| Home | About Me | |
|
|
DELRON
|
BSG: Twenty Two Reviews
Author: Madquest8
Date: 2009
ADRIFT 4.0
What does AIF stand for? Adult Interactive Fiction.
If you likely to
be offended by games with sexual content, you are advised not
to open these
files.
Reviewed by A. Ninny (Inside
Erin: The AIF Community Newsletter Volume 5 Number 7 – July 2009)
Overview: This game has a science fiction setting; you play a ruthless space
warrior. Humanity is at war with a robotic alien race and your warship has had a
bomb concealed on it by a particularly sexy alien lady
robot, whom your crew has captured. It’s your job to convince the alien to
reveal the location of the bomb before it explodes. You have only twenty-two
turns.
Review: This is the kind of game that’s got such a cheesy story, if it seemed
like it was taking itself too seriously it would fall flat. Instead, you get
just enough backstory to know your mission and off you go.
The whole setup - you’re in heightened suspense for 22 turns before the game
ends - makes the author’s terseness an asset to the feeling of the game. If you
waste a lot of time looking for backstory, you’ll die. If
you spend a lot of time looking at the scenery, you’ll die. So best to get
straight to the point. It’s also a game that you’re going to have to play
repeatedly before you solve, and so were I the author I’d want to
make sure to offer enough variety in actions that player won’t get bored. I
thought the author got part of the way there on that point. There are a fairly
wide variety of options, but not different descriptions for
similar actions. I found the sex writing to be pretty much comic book goofy, but
that didn’t bother me too much given the hokiness of the story. I appreciated
that the characters stay consistent to their roles and
don’t become generic, not that that’s too difficult considering how cartoony
they are. I didn’t really buy the author’s choice as to what the solution would
be. It felt like he was trying to use something that players
wouldn’t hit upon in their normal AIF command repertoire, but even though I
figured it out relatively quickly, it left me scratching my head as to just why
that worked.
Concept: B-. I guess I’m a sucker for goofy Sci-fi stories. This qualifies.
Writing: B. As soon as I saw that this was a space opera, my expectations
dropped, but the writing was actually pretty good.
Characters: B-. Both of the characters are cartoonish and flat, but still fun.
Hotness: C. While the sex scene is in character with the rest of the story, it
isn’t one that did much for me.
Technical: C. There are some bugs, but overall the game works pretty well.
Enjoyment: C+. I think it could have been better if the solution to the puzzle
made more sense.
Reviewed by ExLibris (Inside
Erin: The AIF Community Newsletter Volume 5 Number 7 – July 2009)
Through no fault of its own, BSG starts with a few
strikes against it simply because of my own my own subjective prejudices.
Firstly, as a rule I don't like regular fan-fiction very much, but after playing
this game
I realised that it's preferable to fan-fiction with the names slightly changed.
Secondly, I'm not too keen on games with time limits, especially when the time
is advanced by nearly any action, even something as innocuous as examining an
object. Generally that means the annoyance of having
to undo a lot, but in this case the annoyance was increased by the fact that
undo was disabled. I can sympathise with the desire to create tension, but when
it comes to not being able to undo after accidentally
wasting a turn through a typo, it's a bit much.
The time limit is an indirect cause of my third quibble, the huge infodump at
the beginning. A lot of the stuff in the infodump could have quite happily been
placed in a readme file (BSG was also the only game
without a readme file, which I'm afraid is another strike against it). As far as
the story related information goes, I think there are better ways to provide it.
Obedience was a good example of this, as it drip-fed the
required information, allowing the player to slowly submerge into the character,
instead of just dumping everything on the player in one load. The load in this
case felt particularly heavy as well, not so much
nudging the player in the right direction as leading them by the hand.
My prejudices against the game were increased by the fact that Tricia's dialogue
was in a different colour to the rest of the text. Normally I'd think that was a
good idea but, like probably 50% of the population, I had
white set as my background colour. Consequently, making the dialogue yellow was
not an inspired choice unless the aim was eyestrain. Changing the colour was
easy enough, but it was just one more little
annoyance.
Finally, run on sentences are bad, m'kay. Splicing them with commas or chaining
them together with ellipses doesn't improve readability either.
The reason I mention all of this, is that I really had to force myself to play
this game through to completion. And I'm glad I did as there is a surprising
amount of content concealed under that rather unappealing
exterior. Tricia is certainly one of the better implemented NPCs in the
competition, with a wide variety of responses to both conversation and
especially actions. Also, while the execution didn't appeal to me in a lot
of ways, I felt that the basic concept was a good one.
Overall, I'd classify this game as something of an ugly duckling. It doesn't
quite grow up into a beautiful swan when you get into it, but there are
certainly some features of interest.
Reviewed by Gary Plume (Inside
Erin: The AIF Community Newsletter Volume 5 Number 7 – July 2009)
This game was annoying. Violent domination sex is not my cup of tea, and the
threat of being bombed into oblivion put another damper on my enjoyment. The NPC
laughing at the PC was actually a powerful
technique, but it unfortunately increased my revulsion of the game. The main
puzzle seemed to be a conversational maze that you were supposed to follow, but
the constant restarts to try to find a brute force
way of exploring all dead ends annoyed me. Eventually, I gave up because the
path that seemed to be correct didn't seem to win the game and then I had to
postulate following combinations of pathways which
wasn't fun. What does this game want from me? The titillation over frustration
quotient was too low to make me come back for more after each bomb blast. I gave
up trying to win. I don't remember where I
read it recently, but someone recommended NOT trying to quote the onomatopeia of
an orgasm. This game shows me exactly what a terrible technique it is.
Reviews should be considered copyrighted by their respective authors.
| Any donation would be much appreciated to help keep the site online and growing. | To help make your donation quicker and
easier just click the "Donate" button and you will be taken to the secure Paypal donation page. |
|
| Home | About Me |
