Being a DIK - A seminal classic? (heh)
Second review I could be arsed to write on F95, and I wanted to try and touch on some of the things I think Being a DIK does so well that has allowed it to dethrone some other game I won't mention as being the most popular game on the site. I think a lot of us that play these games consider making, and some of us even actually attempt to make; games of our own. What about this game raises the bar and what do we take from it?
I'll say one thing to start: this game is doing something well enough that I think about it long after my lust for finely-crafted gobbos has expired.
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So we start with a tragic past, a nameable warrior poet for a protagonist on the verge of his coming-of-age story. It's not long before we find he's headed off to college, where numerous impossibly fuckable 3d mastercrafts await him, lusting for the MC's stinky cheese juice. There's nothing in this plot to suggest anything out of the ordinary from every other Ren'Py wank-fest to date. All the while, however, you're being hit with the game's soundtrack.
Soundtrack and Setting
I have no idea who The Friday Prophets are and after several hours I'm still no closer to an answer. What I do know is that the riffs I'm hearing are drawing me back into a circa 2000 pop punk time warp where American Pie and half a dozen high school shows are still relevant. Better yet; I'm not even American, but I seem to know exactly what everyone is talking about.
Dr PinkCake is taking advantage of a pop culture goldmine that anywhere else would seem trite but here is fresh and full of opportunity. I don't need to have it explained to me that the MC is a teenage misfit full of hormones and bursting at the seams to get out there and get some action. I don't need to see the facial expression on Josy's perfect face to know that the
MC is experiencing a fleeting moment of teenage romance; the girl who got away. The visuals inform as much as the music does, and every pop punk banger and acoustic solo is hitting at the right times. The music and the setting and the events on-screen are so well matched it becomes easier to feel for our main man and the people around him. Which brings me onto something else.
Tropes and Nostalgia (if you can call it that)
The educational setting has been used before to evoke memories both fond and tragic and allow players to relive those years through fantasy. Dr PinkCake knows this, but his use of a turn of the century American college setting that's hammed up to fuck is part of his genius. I think Being a DIK hugely benefits from understanding across cultures of what fictional American college is like but also because even if we didn't all have our own experiences like that growing up, we sure as shit have seen so many TV shows and movies and we've heard so many albums that we know what it should be like.
Side note: the relationship between Derek and the MC makes the game worth playing for their scenes alone. I would play a VN that is just the two of them trying to get into the DIK frat and nothing else. That's how funny and endearing their fucking around is in this game.
I mentioned an early scene with Josy which isn't really unique in how it plays out, but neither is HELL WEEK with your boy Derek or facing off against the Jocks. Irrespective of their originality elsewhere, they are original for porn games, and experiencing these events in an interactive way feels brand new.
I've already said that I feel I know what's going on without having to have it explained to me, but I also feel engaged without really knowing why. It's true the writing and the characters are top notch, but the game really captures what it means to feel longing for an experience and an atmosphere that had never been experienced (Sehnsucht, anyone?). I think this really helps to drive the plot and the player's desire to progress things with the girls, and I mean beyond the porn scenes. Being a DIK has a few genuinely romantic scenes - and they work well.
Bildungsroman and Butthurt
With all this in mind, the college experience can be characterized in part (in fiction and in real life) by a number of things: getting drunk/laid/high, doing stupid shit and getting your heart broke. This Maya and Josy sub-plot sent me for a spin and I commented on my desire to see an alternative route for DIKs that allowed us to handle things differently and unlock new scenes. My reasons are two-fold: 1) It doesn't make sense for our confident dude-bro to not feel like he's being treated like a chump, and 2) at this point in the game it doesn't give DIKs an event with either or both of them when Josy and Maya seemed to be set up as consistent choices from the start.
Now I have no idea what will happen in the next update(s), so I'm probably moaning about fuck all, but I have noted that this choice of story-line did have an emotional impact, and I have no idea if that is the intent so that it can be expanded on later. I hope this is the case. This entire scene means Bella is my new waifu, so uh, thanks I guess?
I like how the heartbreak is presented as a moment of growth and we see reactions from Derek, Jill and Bella that I really liked in terms of how it expressed them as people with real depth. However, the thing that really confuses me about this game though is that I can't always tell if it's a game about romance or fucking, and sometimes they seem to be at crossed-paths, as contradictory as that might sound. Up until this point, I could suspend my disbelief, that my dude was going around fucking everyone and being only semi-truthful about it. That's the genre. Now I don't know what I should feel and I can't tell if that's genius because it's just like college or dumb because my balls are blue.
One theory I have about this is that it's easier for most people on F95 to accept losing two girls from a possible threesome scenario than getting one girl "cucked" away from them by another dude. This might have been the reason Dr PinkCake went this way for a heartbreak plot, which is basically a must have for a college story. I'm not gunna turn this review into an NTR conversation, but I think it's food for thought that despite the successes of good writing in this game, far beyond the standard, it's direction will always be directed by an audience that is here for wish fulfillment. Which again, brings us back to what the game is really about.
Everything Else
Despite this, I would argue the game is still absolutely phenomenal. The scenes, animations and renders are as good as it currently gets and even the mini-games are fun, excluding the shuffling puzzle because fuck that. I actually looked up a guide for those puzzles and I still can't do it, which might be a side-effect of coombrain. Regardless, the mini-games, render hunting and impact of stat gains all ratchet up the addictiveness and I appreciate that there has been an attempt at "gameplay" here. It feels satisfying to master the combat and see beneficial outcomes. If we're talking about the successes of this game, it's only fitting to acknowledge that the work has been put in here to include everything other games did right, and then more on top. Bugs are minimal and content is overflowing with every installment, so it's worth the wait. The game is so good, I wrote this insufferably long and unhelpful review, and I don't know if that says more about me or about the game.
If you haven't already, play the whole thing in one sitting, it's a wild ride and I'm glad there were a few episodes lined up by the time I started.
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Tl:dr Get your porn game a soundtrack, a good writer and make sure you're capitalizing on what people know and love. Shit, I guess this is all pretty obvious isn't it?
