- Oct 15, 2016
- 861
- 1,362
Well, it's hard to know where to start with this really.
The game is designed in a way that is almost purposefully frustrating - from the engine to the core gameplay. It's not a BAD game by any stretch, there's a good idea/story in there if you're willing to slog through the game but the pacing and some decisions Tomcat has made make it really difficult to play through. Not difficult like Dark Souls, difficult like painting a fence. Tedious but you feel you'll ultimately be rewarded if you soldier on through but the fence keeps getting longer and the rewards keep getting further away.
First we start with very basic design decisions. The content in the game is provided through video that autoplays in a near full screen mode. The problem with this is that the game itself is presented as a form of sandbox with a light story, not too different from Son of a Bitch and other games of the type. So straight away the game clashes with itself. Scoreville used a system whereby you entered into a screen with various options for positions in sex. This was good because it meant that you could essentially skip to the bit you found the most interesting; LWR takes the other option of presenting a full scene broken into parts that you can skip without actually choosing to where you're going. So if you wanted to see a blowjob for example then you might skip the stripping and end up at the sex or you might skip to the blowjob and have a 20 second scene then have to laboriously skip through 30 other scenes before it ends.
This is why I say the game clashes with itself at times. The video option of just watching without any control is more of a visual novel feeling designed to remove control from the player - a rollercoaster type environment. The sandbox nature of the game is something that gives players a measure of control over the content they view and in what order. So at the same time it gives you content but then restricts the way to view that content. It's an odd decision.
Most of the QSP type games have solved this problem by presenting the video in a main window and then text underneath so that you "click along" with the story at the pace that you want. LWR front loads the text in chat bubbles and then puts you onto the videocoaster. I can read text while watching a video at the same time, that's the better way of presenting information as it's less time consuming.
That fault aside, I like the game. There's a few bugs lying around and some of the systems aren't exactly clear on how they work together (lifting weights makes you less likely to prematurely ejaculate for example) but you can pick it up fairly quickly. The models are the pretty standard selection that you'd see in these types of games - Riley Reid, Ariana Marie, etc. Fairly mainstream and uncontroversial choices that are pretty and have lots of content to add in places. Though I'd argue Riley Reid as a genius Doctor who loves studying stretches the bounds of reality further than most.
Some of the English is a bit patchy but easily forgivable. Other than that it's a standard "grind stats and visit places at certain time to unlock content" game and every woman in the game world outside of the three main roommates seems to be a psychotic nymphomaniac who have sex with you because the game script says that they have sex with you and why waste any time building?
The file size is actually excellent for the amount of content. 3GB sounds like a lot but there's a ton of videos in there all encoded with x264 so for your 3GB download you probably get around 1,800 videos which is great work from the dev and must have been a pain to encode them properly.
The one thing this game needs is more players. It feels like a game that is only being playtested under the idea of "find the bugs" rather than the idea of "is this actually fun" and it hurts the overall. It's a bit like a jigsaw where all the pieces are there but they've been hammered into the wrong order so you can see what the picture is supposed to be but it's still frustrating. A few minor alterations and it could be great or it could be hammered into even more of a mess. It's worth a download and worth keeping an eye on.
The game is designed in a way that is almost purposefully frustrating - from the engine to the core gameplay. It's not a BAD game by any stretch, there's a good idea/story in there if you're willing to slog through the game but the pacing and some decisions Tomcat has made make it really difficult to play through. Not difficult like Dark Souls, difficult like painting a fence. Tedious but you feel you'll ultimately be rewarded if you soldier on through but the fence keeps getting longer and the rewards keep getting further away.
First we start with very basic design decisions. The content in the game is provided through video that autoplays in a near full screen mode. The problem with this is that the game itself is presented as a form of sandbox with a light story, not too different from Son of a Bitch and other games of the type. So straight away the game clashes with itself. Scoreville used a system whereby you entered into a screen with various options for positions in sex. This was good because it meant that you could essentially skip to the bit you found the most interesting; LWR takes the other option of presenting a full scene broken into parts that you can skip without actually choosing to where you're going. So if you wanted to see a blowjob for example then you might skip the stripping and end up at the sex or you might skip to the blowjob and have a 20 second scene then have to laboriously skip through 30 other scenes before it ends.
This is why I say the game clashes with itself at times. The video option of just watching without any control is more of a visual novel feeling designed to remove control from the player - a rollercoaster type environment. The sandbox nature of the game is something that gives players a measure of control over the content they view and in what order. So at the same time it gives you content but then restricts the way to view that content. It's an odd decision.
Most of the QSP type games have solved this problem by presenting the video in a main window and then text underneath so that you "click along" with the story at the pace that you want. LWR front loads the text in chat bubbles and then puts you onto the videocoaster. I can read text while watching a video at the same time, that's the better way of presenting information as it's less time consuming.
That fault aside, I like the game. There's a few bugs lying around and some of the systems aren't exactly clear on how they work together (lifting weights makes you less likely to prematurely ejaculate for example) but you can pick it up fairly quickly. The models are the pretty standard selection that you'd see in these types of games - Riley Reid, Ariana Marie, etc. Fairly mainstream and uncontroversial choices that are pretty and have lots of content to add in places. Though I'd argue Riley Reid as a genius Doctor who loves studying stretches the bounds of reality further than most.
Some of the English is a bit patchy but easily forgivable. Other than that it's a standard "grind stats and visit places at certain time to unlock content" game and every woman in the game world outside of the three main roommates seems to be a psychotic nymphomaniac who have sex with you because the game script says that they have sex with you and why waste any time building?
The file size is actually excellent for the amount of content. 3GB sounds like a lot but there's a ton of videos in there all encoded with x264 so for your 3GB download you probably get around 1,800 videos which is great work from the dev and must have been a pain to encode them properly.
The one thing this game needs is more players. It feels like a game that is only being playtested under the idea of "find the bugs" rather than the idea of "is this actually fun" and it hurts the overall. It's a bit like a jigsaw where all the pieces are there but they've been hammered into the wrong order so you can see what the picture is supposed to be but it's still frustrating. A few minor alterations and it could be great or it could be hammered into even more of a mess. It's worth a download and worth keeping an eye on.
