril in Pleasantville, after all, was the game where you could go out on dates with two girls -- neither of which was your girlfriend, and sleep through a plentiful cast. It was awesome.
...And then there was the weird alien subplot I don't think anyone cared about.
But it was RtP that finally made me learn what PiP was trying to be. The awkward horror elements, wanton shamelessness and terrible writing makes RtP the AIF equivalent of an awesomely bad B-movie. For this reason, I was excited when the cult randomly appeared out of nowhere, thinking to myself "ah, this is where the game really starts!"
As it turns out, that's where RtP would end.
We were all well-warned that RtP was going to be smaller than PiP. Despite that, you can't help but wish sequels to be bigger and better than their predecessors, and so RtP's relatively compact size was a disappointment. I can't help but wish RtP was a different game. For instance, why even return to Pleasantville? Why not set the entire game in the cabin by the lake, bring more of PiP's old characters into it and make them a bit more central? I found myself wishing I could interact with some of the established characters a bit more, like Emily, Katie and Maggie, in different combinations, too. In particular Emily, who was my favorite character in PiP, shortly following Katie. (Lamont, there needs to be a Katie/Emily threesome, make it happen) As it is, the important girls get only fractionally more screentime as the numerous random girls you encounter throughout the game.The ending cult sequence could have been foreshadowed a bit more too.
Speaking of girls, there's a lot of them in RtP, and they range from super-hot (Becky and Ms. Weaver) to scary-looking (Ms. Johnson, crazy old lady). It was especially nice to get with Ms. Weaver, who for some reason has become ultra-sexy between games. If women had the same sex drive as men, they might be in a Pleasantville game. After nearly every sex scene the woman has had a reason to bolt out with nary a word about cuddling or even a second date. One girl even said "Thanks for the dick," as she kicked me out of her home post-coitus. Talk about a male fantasy. I found it all a bit funny, really.
RtP uses a peculiar "flirt" mechanic to seduce strangers. Every time you flirt with someone, you either succeed or fail. If you fail too many times in a row, you ruin your chances. If you succeed enough times, you unlock their sex scene. It's as simple as that, and it's the kind of system I might imagine someone writing an AIF parody would devise. Honestly, it's pretty lazy even for a Pleasantville game, and I think it would have bugged me if I could seduce a major character with it. As it was, I didn't mind it as much as I thought I would, knowing that the alternative probably wasn't going to be much more inspired.
Technically, RtP is more stable than PiP, which isn't saying much. The game doesn't bug out as much, and there are just some niggling errors that I just feel could have been fixed pretty easily.
I really feel that Return to Pleasantville would have been much, much better if it had just merged the first part of the game with the second part. The part where you're moping around town and the part where you're camping just don't fit together. Sure, it's pretty cool to be able to cruise around town picking up strangers, but I think I would have liked to have seen more variety with fewer characters. I would sort of love to see an expansion which fleshes out the second part of the game.
...And then there was the weird alien subplot I don't think anyone cared about.
But it was RtP that finally made me learn what PiP was trying to be. The awkward horror elements, wanton shamelessness and terrible writing makes RtP the AIF equivalent of an awesomely bad B-movie. For this reason, I was excited when the cult randomly appeared out of nowhere, thinking to myself "ah, this is where the game really starts!"
As it turns out, that's where RtP would end.
We were all well-warned that RtP was going to be smaller than PiP. Despite that, you can't help but wish sequels to be bigger and better than their predecessors, and so RtP's relatively compact size was a disappointment. I can't help but wish RtP was a different game. For instance, why even return to Pleasantville? Why not set the entire game in the cabin by the lake, bring more of PiP's old characters into it and make them a bit more central? I found myself wishing I could interact with some of the established characters a bit more, like Emily, Katie and Maggie, in different combinations, too. In particular Emily, who was my favorite character in PiP, shortly following Katie. (Lamont, there needs to be a Katie/Emily threesome, make it happen) As it is, the important girls get only fractionally more screentime as the numerous random girls you encounter throughout the game.The ending cult sequence could have been foreshadowed a bit more too.
Speaking of girls, there's a lot of them in RtP, and they range from super-hot (Becky and Ms. Weaver) to scary-looking (Ms. Johnson, crazy old lady). It was especially nice to get with Ms. Weaver, who for some reason has become ultra-sexy between games. If women had the same sex drive as men, they might be in a Pleasantville game. After nearly every sex scene the woman has had a reason to bolt out with nary a word about cuddling or even a second date. One girl even said "Thanks for the dick," as she kicked me out of her home post-coitus. Talk about a male fantasy. I found it all a bit funny, really.
RtP uses a peculiar "flirt" mechanic to seduce strangers. Every time you flirt with someone, you either succeed or fail. If you fail too many times in a row, you ruin your chances. If you succeed enough times, you unlock their sex scene. It's as simple as that, and it's the kind of system I might imagine someone writing an AIF parody would devise. Honestly, it's pretty lazy even for a Pleasantville game, and I think it would have bugged me if I could seduce a major character with it. As it was, I didn't mind it as much as I thought I would, knowing that the alternative probably wasn't going to be much more inspired.
Technically, RtP is more stable than PiP, which isn't saying much. The game doesn't bug out as much, and there are just some niggling errors that I just feel could have been fixed pretty easily.
I really feel that Return to Pleasantville would have been much, much better if it had just merged the first part of the game with the second part. The part where you're moping around town and the part where you're camping just don't fit together. Sure, it's pretty cool to be able to cruise around town picking up strangers, but I think I would have liked to have seen more variety with fewer characters. I would sort of love to see an expansion which fleshes out the second part of the game.
Monday, October 7, 2013
Pervert Action Future: A Belated Review
I've been replaying a bit of Pervert Action: Future and I decided it never really got the sort of in-depth review it truly deserved. So I'll do a belated review of it. I won't be rating it at all because, really, it's a free game, and so you're not exactly sacrificing anything by checking it out. You can check out his website on the top right.
WARNING: Spoilers abound.
Story
First of all, bbben is a very clever writer. So, I couldn't tell if the story was convoluted just because it was very cleverly mimicking the sort of esoteric plotting often found in sci-fi anime or if it was just trying to build a connection between the original PAC game in a rather strange way, but I'm guessing the former. In any case, it gets away with it because of previously established tropes in the genre, but I couldn't help but scratch my head a little during the big reveal. I'm not sure, really, what to think except that the important parts were in the individual romantic sub-plots, which fortunately made a lot more sense.
All you need to know starting off is that Minami Tetsuya is a complete bitch, and in truth, it's Minami that really pushes the story forward. For this reason, I would have liked to see Tetsuya have a bigger role than she does. I'll get to that later.
Writing (ADDED: 10/07/2013)
The game uses a first person, script format to sort of emulate a visual novel instead of a traditional 2nd person narrative often found in AIF. It's appropriate for bbben's style in this case, especially when the air gets thick with one-liners. The important thing is PAF made me consistently laugh out loud, and it rarely felt like it was trying too hard to be funny.
For everything else, the narrator, Kenji, inserts much of his own color commentary as he describes what's going on around him. It makes normally utilitarian location descriptions a little more fun to read but I can imagine some people being annoyed by it.
Writing (ADDED: 10/07/2013)
The game uses a first person, script format to sort of emulate a visual novel instead of a traditional 2nd person narrative often found in AIF. It's appropriate for bbben's style in this case, especially when the air gets thick with one-liners. The important thing is PAF made me consistently laugh out loud, and it rarely felt like it was trying too hard to be funny.
For everything else, the narrator, Kenji, inserts much of his own color commentary as he describes what's going on around him. It makes normally utilitarian location descriptions a little more fun to read but I can imagine some people being annoyed by it.
Gameplay
Pervert Action Future very nicely combines the best of eroge dating sims with what we would call "traditional AIF". PAF's various component parts all feed into each other in different ways, the combat, exploration, dating and sex, so that none felt like an afterthought. Particularly nice was the combat system, which was very well balanced as well as being surprisingly deep and entertaining. My gripe with the combat system is that I was disappointed with the meager award for beating all the monsters, which is certainly not easy. It would've been nice to have a non-interactive scene or something.
The bulk of PAF's gameplay is choosing to either build stats or romance characters between your various fights. You have three stats, Hand, Mouth and Eye, which come into play both during fights and in sex scenes. You don't particularly need to have a balanced character, and in fact the game encourages you to load up on a single stat. Eye, I find, is not only the best for combat but also unlocks anal sex. Between Hand (which lets you rub pussy) and Mouth (which lets you lick pussy) the choice is pretty damn obvious. It might be a little much to ask for each of the stats to do a little more in bed, but it would be nice.
The sex scenes, for that matter, are all very well written, well voiced and well illustrated, but simple as far as AIF goes. I am not a tremendous fan of arousal systems and so I don't feel like I lost a whole lot not having to tap "G" to see the same message pop up until my virtual avatar busts a virtual nut, but it would have been nice to see something else brought to the table in place of it, maybe some sort of clothing system, especially since your in-game avatar can't orgasm at all except in some of the non-interactive scenes at the very end of the game. Again, having the stats come into play a little more would may have helped to add a little more interest here.
As far as the romancing goes, it's all an abstracted point system with some optional puzzles thrown in, with most of the plot being told through cut scenes. It isn't bad because the individual romantic sub-plots are quite good, but even some symbolic decisions would break up the feeling of non-interactivity.
The risk with this sort of game is what I would describe as the "symmetry" between all of the characters, which is both a good and bad thing. On the good side, you can romance any character with any stat. On the bad side, once you know the trick to seducing one girl, you know how to seduce all the girls. PAF isn't hard: you spend the first half of the game developing a single stat, then, in the second half you spam romance them with your uber complimenting, chatting and/or sparring, where at some point they'll fall into bed with you. It would have been nice to see some more dramatic differences -- for example, maybe you have to defeat Taka in a fight to get her to respect you, or maybe at some point Yuri goes missing and you have to find her. I would go as far as to say I would like it if some characters were flat out more difficult than others. I know the trend is to go puzzle-lite but here it all gets given away a bit too easily.
Characters
I played both PAC and PAF pretty close to each other, and the PAF characters definitely stick out in my mind much more easily, and I can't say it was just the superior pictures. For one thing, PAF's characters are just a lot more believable even while being larger-than-life, their exaggerated personalities given more context. I think part of the reason is that while PAC seemed to purposefully mimic the sorts of archetypes typically found in eroge games, BBBen in PAF seemed to free himself a little more, having already established this strange Dating Sim/AIF hybrid and not really needing to rely on the player's familiarity with eroge games. But that's beside the point, since PAF's girls are just more likable than those in PAC.
In this regard, Chiemi really sticks out. At the best of times, she was charming and genuine, she made me laugh and be happy. At the worst, she made me sad and sympathize with her plight, being desperate and lonely as she is. Between that and the voice acting, which is just incredible and adds so much warmth to Chiemi, she stands out as the strongest character. In the end, she hits a strange mark, because while some characters may have reminded me of some real life people, Chiemi was the only character where I felt like I knew people who were exactly like her. Don't get me wrong, of all the cast Chiemi would make the best real-life girlfriend, but as a romanceable character she hits an uncanny valley where, minus the cyborg parts, she's almost not fantastical enough. It's a difficult thing to explain... I just couldn't see her as an erotic character. I think that's why, even with Chiemi really being the best character in the game, she maybe isn't as popular as she deserves to be, not even with me, and that's a shame. Poor Chiemi. She always gets left out, doesn't she?
Taka, on the other hand, is damn fine. In my case, this isn't just because Taka's character model happens to be the least cartoonish and most vixen, but rather because I find Farscape's Aeryn Sun and Katee Sackhoff's portrayal of Starbuck to be just sex on wheels. It's probably the same reason I found Misato from PAC to be my favorite character from that game. I like tough, sexy girls, and Taka's not only badass, but her voice actress has a sexy, husky voice. It's just a personal kink of mine, and Taka just hits it square.
I'm not really sure what to think of Taka's relationship with Yuri. They are supposed to be almost like sisters, but I just can't buy it, considering how deeply troubled Yuri clearly is at least in the beginning of the game. Yuri struck me as the weakest character, I found her portrayal quite inconsistent, going from cold and enigmatic at the beginning to doing drunk karaoke with Taka somewhere in the middle, without much of a convincing transition in between. She's supposed to be deeply troubled, and considering her mother is Minami she would be, but her relationship with Taka is healthy enough to undercut this. It feels like both Taka and Yuri happened to be the odd characters out and needed a threesome ending. It's also not clear why Taka would trust Yuri and not Chiemi. I would have preferred, somehow, this sisterly relationship developing during the game with the player acting as a catalyst.
The final pair is Ayane the pop star and Ami the best friend, whose relationship made a lot more sense. I really liked Ayane because she was very believably "tsundere", and the story line with the player helping her come to grips with her exhibitionism was one of the best and hooked in well to her sex scenes. Ayane's voice acting was pretty good but it had the poorest audio quality, but studio-quality recording is probably a bit much to ask for. Ami's voice acting is second only to Chiemi's and, as a character, she could have very easily become boring or forgettable were it not for her generally pretty good writing and acting. Ami is the character which most obviously falls into a specific archetype, but fortunately it isn't noticeable because Ayane adds a little bit of interest.
A little should be said about Minami, who is very obviously the villainess of the game. Despite her being an awful person, I would have liked to see a little more of her, even if it's to mess up the PC's day a little more aggressively. She never really gets her own true interactive scene for one, and I didn't find her unsexy.
A final note: all of the actresses did a commendable job to breathe a bit of life into the characters, and for that reason none of them came off as Slutty Cheerleader #6. Plus, it's not easy to make dick-sucking sounds and not be self-conscious.
Overall
"Soccer Game", my own work in progress, is heavily influenced by the tone and game play of Pervert Action: Future. If there was any testament to how much I enjoyed this game, it's probably that. I just hope that BBBen wasn't planning on writing Pervert Action: Football.
I will, however, volunteer what his next game should be: Pervert Action: Sengoku. We've already been to the future, now's the time to go to the past. Finish Super PAC first, of course.
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