I remember it like it was yesterday. Scanning through the upcoming releases on steam, pushing my way through heaps upon heaps of crappy roguelike games, pixelated platformers that market themselves as “difficult,” and porno masquerading as visual novels. Then, there it was: Speed Dating for Ghosts. It was beautiful. It was like a diamond in an ocean of forgettable, mediocre trend-chasers. I clicked on it, making sure that my tired, war-torn eyes weren’t deceiving me.
As it turns
out…what I got was even better than I expected. Reading the description, I
found that it was co-created by some random “indie rapper” and an EX BIOWARE
DEVELOPER! YES! Those of you who’ve read my Jurassic
Heart review (i.e. nobody because this is a blog in 2018) know that one of
my ideal video game concepts is a Bioware game without the combat. It’s a match
made in heaven!
I’m so
excited that I’m writing this down the day before launch just in anticipation
of it. Let’s find out if this game lives up to the unfair expectations I’ve set
up for it! :D
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ugh…okay, let’s power through this.
STORY
You’re a ghost! Obviously. You don’t
get a lot of fleshing out (again,
obviously…because you’re a ghost),
but it really gives you some role-playing potential. Here’s how I imagined I
looked:
 |
| (it makes sense if you played the game) |
The whole
thing about this game is that you date ghosts and learn a bit more about them,
so the story is centered solely around the characters.
CHARACTERS
There are
ten characters for you to meet in this game (nine of which are really datable), but I’m
only going to focus on the characters who stood out the most.
Steph(anie)
There’s only
so much I can say about each one of these characters without spoiling their “arcs”
for you, but Steph’s concept is the most interesting out of all of them. Her
character is boring and predictable (to a point), but she’s the only
college-aged female in the entire cast who isn’t a total loser. Shame that she
had to be a pile of lumps. Riley got to be a hunky football player man, but
Steph had to be a pile of lumps. Sad.
Vera
When you hear the name "Vera," you automatically picture a sexy librarian. I mean, that's just basic science. But, as it turns out, Vera's a hunched-over smoker ghost who scares rich people. Her story
is more interesting than a lot of the other ghosts, but other than that, she’s
pretty forgettable.
Spirit of Vengeance (couldn’t remember his name)
This guy is the best character by far. Good story, unique character and design, and occasionally
funny lines. Not much else I can say without spoiling, but he made the game
quite interesting to play.
Hattie
Everything
was going well. Then she called Christians selfish for believing in Heaven. Isn’t
that charming and something that
wouldn't at all be completely socially inexcusable if she was referring to literally any
other religion? I’m really getting sick of this double standard in media. This
could’ve easily been left out of the game, and it wouldn’t have left me with such
a sour taste in my mouth. The developers should be completely ashamed of themselves
for feeding the hate machine.
Antler Ghost
 |
| LOVE ME, ANTLER GHOST, LOVE ME |
GAH! JUST LOOK AT HER! SHE'S SO PRECIOUS! I WANTED TO DATE HER BUT IT’S JUST. NOT. THAT. EASY! SCREW YOU,
BIOWARE DEVELOPER BEN GELINAS!
(Also, I choose to ignore the fact that antlers are only present in male animals while horns are present in both male and female animals. SHE'S A GHOST...FEMININE ANTLERS CAN HAPPEN, RIGHT?!)
(Also, I choose to ignore the fact that antlers are only present in male animals while horns are present in both male and female animals. SHE'S A GHOST...FEMININE ANTLERS CAN HAPPEN, RIGHT?!)
Nervous, Incredibly Boring Ghost Guy
 | |
| (drawn from memory) |
This guy gets
a special mention solely because of how uninteresting and bland he is. Really? The “super nervous” guy? That’s the character you’re
going with? There wasn’t even an unpredictable twist in which you find out that
he secretly sneaks into peoples’ houses and licks their feet while they sleep
or anything! This character fully represents the plethora of missed
opportunities within this game. Ghosts who are able to manipulate the physical
world! That’s something the game introduces! The furthest the game goes with
this, however, is pettily spooking some random people. They could’ve taken this
concept so far. If Ben Gelinas really did work on significant parts of Mass
Effect and Dragon Age, then he clearly has creative chops. So why didn't he chop up some REALLY GROUND-BREAKING characters and dates? I would hope for an
update that adds something significant to the game, but then I’d just be feeding
into the “games as service” model that AAA publishers are trying to push.
Spooky Peter
I literally
only remembered this guy because I wrote the word “spooking” in the last
paragraph. That’s not to say that he wasn’t hilarious and, quite possibly, the
funniest character in the game. I just so happened to forget him. He’s pretty
good. I mean, with a name like "Spooky Peter," there is literally nothing you can do wrong. :P
GAMEPLAY
This game is
technically the game that I’ve always
wanted. It’s a visual novel in which you have dialogue options for every single
thing you say. There’s none of this:
NPC: “Oh,
Takahiro-Mikkosan! Won’t you join me in this sexy, king-sized bathtub? My arms
are soooo frail and timid, and I’m afraid that I cannot wash myself!!!!!!<3<3<3”
Protagonist:
“Tsk, you’re such a weirdo. When will you grow up? Put on some clothes and stop
hogging the bathtub, baka!”
{Incidentally,
I’m writing this alone in my apartment on Valentine’s day. Just something to
think about.}
Instead, you
can actually carry on a conversation with
someone with your own input! The only problem with this, however, is the
fact that the writing and story have to be incredibly stellar in order to make this
kind of game work. The sad fact of
the matter is, the writing just doesn't stand out. I left the game feeling disappointed. I’m not upset that I
played it, of course, but I will most likely never play this game again. It
took me around forty minutes to actually “beat” the game, but that only involved
dating the first three ghosts. At that point, I felt like I legitimately beat
the game. I already chose the ghosts that I thought were the most interesting,
and in order to get more content out of the game, I’d have to go back and date the
ones that I thought were boring. I was only proven wrong about Spooky Peter.
The rest of the ghosts were just as uninteresting as I thought they’d be.
The biggest
slap in the face, however, is the Antler Ghost. Yes, she has a name. No, I don’t
know it. In order to get anything out of her, you have to date all the datable
ghosts. But that’s not all: If you want to get on her good side, then you need
to answer all five of her ghost-related trivia questions. Chances are, if you’re
like me, then you don’t know jack about completely useless, underground ghost trivia
questions. You want to know how you can re-take her quiz when you inevitably
fail it? You have to reset the entire game, play it again, and get back to that
point. In case the severity of this is lost to you, let me elaborate: You have
to go through at least forty minutes of the exact same dialogue options that
you’ve already read. I’m sorry, but if Antler Ghost’s “date” is similar to any
of the other “dates” that the game has presented me with, then the tedium of
clicking through pages upon pages of the exact same dialogue isn’t going to be
worth it in the end.
BEAR DENSITY
There aren’t
any bears in this game.
SOUNDTRACK
The
soundtrack does its job. That’s it. It’s a shame, because the description of
the game seemed to be super proud of this indie rapper that neither me nor literally anybody else has heard of, and it all amounted to some serviceable-at-best
atmospheric looped jingles.
GRAPHICS
This is
actually the worst part about this game. The designs for the ghosts are okay in
a “first draft” sort of way, but the sheer level of laziness on the part of
whoever was in charge of the art is astounding. A large portion of the visuals
are “text-based,” meaning that the artist didn’t draw backgrounds. That would
be okay if we were reading a book with illustrations in it. But we’re not. We’re
playing a game. It would be acceptable if the art style restricted the amount of
background art that could be made, but that’s just not the case. The art style
is very loose, very free-form, like a FilmCow animation with somehow less
effort put into it. Now, a mildly scribbly art style isn’t bad per se, but when you have such little faith in your ability as
an artist to draw down a couple sprites of ghost
geese or a frozen lake or literally anything, then it degrades the
entire game. I remember reading the details of the game the day before release
and finding out that the developers were using “text-based adventure” as a selling point. IN 2018. It would take
more effort to write out the text describing
the environment than to make a specialized photoshop brush and pump out a
couple backgrounds for maybe five hours at
most. If there are any updates to the game, they should involve background
art. Otherwise, the lengthy landscape descriptions just add more clicks to the gameplay that we don’t
need.
CONCLUSION
Writing all of this down, I can’t think
of anything positive that stayed with me after playing this game. It was a time
sponge that had a couple of ups, but it was so inconsequential and uneventful
that it ended up leaving no impact on me whatsoever. In my opinion, that’s the
worst possible experience you can have with a game. At least if it was really
bad I could revel in its sheer lameness and have a good laugh at it, but this
leaves me with only seventy minutes of wasted time (not including the time I
spent drawing art for this review, of course).
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Characters: 1 I mean, whatever.
Story: 0 Well, it depends on the characters,
dunnit?
Gameplay: -2 The “reset” option made me quit the game
completely
Soundtrack: 0 Sorry, Mikey
Graphics: -2 DRAW SOME BACKGROUND ART, YOU PANSIES
Bear density: -5
Final Score: -8/10
Lost
potential. I personally wouldn’t buy it. I judge these things based on how they
measure up to a fast food meal (something that costs roughly the same amount). I’d
say they’re both equally matched, only this game won’t make you fat.
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