When I played through, I picked the first girl; the logical choice. The first one should be the easiest mark and therefore I can get this over with faster so I can get straight to the post-climax weeping. Good plan. I can't take too much credit though. My initial choice was the office lady, as the cynical, broken, glasses-clad older woman does beat out the fraction of a schoolgirl in the metaphorical Pokemon duel of my mind. However, the fact that when she was doing her sexy dancing at the beginning and clutched at her chest like so many cantaloupes, there was no saucy little bounce; they were fixed there like slabs of granite. I was convinced that mammary-physics coprocessors were standard on the latest generation of video cards considering how much wobbling to-and-fro games did these days. This leads me to believe that those are just melons of some sort, or perhaps just some nice, smooth rocks he or she found along the road to work, and I would be heading off to a Crying Game (alternately, Sleepaway Camp) level revelation were I to follow that path. With all due respect toward persons with both appliances, one or the other but not the right one, dudes who like dresses (they are quite nice, you know) and the Watermelon Smugglers' Union of America, I'm just not exactly in the mood for a shocking twist ending, as I feel this game will serve up more than enough thrills and spills without a stiff surprise popping up. So, I pick the easiest choice.

In life, this is how you end up with some painful chancres and an obligation to make a lot of uncomfortable phone calls. But this isn't reality, of course. All we need is that well worn list of excuses we've made up for jacking off to cartoon rape, and we should be fine.

So now we have the developers trying to justify the game as a stalking "simulation". You know, so they can somehow explain it away later by telling us that we are the stalker! And the disturbing aspects of the game force us to come to terms with our own demons! It's not a morally repulsive piece of shit, it's ART! In other words, this means that to get to the fucky, we have to put up with menu after menu of obtuse squiggly moon-man. I suppose this should be fair enough warning; a “ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE” kind of deal. Of course, I'm too stupid to accurately interpret warnings, leading to numerous misadventures with a vacuum cleaner, but I digress.


MERYYYYYYYL!
So the game has been looking just lovely so far; the kind of graphical showpiece that we buy our fancy 3D accelerator cards for. Once we get into the game though, we find out that they achieved this level of detail on the girls by grabbing some freeware textures, sticking them on everything, and smearing it all with vaseline. Obscene levels of blur? Just like playing the “Drill A Hole Through The Castle Wall and Jerk Your Tiny Italian Penis to Peach Changing” minigame in Mario Party on the Nintendo 64! And that's not even the start of the lame, low concept games they've ripped off. See, the whole point of the elaborate and indecypherable menus is to pick up items. If you don't pick up certain items, you can play through the scenario all you want, but you're not going to get any. Unforgiving item puzzles and unwinnable situations? Are you sure I'm not playing Roberta Williams' Rape Quest VIII: A Dick in the Ass Is Worth Two in the Bush? I kid. As terrible a game designer Roberta Williams is, she would never stoop to developing terribly constructed, exploitative, barely interactive T&A shock games.

The fun doesn't stop there. Once you've muddled your way through the menus, we get to the action scenes, and taut, riveting excitement, thy name is Bikou 2. Taking a page from Hideo Kojima's book (thankfully skipping the chapter that states "The Colonel should page you every thirty seconds to remind you what the X button does") this game's gimmick is to closely follow the girls without getting spotted. Through every blurry plaza, through every Windows Paint spraycan blotch stretched into a bush, even keeping track of her through the magical door-painted walls which they sneakily disappear into, you must follow. Down every street and into every city backdrop-textured aether void at the end of those streets, our bold protagonist will be ten steps behind his mark.

It's like shopping with your girlfriend, only you will never, ever have a girlfriend
To brave the maddening emptiness of limbo is one thing. To put up with these stupid fucking girls is another thing entirely. Apparently these girls were either tipped off that they're in the obligatory frustrating action game section of a fetish game and have nothing to fear until the “LAST SPURT”, or they're the dumbest girls in gaming. You are in big city, Japan. At midnight. The streets are mysteriously COMPLETELY FUCKING EMPTY despite having one hundred and thirty million people stuffed on Gilligan's Goddamn Island there. YOU ARE IN THE COUNTRY THAT TURNED SUBWAY GROPERY INTO A SPORT. RUN THE FUCK HOME. But they don't. Instead they go sightseeing, and they stand around like doofuses and stare at water fountains for small eternities! Then they take a break at the "NcDonalds" for some greasy pre-rape energy, and then wander aimlessly through forboding alleys at midnight for no good reason! At this mythical time when, I don't know, a short, colorfully dressed middle aged Japanese man with horrible teeth and spectacles named “JIZAZU KURAISTO!” assumed everyone else in Japan bodily into the big humiliating Japanese gameshow in the sky, I would think that our, um, hero would have free reign to get his sick freak on wherever the hell he wanted. Instead, he has to follow these girls through every banal little errand for what seems like a billion stages until you've got enough frustration at the stupid goddamned game that you're actively wishing the most horrible iniquities on these idiot god damned women. Maybe if I only had to follow you for one or two screens I'd go easy on you, lady! Maybe ask to take you out to dinner before pounding your asshole! But it's way, way too late now, missy.

Finally, you get to the “Last Spurt.” I bet the developers were patting themselves on the back for thinking of that one - honestly, with the amount of ineptitude that's this game has demonstrated, I wouldn't have been surprised if they had made it "RAST SPULT" instead). Finally, some logic: Grab the girl. But first, item check! Do you have the dildo that was just lying on the floor of the video store? Do you have the handcuffs that were just lying in the back alley? Shit, this video store is seriously asking for a lawsuit. Oh, yeah, do you have that love letter apparently addressed to you? (“That guy in the corner with the bloodshot eyes who's been trying to make out panty lines on my clothing for the past hour and a half is so dreamy!”) If not, uh oh! Looks like all that was for absolutely nothing! Thank you for players! Try again with a friend! Right, and now that you're absolutely enormous, green, and still wearing pants, I'd like to remind you that it's dangerous to ram your fist directly into your computer case with it still powered on; make sure you unplug it first! Now, if you DID collect the secret bonus items, it's time for action so hot you'll want to hang yourself; whether or not you'll want to hang yourself in the sexy Michael Hutchense way or just out despair is up to you.



Copyright ©2001-2006 Ecchi Attack! All Rights Reserved. Header image courtesy of Manna.

"Hentai is the Otaku's Gateway to Boundless Pleasure" ~ Ancient Proverb