Unity - Completed - ARIA: Genesis [Final] [Vortex00]

A classic from the Flash era revived and in 3D! Maybe it should have stayed in 2D.

A lot of work was put into this, and the dev clearly cares about the universe they created, but there's a certain project scale where passion isn't enough and you need some actual development chops, and that's mostly where this game falls short. By the standards of your average porn game, it's punching far above its weight. But we're also at the point where these kinds of games are on legitimate platforms and cost real money, and by that standard, it doesn't even feel finished. Simple scripting errors are very easy to trigger, such as when you decide to enter a building and then return to the city, causing an NPC to cycle through their most recent dialogue all over again. You can also run towards a character and suddenly get stopped by an invisible wall. These feel like basic things you should catch before you start charging people for your game.

The gameplay mostly consists of shooting sections that are totally servicable, if not very exciting. Mercyfully, due to the janky controls, they're also rather easy. In between are segments of story that feel impossible to care about. In the old flash game, the MC was a brooding asshole that basically had freeuse access to a ship full of hotties. It wasn't Shakesphere, but it got the job done. Now you're asked to play as one of said hotties (Ari, the least interesting one, imo) in what I think is a prequel(?). The previous MC is still around, and still a brooding asshole, though now that he's no longer playable, you have to ask yourself why Ari (or anyone really) puts up with him. It feels like the dev assumes that players care about these characters and this universe as much as they do, as I really had no idea why I was doing much of anything or why Ari was making any of the decisions that she did.

As far as the actual porn content, your mileage may vary. If you like jiggle physics, you'll be in heaven with this game, but for most people, it just feels comical and makes the characters much less attractive than their 2D counterparts. The scenes themselves are nothing to write home about. You may get more out of it if you prefer female protag games, but most of it amounts to Ari either fooling around with her lady friends or getting railed by some scummy stranger. Scenes are typically one looping animation that you can move the camera around. There's a cum button, but it just makes clouds of white smoke puff out of bodies.

There's something here, but I doubt most people will be compelled to actually finish it, and if given the choice, I'd play the old Flash game every time over this.

A porn game that makes an actual effort at being a game! This should be a cool instant reccommendation but alas, it falls a bit short in the execution.

GRAPHICS
Visually the game is pretty good. A lot of love clearly went into the jiggle weighting on the main girls breasts and butts, and the standard walking animations show it off quite well. The actual character animation could use some work (arms clipping through breasts, feet sliding around during dance animations, etc) but I'd say this is one of the game's strong points.

If I had to really ding the graphics anywhere it's that comparing the promo illustrations (especially the highly rendered, painterly pictures) to the actual character models in game.. the faces just don't match up. Pretty small complaint though, since we're clearly running on cheesy anime rules where characters are distinguished by curves and hairstyle only.

Oh and... do yourself a favor. After starting the game, turn the jiggle strength for butts down to low. The default jiggle strength is enough that during the action character's butts look like they're trying to detach from their bodies, and "low" is still quite impressively jiggly.

STORY
There's a hint of a plot here but if like me you've not been following the author's characters for years you'll probably have no idea who the characters are and why they're doing what they do. With what we're given there's hints of a complex narrative with subterfuge and rival powers within an overly powerful megacorp but... we don't really see enough to make any judgments. The game also hits a "to be continued" screen right where it feels like the plot might actually be starting.

GAMEPLAY
Actually playing the game is where things get messy. It's hard to make a coherent breakdown because it's just generally a mess of issues, but to name a few:

• At the title screen you can only adjust the video settings. There's actually more options! But most of the options are only accessible during gameplay. Since one of the first things you'll probably notice when starting the game up is the volume of the music not being able to adjust the volume until starting the game might be a problem for you.
• Loading screens are long, dialog boxes are sluggish fading in and out, and menu controls feel incredibly unresponsive.
• During action stages the game doesn't actually pause during dialog, and there's rarely an option to skip dialog either.
• When loading zones are triggered by interactive objects or dialog, the game doesn't properly switch these off during the loading screen, often leaving the prompts on screen until a few moments after you've loaded into the new zone.
• You can only save your game by either going to the main character's apartment in the city, or interacting with a specific floating drone NPC in the same city. If you want to save and take a break anywhere else in the game, too bad. No autosaves either.

It's a mess, and it doesn't help that the controls can't be customized (a problem if you're not using a QWERTY layout keyboard). The actual ground shooter missions aren't too bad, though they're not especially well balanced. Despite having an impressive enemy variety the game feedback just isn't that good for when you're taking or dealing damage. What's worse the enemy AI is very simplistic, leaving the enemies simply wandering around spraying bullets in your general direction. Sometimes they just don't hit you at all, other times every bullet finds its mark and you die in short order.

The flight segments are stupidly simple, which is good because the controls are awful. Using WASD to steer the ship, mouse-1 to shoot, and moving the mouse to roll the ship is just... weird. Wrong and weird. Again, good thing these segments are short and easy.

THE PORN
This is a porn game, we're here for the porn, so this is important annnd... ARIA is just short of really delivering. If you're into money shots or sex sims, skip this one. The sex scenes are mostly single looping animations, though some of the scenes do progress from one animation to another. There's no climax animations or afterglow, unfortunately. The camera for sex scenes defaults to an awkward freecam, but you can usually find a better angle than the fixed angles so it's just as well. In terms of variety it's all male x female, and mostly vaginal and one very sad looking handjob.

Unfortunately the controls during sex scenes don't really modify the action either. You can toggle the male character cumming... which just means during the looping sex animation there'll be an intermittent gloopy sound and chunky grey particles falling from the man's penis through all geometry and scattering on the floor. There's no effort to make mouths or pussies look full of dripping cum, no textures painting bodies in love juices.. it makes me sad.

Oh and.. someone should probably tell the animated that hanging breasts (like say, during doggy style), hang away from the body and become quite reactive to forces, instead of becoming more static. Missed opportunity.

OVERALL
I honestly don't think this game is as bad as the commentary in the thread make it sound. For an ambitious first stab at making a 3d game this is actually pretty impressive. There's just no way to call this a fully finished game. There's rough edges and missing details everywhere you look. If I had a strong indication that Vortex considered this an unfinished work-in-progress, I'd be all on board to see him push further and actually complete it. As it is... this game is a fun novelty, but you'll get a more complete erotic experience from a Ren'Py project or AO3.

It's a bit unfortunate that probably the hottest scene is fucking a guy at a strip club in order to get a racing bike.

I don't think I've ever quite played such a sham of a game. That was impressively bad. I really should have looked at the existing rating but I let myself have a bit of hope that it'd be something other than a bunch of storebought lowrez assets tossed together haphazard.

The game is pretty original but still lacking in the story part. Pretty maps, the girls models are great, good animations and they have jiggle physics. You can unlock/buy clothes, there are minigames to get money, you can make her dance in a strip club, play cards with a guy, participate in car races, the combat is okay, is a shooter.
The bad things, is poorly optimized, the card game is poorly coded or is made in a way so you win less, because the NPC can lose a turn but most of the time the game instead of let you play, because is your turn, skip your turn and let the NPC play again, I experienced that many times and one the NPC lost 4 turns in a row and the game skipped all my turns without reason. The race game is poorly explained and looks really hard, because I lost them for a second and I couldn't catch up with them even using nitro. The story is pretty simple and in some moment looks like rushed, the sex scenes too.
All in all, the game runs pretty good in an old PC with 2 cores a GT 1030 and the game installed in a old Hard Drive, the loading screens are really long, but is expected in a game with no optimization and an old HDD. The game should be more than playable in an SDD with a better GPU and CPU.
Some reviews are pretty exagerated, and is stupid spam missiles when you know that the game is poorly optimized and it can cause the game to crash, even if the game is correctly optimized, if you spam missiles, the game may still crash.

Not sure what to say, the game is not bad, it try to be original and it is. Everything is unpolished but there are many things to do in the game. Basically that's not another "vn/scene player/point & click" game you already see.
I think it's important to mention, because at least it try to do something, and I salute the effort. In the end i found the game pretty basic but still enjoyable.

Pro:
- It have a open world, cars, arena combats, various minigames, a strip club, etc.
- I can feel the work put into the game, not just copy paste, far from perfect but i can see the author really trying to do things right.
- Some nice idea,
- I found the game somewhat fun, I wanted to finish it, not a lot of games does that.
- The side content make you want to continue the game after the story.

Cons:
- Pretty basic/stupid story, but well it's a porn game so is it bad ? xD
- Many and very long LOOAAAAADDINNNNNNNGGS !!! Oh boy, you can't imagine, loading a map take like 40sec on a i7-11700k with 32Gb RAM and game on a SSD....
- Really, but reaaaallyy abusing of reflections, it almost make you blind sometime.
- It deserve to have more porn content, and I would want some scenes in the story and not just like a side bonus.

I don't often do reviews, but I think this game deserve it because I can see some potential and the dev is trying to provide something original.

Porn games should not require a PC costing thousands of dollars, even on lowest graphics you will get lag, it doesn't matter, this is a horribly unoptimized janky mess, don't waste your time. Such a shame that an awesome animator like Vortex00 was dragged into this game' development, total waste.

Very fun, I like hgames that try to be other genres besides visual novels and rpg, the models are good but a shame that the pigtail girl isn't playable after the story ends. Very ambitious with the hub city, apartment, can't wait for the sequel.

This game is crazy ambitious! It's a bit janky, sure, but it's got a ton of content and if your PC can handle it, the graphics are pretty sweet.

I played the spiral vortex games when I was much younger, so it's very nostalgic to see these characters again upgraded into 3d models. I thought I was at the end of the game, and boom they drop Maiko on me, and then another playable character after that!

This is one of the few games I've seen on this site that feels like a real game. Decent story, varied gameplay mechanics, an actual bit of a challenge to the combat, and some bangin babes on top of that.

to start with the game is increadibly poorly optimized as well as having a lackluster story at best and when you combine that with the stale gameplay bad ai and minimal amout of sex scenes not to mention the awkward animations when walking you get this half baked shit show the only good thing i can really say about it is that it has nice physics but thats about it

The loading screens are the only scenes you'll see in this game because the game is boring and buggy. It's buggy slow and overall just awful. Gameplay is boring and not even close to being fun with a chance of crashing your game if you spam the missile weapon which also makes the game run like a slidshow when you fire it regardless of settings. Not worth even reading this review to play the game. Don't waste your time

[Final]
Played it an maximum graphical settings... Where are the graphics?
Everything is "soapy" and the shooting effects get my card to 100%.

The game works and it is a great plus!
But the gameplay is boring.
AI is stupid.
Plot is primitive.
It only has graphical settings (Lol when you play it has a lot more settings than in main menu, wtf?!).
When you turn it on you are blasted with music.

I saw worse h-shooters, but more that are better.

I guess you can play it one time to cringe and delete it.

PROS

1. it is has ok visuals
2. love the setting
3. sweet jiggle physics
4. ok music
5. Beautiful and sexy girls
6. good sex scenes

CONS

1. WTF STORY
2. gets stuck in messed up levels
3. TO MANY LODADING SCREENS
4. main villain and "good guy" have shit story's as to why they hate each other and what they want from the main girl
5. little sex scene
6. cant swap characters on your own and the story does it for you when you don't want to
7. "completed" tab is a lie
8. other mini games are boring and don't give as much currency
9. unwanted flying minigame
10. some weapons are some times better then the main characters
11. THE CURRANCE IN THE GAME DOES NOT MATTER

edit: I am not trying to say that this game is trash. It is not bad but it needs more time for development

I found the game to be a fun, short & sexy fps. You'll need a good pc and not to expect too much though.

What to expect:
- Workable FPS gameplay with a variety of characters. (Not AAA ofc, but I found myself enjoying it.)
- Nice 3D world & atmosphere with plenty of sexy bits. (Your opinion may differ. I liked the city map and characters.)
- Hot girls with customizable outfits. Very very bouncy. (You can reduce the bounce amount in options.)
- Barebone but serviceable plot and dialogues. (It's far from "advanced" but I still got pulled in by the characters and story.)
- Optional mini-games and exploration.

Beware:
- Sex is easily accessible but sex scenes are minimal. (Sometimes it's only 1 animation loop and no text.)
- High hardware requirements & loading times.
- Sluggish dialogue and "blinding" combat effects.
- Poor UI, getting stuck (unstuck via menu > restart map), a few bugs, janky save system.

In retrospect, the game was a good surprise. I had more fun than I maybe should have.
(Even making a review...!)

Let me get this out of the way straight off the bat: this thing is unoptimized.
This is actually more difficult for my PC to handle than the latest and greatest triple-A big name release of the moment. This thing overheats my PC and makes it shudder to a halt at every turn far, far, far worse.
To add insult to injury, this thing needs to load every few seconds of gameplay.

You boot it up, massive load time. You start the first mission, massive load time. You kill about four sodding aliens that have no way to threaten you in any capacity because you start with some kind of exploding sniper round with a 30 ammo magazine that one hit kills anything within earshot and they have melee attacks. You kill those aliens, then you get a few sentences of forgettable dialogue and off to another loading screen. OK, new mission, go hack into this terminal. On the way you'll fight about three dudes (again, instant AoE kill), get there, three more dudes spawn, instant kill those too, get informed that a powerful agent is now roaming the level! OK, probably overstatted, right? Sneak if you want to, walk right to the exit, kill two more dudes on the way before they even aggro, interact with your escape route and the dangerous agent attacks you! He swipes 2/3 of your HP before you regain control after the ambush dialogue and then you one hit kill him like all the others. Whatever. Now you get another loading screen, a flight section where you kill four turrets that can't hurt you, another even longer loading screen, walk maybe 5 feet and another loading screen.

Y'know what, maybe this thing is playable if you have a beast of a computer. Maybe. But then, why would you even want to? It offers no challenge, the story is pathetic: typical high ranking dude is super corrupt and cartoonishly evil, wants to force a girl into marrying him, she loves another dude who is totally awesome and great and all that, she breaks off from cartoonishly evil high station guy and wins every single battle because explosive sniper bolt with 30 ammo. Fine, whatever. The visuals, then? Nothing to write home about. I've seen better, much better, and there's nothing to look at those visuals for. No meaningful exploration rewards, no fun secrets, and you'll get stuck in the terrain if you wander off too far from the main road.

Basically, what is here is a bunch of assets someone slapped together in UE and thought "Sod it, that'll do. Its got porn in it so the game part can be utter shite" well, no, no it can't - not if you want to get more than one star from me.

This thing is offensively bad on every level; gameplay, optimization, amount of adult content, download and file size - EVERYTHING. And none of it is justified.

1/5. I want to forget this thing ever existed.

Pretty good game, varied maps biodomes nice cyber feel to the city, music and waifus, main story was ok, a lot of effort went into the creation of the game, was thinking it was a triple B quality game but changed my opinion to A quality by the end.

So right of the bat, this isn't a bad game at all. I actually enjoy these games more than grinding stats like other games, but this one is just unfinished (even though it has the "Completed" tab). More sex scenes and I would give this more, but it felt like a bad 3rd person shooter with bouncing tits.

PROS
More fun than stat farming.
I like the mini games, especially the cards (I think the cards could be sexier though).
I like being able to walk around and have sex with people. I think this feels more immersive and sexier.

CONS
Not enough sex scenes. They just chose to not add them in at specific parts of the game which is annoying, at the very beginning there was a perfect scene for it and they just chose to not do it.
Glitchy and untested (or they just couldn't fix it).
Boring combat.
No autosave.
Too many loading screens that take ages.
Unfinished even though they've released it as "Completed".

Actually finishing the game, adding autosave, and adding more sex scenes would make this a fun to play game.