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DELRON
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Dear Brian Reviews
Author: Choices
Date: 2003
TADS
What does AIF stand for? Adult Interactive Fiction.
If you likely to
be offended by games with sexual content, you are advised not
to open these
files.
Reviewed by 'trix (Inside
Erin Volume 4 Number 9 - September 2008)
Basic Story
Brian gets dumped by his girlfriend, and receives a magic pendant from his
mother, which transforms him into a girl. As him, you must find a way to reverse
the spell, and resolve things in your love life.
Overall Thoughts
This is one of my favourite AIF works, and I'm not sure why it doesn't get
talked about as much as some other games. The idea of writing an AIF game that
you either choose your sex, or switch between them as you play, is something
that's been around forever (maybe not forever-I'll estimate 2 thousand years in
the absence of any hard data) and has rarely been explored because it's so much
effort: you're pretty much doing the work of two games and only ending up with
one. Dear Brian doesn't exhaustively explore all the possibilities of dual
gender perspective (which is the new official term I just invented), but it
makes very good use of it to produce a fun and very big-feeling game.
Puzzles/Gameplay
Dear Brian has more of the elements of IF than a lot of AIF: it has an
interesting premise and characters, and the puzzles are mostly along the lines
of figuring out how to deal with each NPC, and which sex to be when you do it.
Some of the puzzles are somewhat obscure, but it's fun enough to keep you going
till the end, and then you have the added fun of replaying and getting all the
many things you missed AND the multiple endings.
Sex
Most sex scenes are open for the player to explore rather than being on a rail,
which works very well. There aren't points for twenty different possible sex
acts per scene that you want to exhaustively go through so you haven't missed
anything, and you can largely do things in whatever order occurs to you.
Latterly, when you get the camera, you can try and explore every possible
avenue, but it's not compulsory. The camera is a fun little addition to the sex
scenes, as well as being a plot device. You get to have sex with a load of
different characters, each of which has a different character and tone. Since
the game's premise is one of switching sex, it's a little disappointing that as
a girl you only get to have sex with one guy (and no girls), which isn't really
making full use of the female PC. But there's plenty of hot chicks for the male
PC to score with, which is probably what the player-base wants.
Technical
It's TADS 3, which gives it an immediate leg-up on most other games; however
it's fairly early TADS 3, which isn't quite as tweaked to perfection as the
current version. The technical implementation is very good and very thorough
with just occasional annoyances: characters don't respond when talked to or to
"hello"; they only respond to being asked about specific topics, which are
occasionally hard to guess; also occasionally things don't give sensible
responses to "search" commands. Those aren't enough to impair enjoyment of the
game. However, it is very easy, early on, to get the game into an unwinnable
state and not realise it
Intangibles
As you play you can discover the characters' backstories (some more than
others), which is one of the things some IF does really well and AIF mostly
doesn't bother with. And there's loads of hidden stuff to try and find in the
game, including secret endings.
Final Thoughts
What's not to like? Even if you're too manly to enjoy playing as a girl, this is
a big, well-written, very well implemented game with humour and sex and a guy in
a wookie costume AND it's got puzzles and storyline and hidden stuff to enjoy if
you haven't got a one-track mind.
Rating: A
Reviews should be considered copyrighted by their respective authors.
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