by thundergod » Tue, 11Feb08 21:27
Patience, secret scene-searching folks. Here's a hint: the game is wall-to-wall sex. If people aren't actually having sex in a scene, someone in it is trying to. So if there's a scene in which there's no sex and no one is trying to have sex, that should stand out as special and suspicious. The "solution" is...well, don't overthink it. In a game of this type, how might you initiate a sex scene?
But: patience again. The trigger for the secret scene doesn't start the scene immediately; the one you're in plays out to the end, first. You are, however, provided a way to understand that you're doing the right thing. Watch carefully.
(What follows is plot-spoilerish, but I'll try to keep it vague when it involves puzzles.)
As for the game...graphically, it's yet another improvement. A lot of visual interest, excellent textures. Some goofy faces, especially on the men (or, alternatively, dull stone-facedness), but that's endemic to the genre. Siti...except when she's not by design...is just gorgeous in this game.
The game play is mostly easier than anything Puso has done so far, with two exceptions. The first is the "busiest" scene in the locker room, which I'm still not sure I understand how to get through...I do, but I'm not sure I know what I'm doing to move that one particular bar past its halfway point, where all three can otherwise get stuck. The second is the Renthroe scene, which took a long while to figure out because there's something counter-intuitive about the progress bar.
The dialog is an improvement on the previous episodes, though it gets extremely (and to my mind, distastefully) juvenile at one point. Plot & characterization...well, it's a sex game and I'm probably overthinking this, but I have some problems with it.
First, Siti gets screwed here. (Pun only somewhat intended.) She deserved something better, and never had the chance. Because of that, I really don't understand the slow buildup of the scenes with the shy virgin. Unless they're going to pay off in the fourth installment, what's the point? She finally gets a chance at something she's actually chosen, and then...not so much.
But the bigger problem is Emma. Siti was used, repeatedly, but she was an active participant, too. She had agency. Emma seems to be after humiliation, seems to be *driven* to it. Even if we suppose that it's what Emma is contributing to the new situation -- though that's not at all suggested by her previous characterization -- it doesn't make any sense as we see it. The ankh needs one fluid, Emma is apparently into something else, but there's just nothing to suggest *why* Emma changes into something so different from Siti. Again, maybe this will be explained in the fourth installment, but it makes zero sense here.
Finally, of course, there's the content. I don't share Puso's bukkake obsession, but it's at least common to his games, and anyone playing ML3 without expecting it should probably have done a little more research. But I feel very strongly that the more extreme sorts of fetishism should be disclaimed in some fashion. I'm really, really not into the one featured here (the first appearance I could tolerate, just because of the nature of it, but the final scene was too much for me), and would at least have liked to know what I was getting into.
So, overall, it's a well-designed and very attractive game with some of the weakest puzzles of the "modern" Puso games, alternately good and baffling characterizations, a pretty good plot that sort of falls apart at the end, and a really unpleasant surprise in terms of sexual content.
And Siti still got screwed.