Sunday, 5 April 2009
Jinkou Shoujo 3
…or, in other words, Artificial Girl 3. Yep, just picked up this little gem from Illusion recently, with all three expansions. Showed it to one of my friends, who was, naturally, skeptical – “Where’s the story? Where’s the action? What’s the point?”. Naturally, she misses the point entirely. Like their earlier offering, RapeLay, there’s no concrete goals per se, except what you set up for yourself.
It’s like a sim, only it’s an adult one. I mean, hey – take a look at your average popular mindless FPS game. Shooters, despite their long and torturous roots, still consist of the same tired AI – bots who basically bum-rush you. What’s the difference between the latest shiny 3,000 polygon alien and the ultra-simplistic single-texture enemies of Wolfenstein 3D? They both come charging at you in a fucking straight line. Now, bear in mind that these games are virtually generations apart (and that’s not considering the hardware they run on, either), surely we can programme better enemies than that?
Where are the monsters who split up and flank you? Break down walls, take advantage of terrain, attempt to get through your blind spots? But no, decades later and we still have enemy AI that charges down that hallway to get at you, nevermind the fact that you’ll rip them to shreds.
Obligatory dig against mindless FPSes done, let’s take a look at AG3. What can I say? It’s gorgeous. Sure, it’s nothing like real porn – but unlike porn, which is static (unless you count in those sad camwhore encounters), games like these are interactive. That’s the whole point. None of the stupid online chat crap either. This is custom-tailored you-in-the-driver-seat kind of porn.
AG3 is basically a sandbox which consists of two parts; a 3D dream girl designer, and then the actual gameplay module. In the design module, you get to create and edit girls as well as the clothes that they wear. Character creation is so detailed it evokes memories of the first time you came across Oblivion‘s character editor:
The character editor in action
You’d think that MMOs, being home to thousands of players, would have this kind of customization as standard already. 5-choice templates are so damn 1990, yet look at all those loser Korean MMOs. All of them have absolutely shit options, resulting in you creating a character who immediately looks like a clone of 20% of the population. It’s not like they even have to store the goddamn 3D data on the server – all they need is the data you used in your design, i.e. the options you selected – like, I don’t know, “eyes option N, height X, iris colour Y” etc. Because it’s not the server’s fucking job to render it, it’s your client computer which bears that particular load. I mean, goddamn. This is so trivial. Programming common sense 101. It’s up to the players whether they want to render everything at max detail, or lower the quality so that even piece of shit computers can run at an acceptable pace. The server doesn’t need to care about this shit.
I still don’t get why the fucking gooks still churn out crap MMOs which are cookie-cutter stat build grindfests. Just look at them: 95% of them will have something like 4 stats total ever, being the generic “strength, intelligence, vitality, dexterity” kind of crap which has come down to us through the ages from the Stone Ages of 8-bit console RPGs. FOR FUCK’S SAKE! We have the computing power now; we should be playing characters with more detail than that.
After all, this is all mere looks, and aren’t these developers all concerned about looks primarily? Aren’t they still producing the same shit games year after year, the only difference being how much more shinier the newer versions look? Name me a new MMO, anything recently released, and I am willing to bet money there’s an older game which has similar features, if not more of them. Fuck, most of these korean knockoffs don’t even have proper social controls, which chat programs have already taken for granted since the fucking 1990s, like /ignore.
Ah, screw it. I don’t really want to write a full review of AG3. After all, as I said, it’s more of a sandbox thing. Of course, if the girls just wander around randomly in it, there’d be no point. This is where Illusion’s perverted genius kicks in. When you design a girl, you can set their personalities and traits – refer to the editor picture above, see the last two tabs there? Now, when you create a world, you get to load from 1 to a maximum of 5 girls in it. Depending on their personalities, moods, and current stats versus you (there’s settings for friendship, love, and jealousy, while the other settings have to do with their needs such as sleep requirement, hunger, bath, pee, etc), they’ll actually interact live, ON THE FLY.
No joke. Walk in on a timid girl in the bath, and she’ll probably scream and run out, and her friendship rating to you may drop. Interrupt a tomboy type while she’s masturbating, and she may yell at you. Or even hang back, and watch as the girls interact with each other, not just react to your actions.
This, my friends, is what AI is supposed to be about. If those stupid shooting games had any AI, you can be sure magazines and websites all over the world would be boasting of the game which did that far and wide. But do we hear of such things? No. All we ever hear of those fucking games are how many more polygons it renders per frame compared to it’s competitors/predecessors, or how many more special effects it can abuse. FUCKING SPECIAL EFFECTS!. Special effects, my friends, is what Hollywood throws to the masses to distract them from the fact that the movie you are currently watching is pure recycled shit. They have absolutely nothing to do with how smart the AI in those games are, or how good the actual gameplay is.
Let’s not forget multiplayer. It’s an even bigger con job. You know why programmers love multiplayer? Because other players provide free AI! They don’t even have to go to the hassle of pretending to code an AI which will, inevitably, be dismissed by the stereotypical online FPS gamer (invariably a 12-year old) as shit – and sadly, they’re usually right. That’s also why I’m not a large fan of multiplayer. The developer has exactly nothing to invest in developing a multiplayer AI (because it doesn’t fucking exist; other players automatically bring it with them). All they need to do is throw up a random level, make sure it doesn’t suck too much like too easy camping or some such shit, let players in, then sit back and relax while the money rolls in. Pffft.
Jun-chan, I love you!
Take a look at that sweat-shiny skin! Don’t mind the yellow text in the upper left, that’s just the subtitle mod in action. Of course it isn’t perfect, but AG3 kicks the hell out of lame western porn “games”. Eat your heart out, Leisure Suit Larry!
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some virtual sisters to… attend to (yes, you can even designate the girls’ initial relationship towards you, whether they are your siblings, friends, or not). After all, that Brother of the Year Award isn’t going to win itself.
