Diva X: Rebecca
Pixis Interactive
Mac & PCThis was an interesting disc to play with. The designers clearly have done their best to create a fully interactive experience. But, during the laborious process of guiding Diva X through various levels of sexual play, I got the distinct feeling that I could have been having a better time playing Pong. This isn't because the designers didn't do a good job -- on the contrary, the sheer number of options available is what inhibits action-packed play. Dancing, latex, foot worship, toys, masturbation -- nearly anything a woman can possibly do on a screen to get your attention is included. This is a case of over-design rather than lack of care in design.
On the other hand, Rebecca is quite beautiful, the interface is slick and relatively easy to use, the digital video is well shot and of good quality, playback time is also quite acceptable even on a double-speed CD-ROM drive. The video is large, but not quite full-screen; perfect for those of us with older equipment.
One technical complaint: I really like having the option of being able to browse individual files manually, but Diva X has most of the good stuff encrypted inside some proprietary QuickTime files. This means one is obliged to go through the hoops of the game to see anything naughty -- a real pain in the butt for a reviewer who wants to examine the entire contents without solving every puzzle.
Diva X is worth looking at, although not worth eight hours a day of salivating gameplay. At the very least, it's slick eye candy. Give it a try.
La Blue Girl
Software Sculptors
Mac & PCThis disc should appeal to people who are into the following: anime, schoolgirls; demons; foreign movies; many, many, many subtle (or not) views of white panties; aggressively non-subtle, badly translated sexual innuendo; sorcery; female werewolves; ninjas; spiked dildos and, for anime fans everywhere, gobs and gobs and gobs of looped, glistening, eight-in-every-orifice tentacle sex. Asian filmmaking’s clearly come a long way since Gamera vs. Zigra.
This is a fun disc to play with. The viewing screen is big, the controls are responsive, the still frames are superb, and my double-speed CD-ROM can play them back without any lag. (In my experience, most video compression algorithms perform faster and more efficiently with cartoon data than with real video.) There's also an appealing option -- you can ignore the provided interface and browse right off the disc. Bill Gates’ evil beast, Windows 95, can play the movies full-screen. With a nice fast IDE CD-ROM drive, you’ve got TV in your CPU, a novelty I haven’t quite got used to yet.
I’d like to end with a question. I cheerfully admit that I am fairly ignorant of anime; my taste in cartoons is lowbrow enough to slam short just beyond The Tick. But I could never figure out from watching La Blue Girl why she’s named La Blue Girl. I watched her do her squeaky Wet-drenched thing for an hour and a half, and I'm pretty positive that she's not actually blue. In fact, the animators were exclusively interested in only the pinkest parts of La Blue Girl.
The disc’s content is exactly what one might expect, it’s well done and fans of the genre, and digi-geeks everywhere, will love it. Give it a look and send E-mail to darklady@spiritone.com if anyone figures out where she’s blue. Thanks!