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:
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.
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.