Full Motion Video (FMV) games have to walk a hard road, allowing the player to enjoy something similar to a movie experience while mixing in a choose-your-own-adventure type experience. There are several tiers that need to be checked off on every level to make sure it balances things for the desired results, leaning too far one way will ruin the illusion, leaning the other will simply take the player out of the experience. Impressively enough Super Seducer manages to accomplish something no one has ever done before and do both of those things.
Super Seducer manages to be about as engaging as a film reel that awkward teenagers were forced to sit through in High School on how to talk to other human creatures. It isn’t that the interactions are forced, or even that strippers at dive bars rarely look as lifeless as most of the female cast in the game, but the logic and pointers that are given throughout seem to constantly contradict themselves as to not apply within the flow of the game. Don’t try to give me a good piece of advice about not asking for a number when randomly meeting someone because it is probably fake, and then tell me it is acceptable three unbearable minutes later. That makes the same amount of sense as thinking that being a part of this production would be a good career move.
This defiance of logic leads to the second major issue with the game, mainly being that the game is a chore to play. The only good times to be had are making the main character break role, of the cool and suave Don Juan, and basically make him start masturbating in the middle of the street or the like. The problem is that regardless how enjoyable these are, and some of them are pretty good, it almost becomes a necessity to start actively avoiding them as the game progresses as every wrong answer given starts to feel like a punishment when Richard La Ruina decides to explain why the choice was wrong—at length— or to take what would have been a dead-end conversation into a screaming tantrum that a five-year-old would be impressed by, to seemingly prove a point about why you don’t bring that up.
Super Seducer, honestly, could have been a good game –which is not something that anyone should have ever said ever. The problem is that I don’t think that anyone who worked on the game knew what the hell a video game was when they were designing it. Whenever something is fun the game instantly finds a way to make it a chore, and when there is a reward to be had – unlocking bloopers from the many shoots that they had to do – the game acts like it has no obligation or respect to the players time by allowing them to jump to certain conversation points to try different options.
When it comes down to it the game isn’t worth anyone’s time or money, even if it is a joke. What could have seemed like it could have been fine if handled well was instead just sourced out to the lowest bidders and shoved out the door to probably cause the most traffic to Richard La Ruina’s classes, which he constantly brings up.
(This title was also supposed to be released on PS4 but Sony decided not to post the game at the last minute. Currently, this title is only available on PC.)