I also got a new potential candidate for the mighty list
. Game's called
High Desire
A bit of an oddity if you ask me, it's like the polar opposite to something like Race of life... There are 4 things in particular who stood out to me.
1 - The overall approach to street racing
Just the way it's shown to us from that first TV news report that we get to see up until the point we're getting introduced to the team later on is just very nicely done imo. It's not soley focussed on just the racing part of it, it also a tries to look at it from different angles and different POVs.
The MC himself starts out as someone who did some legitimate track racing since he was a child, which makes it pretty easy to buy into everything that follows. Even though the whole underground racing community thingy feels more like a GTA version of it rather than the real deal, but that's ok. Kudos to how it's done regardless, which brings me to the next point.
2 - The MC
While I would agree that he comes across a bit edgy at times, more so in the 2nd half where his swear count goes up by a lot, but he stays, for the most part, away from the usual tropes concerning MC's in AVN's. He ain't a player, neither is he overly cocky or an imbecile or anything, which is something you'd usually expect in a game with this kind of premise. I liked that he's written in a consistent way and it doesn't take you long to get a feel for who he is and what he's about.
Oh, and what a lovely father he has, doesn't he?. What a piece of human trash... There's no coming back from that, ever. I would rate this game 0/5 if the MC's going to forgive him at any point in time until the day he fucking dies.... Just despicable.
3 - LIs
Without wanting to spoil too much, but usually in an AVN you're represented with mostly oversexualized LI's. Which of course makes perfectly sense in a porn game, but here it's more grounded with who they are and how they're represented. You can hook up with one or 2 of them already, but it never felt out of place or weird. If anything, with the way it's done so far, i'm more interested than usual as to how it's going to progress going forward. It's a good mixture of people you'd expect to see in such a game and some unusual ones.Same goes for the lewd scenes who're also done slightly different from the usual.
4. Music, animations, atmosphere
Not very often that I have to point out the music, but here the developer did a good job with his retro, low fi approach. A lot of scenes get elevated by it..., loved it. There's also a large amount of video animations in the game who're all done exceptionally well and do enhance the overall atmosphere of the game. The game comes across very mellow and dreamy at times.
5 - Verdict
Well, even though i'd like to go into more detail about certain, mostly smaller, things, i'm just gonna leave it here. I did call this game an oddity and that's mainly because the developer cleary did his own thing, which I apprechiate. You're probably going to be disappointed if you're looking for a new, more traditional AVN, but otherwise, check it out.
Not perfect by any means, but I really liked it.
