It's a good game, ish. Depending. The writing is somehow rather uneven, and the tone varies wildly. The latter part isn't really a problem if executed well, but in this case it bothers me a little. I had hard time finding any sympathy for Liam.. It's just that his personality rubbed me the wrong way about half of the time. I didn't see his friendship with the protagonist in the writing.
What I saw was basically the movie equivalent of telling someone is a great friend; you don't actually see much evidence of it, just that we as readers were told it was true and then events follow. Regardless the start of the game is mix of amusing and serious with some fairly liberal sprinkling of sex scenes (considering the "realistic" tone).
Regardless, that's not my biggest problem with the game. The art is okay. Not bad. Not great. Just okay. Stock models, stock enviroments, okay renders, weak lighting (which is actually the biggest problem adult games have, in general). Basically: It'll do the job.
On the good side, every character was easily recognizable and there was no confusion there. The plot threads were involved and there were a lot of of them, which was kind on the limit of what this game could handle. Adding any more spaghetti to the plot threads might've derailed the whole game.
Warning: Some spoiler'ish content. I am not actually giving out the plot, but you can infer some details.
I can't say if the endings are satisfying because I found the house-fire scene both unrealistic (I can see the scene, and the situation really wasn't that cut and dried in the image) and extremely jarring. It was Deus Ex Machinae, except that this time the author did it to create "drama".
I was playing the two girls-at-the-same-time route mostly to see how it would work out. I was fully expecting it not to work, considering the fairly realistic (for a given value) tone of the story. That it then worked out was surprising, and that it did it fairly gracefully was actually interesting.
But that binary decision towards the end just soured me towards the writing. It's hard to appreciate any skill in the writing when it was such a hamfisted and clumsy way to do it.
If you wanted to kill one of the two, then do it in any other way in that doesn't directly make the player kill them. This is essentially telling player "which one you want to kill", even if it is presented as "which one you want to save".
Basically, shades of Mass Effect 3. After that point, most of your previous decisions don't actually matter.
What I saw was basically the movie equivalent of telling someone is a great friend; you don't actually see much evidence of it, just that we as readers were told it was true and then events follow. Regardless the start of the game is mix of amusing and serious with some fairly liberal sprinkling of sex scenes (considering the "realistic" tone).
Regardless, that's not my biggest problem with the game. The art is okay. Not bad. Not great. Just okay. Stock models, stock enviroments, okay renders, weak lighting (which is actually the biggest problem adult games have, in general). Basically: It'll do the job.
On the good side, every character was easily recognizable and there was no confusion there. The plot threads were involved and there were a lot of of them, which was kind on the limit of what this game could handle. Adding any more spaghetti to the plot threads might've derailed the whole game.
Warning: Some spoiler'ish content. I am not actually giving out the plot, but you can infer some details.
I can't say if the endings are satisfying because I found the house-fire scene both unrealistic (I can see the scene, and the situation really wasn't that cut and dried in the image) and extremely jarring. It was Deus Ex Machinae, except that this time the author did it to create "drama".
I was playing the two girls-at-the-same-time route mostly to see how it would work out. I was fully expecting it not to work, considering the fairly realistic (for a given value) tone of the story. That it then worked out was surprising, and that it did it fairly gracefully was actually interesting.
But that binary decision towards the end just soured me towards the writing. It's hard to appreciate any skill in the writing when it was such a hamfisted and clumsy way to do it.
If you wanted to kill one of the two, then do it in any other way in that doesn't directly make the player kill them. This is essentially telling player "which one you want to kill", even if it is presented as "which one you want to save".
Basically, shades of Mass Effect 3. After that point, most of your previous decisions don't actually matter.
