LOL let's talk about BL games
Once upon a time, I watched Gakuen Heaven and lol'd all over it. I figured I'd hunt down the game, and that led me down the rabbit hole into BL gaming. Haha! I said 'hole'.
It quickly became apparent that for every "aww~ that's so sweet~" moment or "hells yeah!" moment, there were, like, a bajillion "WTF" moments. I did it for the lulz, man, just like everything else I do in this life. I don't even remember how many games I played through. Some were good, some were "interesting", and others were boring as all hell.
Quick rundown of the ones I remember:
Silver Chaos - good
Silver Chaos 2 - just like the first, only not as good
Gakuen Heaven - good
Kuro no Tsuki - dude, this sucks
Heavenly Blue - mind-numbingly booooooring
Absolute Obedience - LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!! xInfinity
Enzai - ...interesting
Fragrance Tale - cute, but why am I making perfume and why do his fingers look so weird?
Pfft! I'll have to snark about some of those one day. I still have Laughter Land(?) unopened somewhere around here...
Well, the most recent games I've played are Hanamachi Monogatari and Kichiku Megane. Hanamachi kind of...turned me off BL gaming for a couple of months. (Or, oh, maybe a year or so.) And then I thought, "What the hell. I still have Kichiku Megane somewhere on my hard drive. I might as well play the damn thing since I have the Chinese patch and might be able to understand more of it than I usually do with crappy Japanese translations."
And I do, actually. It's...a very interesting experience reading porn in Chinese. I feel slightly guilty, but mostly amused. Y'know, it's like I totally took those accelerated Chinese courses and practiced translating light novels all just so I could waste my new skills by reading man-on-man pr0n. God damn that is such a waste! :D
ANYWAY. I'm going to rant about those two games. RANTRANTRANTRANT.
Hanamachi Monogatari... Where oh where do I begin?
Gorgeous artwork, yes. Worth the brain-breakage? No.
So the premise is that there's this kid, Shuri. This blond kid in Japan, and the odd coloring is explained away with him being half European, and everyone racially discriminates against him boohoo. Then they sell him into prostitution yay.
The characters (whose names I had to look up because I forgot):
Shuri - The main character. He is an ukeface. He is boring. Booooring. And a crybaby.
Tatsumi - That glasses guy and main love interest. Short version? He's a jerk and I hate him. Long version? He's also an asshole. And a douchebag. What the hell, guys? Is he really supposed to be intriguing or attractive? Because he's the jerk who owns this brothel. Excuse me while I gag over the premise of a whore falling in love with his master.
Kajiyama - That giant lump at the top with the bandages around his neck. Is a bodyguard. Is a stupid henchman. Is the stereotypical huge dude who is secretly gentle inside. Not much going on in the brains department.
Sakuya - Girly long hair dude. Teaches Shuri how to be a proper whore.
Izumi - Another young whore, and Shuri's buddy. Split personalities, yo. First he's nice, then he's slutty and creepy.
Kagami - The older gentleman. He's, like, supposed to be the obligatory DILF. I kind of liked him, actually, but then no. He's really nice in a gentle sugar-daddy way, until he's not.
Igarashi - Some artist guy. I vaguely remember him smirking a lot, but not in the nasty way. I think he draws porn.
Masato - Jesus Christ, Masato... Isn't he just perfect? Look at him! So handsome and gentle and talented! He's Tatsumi's older brother, and is very, very nice. He's a soldier and plays harmonica, and is just very, very nice. Until he's not.
I have problems with this game because NO ONE IS MENTALLY STABLE. At least not from what I've seen... I dunno, I figured out early on that Tatsumi was a jerk after he stuffed a dildo-thing up Shuri's ass and just left him there. I think he said something like "It's for your own good".
Yeah, I kind of decided then and there that I would avoid his path, despite it being more or less the default romance. "Oh, Tatsumi's so sweet! He's such a jerk to everyone except Shuri!" the people said. Um...yuck?
At first I was just dicking around with the game and got a few generic endings, a Sakuya ending, and a few other pairings. But the Tatsumi thing happened, so I decided to chase after his brother just to piss him off. The brothers aren't exactly on good terms, though Masato is really nice and wants to reconcile with Tatsumi.
My BL game spitefulness knows no bounds. Okay, yeah, I admit that I thought Masato was cool, too. Most of the others gave me bad vibes, but not Masato! ...But I have problems with him, too. First, it was all "aww~" with him being shiny and perfect. Fuck, man. I should have known he was too good to be true in a game like this. (Note to self: It's always the nice ones.) In one ending, they lived happily ever after. In another, a "bad" ending, he died being all heroic out at war and Shuri was all, "I will love you foreverever!!" It was quite touching.
I couldn't just leave it at that, though, could I? Noo~ I had to "experiment". Masato's dark side goes something like this: I love you so much never leave me you bitch how dare you refuse me I will have you no matter what - and oh, my friends will join in on this fun too and we will gangrape you forever. Because I love you.
Dude is crazy. I... He plays the harmonica. If the nice harmonica-playing dutiful soldier is really that unstable, then I fear for the rest of the cast. Well, I've seen some of it already. It's not pretty, and I have this nagging feeling that I've only scratched the surface of the WTF iceberg in this game.
A big "thank you" goes out to Masato for making me avoid BL games for many, many months.
...
Oh, hey, let's talk about Kichiku Megane!
I'm starting to develop an aversion to the suave, jerktastic businessman. I wouldn't mind it if they were funny jerks or quirky jerks, but they're just jerks for the sake of being jerks. When they smirk or abuse their power, I just really wish there would suddenly be a glowing button that pops up, allowing Ukeface McGee to punch that bitch in the mouth. Oh, god, that would be so satisfying.
JERK is smirking at you. JERK demands payment...with your body. Will you:
1) Cry
2) Strip
3) PUNCH HIM IN THE MOUTH
That's probably why it was a bad idea for me to play this game. It's mostly about businessmen who are really horrible people inside and deserve to be repeatedly kicked in the nutsack.
Not that I hate everyone! Far from it! Some of the characters are okay, but those are the side characters. The main love interest is a total jerk, and the main character's seme side is a total jerk. Somehow, those two together is the most popular pairing?
The characters:
Katsuya (normal) - Ukeface McGee
Katsuya (evil glasses) - Jerk. I hate him. Also, serial rapist.
Mido - Main love interest. Jerk. I hate him.
Honda - Obligatory best friend.
Katagiri - Obligatory DILF.
Taichi - Puppy-like college kid. Also, Yakuza. (Oops. Did I spoil it?)
Aki - Slut to the nth degree.
Mr. R - The Devil
Basic premise is that The Devil gives Katsuya a pair of evil glasses. When he wears them, he rapes people. When he doesn't, people rape him. That's mostly how it goes, except some of the guys are too nice to do to Ukeface McGee what he does to them when he goes Glasses Mode.
I'd probably be more amused if Mido's smirking face didn't make me want to punch it every time. I'm guessing he's annoying so that you'll want to have Katsuya rape him, but eew. I don't even want to touch him. I think he has cooties.
Ah~ Me and my side characters will be having some fun, then. Mostly in normal mode. I'm going to pretend that the default romance is Katsuya and Taichi living happily ever after, just hanging out and jamming away on their guitars.
-_-;
Seriously. This rape thing is getting old.
It quickly became apparent that for every "aww~ that's so sweet~" moment or "hells yeah!" moment, there were, like, a bajillion "WTF" moments. I did it for the lulz, man, just like everything else I do in this life. I don't even remember how many games I played through. Some were good, some were "interesting", and others were boring as all hell.
Quick rundown of the ones I remember:
Silver Chaos - good
Silver Chaos 2 - just like the first, only not as good
Gakuen Heaven - good
Kuro no Tsuki - dude, this sucks
Heavenly Blue - mind-numbingly booooooring
Absolute Obedience - LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!! xInfinity
Enzai - ...interesting
Fragrance Tale - cute, but why am I making perfume and why do his fingers look so weird?
Pfft! I'll have to snark about some of those one day. I still have Laughter Land(?) unopened somewhere around here...
Well, the most recent games I've played are Hanamachi Monogatari and Kichiku Megane. Hanamachi kind of...turned me off BL gaming for a couple of months. (Or, oh, maybe a year or so.) And then I thought, "What the hell. I still have Kichiku Megane somewhere on my hard drive. I might as well play the damn thing since I have the Chinese patch and might be able to understand more of it than I usually do with crappy Japanese translations."
And I do, actually. It's...a very interesting experience reading porn in Chinese. I feel slightly guilty, but mostly amused. Y'know, it's like I totally took those accelerated Chinese courses and practiced translating light novels all just so I could waste my new skills by reading man-on-man pr0n. God damn that is such a waste! :D
ANYWAY. I'm going to rant about those two games. RANTRANTRANTRANT.
Hanamachi Monogatari... Where oh where do I begin?
Gorgeous artwork, yes. Worth the brain-breakage? No.
So the premise is that there's this kid, Shuri. This blond kid in Japan, and the odd coloring is explained away with him being half European, and everyone racially discriminates against him boohoo. Then they sell him into prostitution yay.
The characters (whose names I had to look up because I forgot):
Shuri - The main character. He is an ukeface. He is boring. Booooring. And a crybaby.
Tatsumi - That glasses guy and main love interest. Short version? He's a jerk and I hate him. Long version? He's also an asshole. And a douchebag. What the hell, guys? Is he really supposed to be intriguing or attractive? Because he's the jerk who owns this brothel. Excuse me while I gag over the premise of a whore falling in love with his master.
Kajiyama - That giant lump at the top with the bandages around his neck. Is a bodyguard. Is a stupid henchman. Is the stereotypical huge dude who is secretly gentle inside. Not much going on in the brains department.
Sakuya - Girly long hair dude. Teaches Shuri how to be a proper whore.
Izumi - Another young whore, and Shuri's buddy. Split personalities, yo. First he's nice, then he's slutty and creepy.
Kagami - The older gentleman. He's, like, supposed to be the obligatory DILF. I kind of liked him, actually, but then no. He's really nice in a gentle sugar-daddy way, until he's not.
Igarashi - Some artist guy. I vaguely remember him smirking a lot, but not in the nasty way. I think he draws porn.
Masato - Jesus Christ, Masato... Isn't he just perfect? Look at him! So handsome and gentle and talented! He's Tatsumi's older brother, and is very, very nice. He's a soldier and plays harmonica, and is just very, very nice. Until he's not.
I have problems with this game because NO ONE IS MENTALLY STABLE. At least not from what I've seen... I dunno, I figured out early on that Tatsumi was a jerk after he stuffed a dildo-thing up Shuri's ass and just left him there. I think he said something like "It's for your own good".
Yeah, I kind of decided then and there that I would avoid his path, despite it being more or less the default romance. "Oh, Tatsumi's so sweet! He's such a jerk to everyone except Shuri!" the people said. Um...yuck?
At first I was just dicking around with the game and got a few generic endings, a Sakuya ending, and a few other pairings. But the Tatsumi thing happened, so I decided to chase after his brother just to piss him off. The brothers aren't exactly on good terms, though Masato is really nice and wants to reconcile with Tatsumi.
My BL game spitefulness knows no bounds. Okay, yeah, I admit that I thought Masato was cool, too. Most of the others gave me bad vibes, but not Masato! ...But I have problems with him, too. First, it was all "aww~" with him being shiny and perfect. Fuck, man. I should have known he was too good to be true in a game like this. (Note to self: It's always the nice ones.) In one ending, they lived happily ever after. In another, a "bad" ending, he died being all heroic out at war and Shuri was all, "I will love you foreverever!!" It was quite touching.
I couldn't just leave it at that, though, could I? Noo~ I had to "experiment". Masato's dark side goes something like this: I love you so much never leave me you bitch how dare you refuse me I will have you no matter what - and oh, my friends will join in on this fun too and we will gangrape you forever. Because I love you.
Dude is crazy. I... He plays the harmonica. If the nice harmonica-playing dutiful soldier is really that unstable, then I fear for the rest of the cast. Well, I've seen some of it already. It's not pretty, and I have this nagging feeling that I've only scratched the surface of the WTF iceberg in this game.
A big "thank you" goes out to Masato for making me avoid BL games for many, many months.
...
Oh, hey, let's talk about Kichiku Megane!
I'm starting to develop an aversion to the suave, jerktastic businessman. I wouldn't mind it if they were funny jerks or quirky jerks, but they're just jerks for the sake of being jerks. When they smirk or abuse their power, I just really wish there would suddenly be a glowing button that pops up, allowing Ukeface McGee to punch that bitch in the mouth. Oh, god, that would be so satisfying.
JERK is smirking at you. JERK demands payment...with your body. Will you:
1) Cry
2) Strip
3) PUNCH HIM IN THE MOUTH
That's probably why it was a bad idea for me to play this game. It's mostly about businessmen who are really horrible people inside and deserve to be repeatedly kicked in the nutsack.
Not that I hate everyone! Far from it! Some of the characters are okay, but those are the side characters. The main love interest is a total jerk, and the main character's seme side is a total jerk. Somehow, those two together is the most popular pairing?
The characters:
Katsuya (normal) - Ukeface McGee
Katsuya (evil glasses) - Jerk. I hate him. Also, serial rapist.
Mido - Main love interest. Jerk. I hate him.
Honda - Obligatory best friend.
Katagiri - Obligatory DILF.
Taichi - Puppy-like college kid. Also, Yakuza. (Oops. Did I spoil it?)
Aki - Slut to the nth degree.
Mr. R - The Devil
Basic premise is that The Devil gives Katsuya a pair of evil glasses. When he wears them, he rapes people. When he doesn't, people rape him. That's mostly how it goes, except some of the guys are too nice to do to Ukeface McGee what he does to them when he goes Glasses Mode.
I'd probably be more amused if Mido's smirking face didn't make me want to punch it every time. I'm guessing he's annoying so that you'll want to have Katsuya rape him, but eew. I don't even want to touch him. I think he has cooties.
Ah~ Me and my side characters will be having some fun, then. Mostly in normal mode. I'm going to pretend that the default romance is Katsuya and Taichi living happily ever after, just hanging out and jamming away on their guitars.
-_-;
Seriously. This rape thing is getting old.