By David Futrelle
Now, I don’t really understand dating sims, and I’ve never played one, but I nonetheless think it’s safe to say that no other title in the genre is worse or more cringeworthy than Super Seducer, a choose-your-own adventure video game guide to pickup artistry put together by Richard La Ruina, an honest-to-goodness, sort-of-well-known, professional pickup guru who actually makes a living running expensive “bootcamps” for hapless wannabe lady killers. It’s scheduled to come out in a few days on Steam.
How bad is it? Well, here’s La Ruina’s own trailer for the game. See if you can make it all the way through it without facepalming or slowly banging your head against your desk or a nearby wall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5MfGJG_ndA
As you can see, the basic premise is simple: La Ruina shows himself in assorted contrived pickup scenarios in the form of ten “missions” ranging from “day game” street pickup to pestering women in restaurants.
You choose what he does at various stages along the way. When you make the “correct” choice, the Hot Babe reacts positively and the scene cuts to La Ruina sitting on a bed with two scantily clad hotties to tell you just why your choice was such a genius one. Undercutting his argument somewhat is the fact that the two women he’s hired to sit on the bed with him look as grim as it is possible for human beings to look; kidnap victims look more cheerful than these two.
When you make any of the “incorrect” choices, the Hot Babes who are La Ruina’s targets in the videos tell him to fuck off. They generally give much more convincing performances in these scenes than in those in which they have to pretend to like him. It’s as if they’re not even acting!
Here’s a very brief clip from the game showing one of these little dating mishaps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq5uX0qu3NQ
After each of these painful virtual rejections, La Ruina appears again on his bed to tell you how you fucked up. If you did sort of badly, the Hot Babes sitting with him have all their clothes back on. If you did really badly, they’re not even there.
If you’re a space alien, or a human male who has never in his life had any kind of meaningful interaction with a human female outside of your own family, I suppose you could learn a few things from La Ruina.
Here are some of the pickup techniques that Super Seducer suggests are bad:
- Trying to grab a woman’s butt moments after meeting her on the street
- Pretending you are blind and walking into her with your arms in front like some kind of cartoon zombie
- Breaking the ice with a woman by telling her how much you’d like to perform cunnilingus on her
- Asking a woman if she has sex with her dog
- Sneaking up behind women at a club and smelling their hair
- Trying to convince a woman you’ve just met to come to your apartment so you can wash her hair
- Rubbing your crotch suggestively in broad daylight
- Literally taking your dick out
So if you weren’t clear on any of these things, I guess you know now not to try them!
Trouble is, La Ruina’s “correct” choices are nearly as bad as the incorrect ones. He recommends that men stop directly in front of women they want to talk to as they walk down the street, blocking their path and essentially forcing the women to interact with them. He urges men to pester women reading books or giving other indications that they want to be left alone. He teaches men it’s fine to lie and manipulate to get women into bed. He just wants you to not be too blatant about it.
Needless to say, Super Seducer is not exactly getting rave reviews, particularly on YouTube. Here are a couple of the shorter reviews I found, all of which feature extensive and utterly cringeworthy “gameplay” footage. (La Ruina tried to get some critical videos containing game footage taken down for copyright infringement, but has apparently backed off.)
Enjoy!
If you really want to immerse yourself in this awfulness, there are a variety of hours-long playthrough videos.
This one is five hours long, if you have an entire evening that needs ruining.
And if you really want to put yourself through hell, the legendary Matt Forney — yes, that Matt Forney, one of the grossest and most despicable humans on planet earth — has made his own playthrough, in three parts (so far), with a total time upwards of five hours. Who the hell is actually watching this shit?
Demonstrating his keen grasp of journalism ethics, Forney has written a cheerfully positive review of Super Seducer on his web site. The post is literally sponsored by the game maker. The game maker paid him to review it.
As you may recall, Forney was an avid supporter of GamerGate, the reactionary harassment campaign against women and “SJWs” that liked to pretend it was a crusade for ethics in game journalism.
Super Seducer, a game only paid shills could love!
I really think most people could learn a lot more from that Japanese game in which you date pigeons.
H/T — Thanks to Joel Williams for tipping me off to this masterpiece
Man, everyone is trying to make a spiritual sequel to Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties. I keep telling them, that there gem is unique!
Just throwing this out here as a potential antidote for this game: http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2017/09/04/zoe-quinn-and-chuck-tingles-fmv-dating-sim-tingle-has-a-saucy-trailer
Love is Real, Buckaroos
I’d love to see jacksepticeye take a stab at this. I watched his whole play through of Cuphead and it was awesome!
For even more bizarre but hilarious relationship gaming fun, check out Panzermadels… a dating sim where all the options are girls who are personifications of historical military tanks.
Eugh, dating sims. Though they can sure be done nicely and sweetly, they are so often not much more than misogyny-trainers. Women are puzzles that you solve by figuring out the right combination of buttons, then you get sex as a reward. I’ll play the pigeon game instead!
As for this guy, blegh. I hate everything he teaches. Rely on women not wanting to make a scene in order to start talking, inconvenience and belittle women to make her feel bad, manipulate and wheedle at every opportunity. Gross. I mean, that’s just an overhead view of pickup garbage, but he’s certainly a specimen of it.
bleghhhh
Got to admit, I don’t get the point of dating sims, though I do quite enjoy the romance options (what little they are) as part of Stardew Valley. 😛
Note the door-in-the-face technique, where obviously awful “don’t do this” choices like inviting a girl to grope your ass and physically lifting her off her feet are presented in contrast to alternatives THAT ARE STILL TERRIBLE, in order to make the “do this” pointers seem socially reasonable. It’s like one of those optical illusions where a grey area seems much brighter and whiter when placed next to a swatch of black.
Sure, you’re blocking a random girl on the sidewalk and asking intrusive questions…well, thank goodness you’re not so clueless that you whip out your dick at a bar.
In a way, I’d rather have a creepy guy at a bar just whip out his dick than follow me around asking weird questions. At least the former is so unambiguous that you can tell someone at the bar and have the offender bounced. With the latter, he can just claim he’s only innocently chatting or flirting.
Anglerfish dating sim. That could be a fun contrast.
@Errapel: When I first learned about this sim, I assumed it would be a HuniePop-type thing where you’re a Regular Guy encountering different female archetypes – the Bitch, the Shy Girl, the Prima Donna, etc. – and you have to figure out a different strategy for seducing each one. The title screen also led me to believe that the entire game would be still images in the same cartoon style. But no, it looks like you’re Richard La Ruina, going around and using the same strategies on interchangeable women in a series of mediocre films. So it’s lazier AND more misogynistic than HuniePop. At least the women in HuniePop have individual personalities.
E: And as long as we’re recommending dating sims, Doki Doki Literature Club pretends to be a cheesy slice-of-life anime romance story, but in fact turns out to be much, much darker. Like “maybe needs a trigger warning” darker.
PS: La Ruina took down his video, so the link is dead.
There actually is one!
Benthic Love
Man, how the hell did I miss this being posted? Picked up on the Sterling vid being dropped, though.
Also, Hatoful Boyfriend is fucking great…but has its own brand of darkness. Word of advice: unless you are suicidal and/or really want yakitori for lunch, don’t try to seduce Shuu.
WHTM : come for the mocking of misogynists, stay for… anglerfish dating sims ?
Ehh, still better than seagulls.
@Moon_custafer
Neat! I’m fascinated by the existence of a pigeon dating sim. I need to read from the fans at some point since I don’t play them. I’m a furry too so two groups of fans maybe.
@Moon_custafer
Home from work. After reading the whole blog post I’m still interested. It’s an interesting take but they didn’t want to spoil it for anyone so they didn’t go into detail. I totally understand:)
Godzilla,
Thanks for that vid, which led me to ProJared, which led me to his Let’s Play of A Normal Lost Phone, which made me tear up and gave me like humanity +3.
There are lots of gross dating sims out there, but there’s also a lot of cool ones I’ve come across as well. Like Cute Demon Crashers, or Doki Doki Literature Club. I can also reccomend Seduce Me the Otome.
It does seem as though that people are kind of reclaiming the genre from the assholes out there, and making lots of dating sims for other people who aren’t as cool with the…*ahem* “classics”.
It’s always nice to see people doing something different with it, and making it way more interesting.
I played Hatoful Boyfriend. It is wonderfully bizarre. I love it.
I’d much rather date a pigeon than La Ruina or any other PUA.
@Jules
Your comment made me look that one up. Halfway in I realised I was supposed to working so I had to stop. Now I can’t wait to find out what happened.
Thank you, and curse you ??
Otome games are less creepy.
I mean you’d think that, but this is a world where RapeLay and House Party exist.
Hatoful Boyfriend is an absolute masterpiece, even though that obviously sounds like an off-the-wall claim. It’s impossible to explain why without just telling people to play it all the way through.
I was part of a group who voiced through it and we had a thriving community of Japanese fangirls at one point. My life has never been the same since.
Did somebody say “Dating Sims”?
I actually reviewed quite a lot of them back in my younger years (though I prefer the term “Visual Novel”, it’s much more accurate, since you have to do A LOT of reading).
And, yeah, there are some pretty weird ones out there…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5s3tN0w-Yo
Unsurprisingly, Hatoful Boyfriend is in one of the top spots. And, yes, it’s actually a good visual novel despite the premise.
Okay, recommendations (please note, that, even though the links are SFW, the games themselves are not):
Katawa Shoujo – Yes, it’s one of the games in the video. Once you get past the premise, that you are courting girls with disabilities, you will find that it’s quite well-written and enjoyable. There’s an MRA comic-relief character in the game though, so be warned. Yes, it has nudity, but you can turn it off in the options. And did I mention that it’s free? You can check out JewWario’s review if you want to get a spoiler-free idea.
Princess Waltz – An interesting story involving a lost prince from a parallel universe and princesses beating the crap out of each other. There are a few twists and turns that I didn’t see coming and the card game mechanics are quite addictive.
Utawarerumono – Yes, the anime is based on a visual novel, and it’s actually quite a good strategy game. The sequel, “Tears To Tiara” , which also received an anime adaptation, is a worthy successor. None of the games have any official English Releases, but they do have fan-translations. It’s quite a hassle to get them to run properly though and you need to have a copy of the original japanese game.
Fate/Stay Night – Those that have been unimpressed with the various anime adaptations over the years will be surprised find out that this is a really well-written visual novel with plenty of emotional and heart-rending moments. It’s worth playing just to see what the fuss is all about. Like Utawarerumono there is no official english release, but there are fan-translations and they are very well made.
I really want to recommend more but most of the other stuff I reviewed is not suitable for the audience of this site. To put it mildly, all the narrative problems hentai have towards certain sensitive subjects, most visual novels have as well (which shouldn’t surprise anyone, since a lot of adult animation is based on dating sims). And because I don’t want to litter this post with trigger warnings, I’ll stop here.
(There are visual novels that treat sensitive subject matters with the respect they deserve, but they are too few and far in-between. I understand that some of the members of this site have traumatic backgrounds so I won’t mention them here, even with a trigger warning, because well… I am not sure if it’s appropriate or not.)
Anyway, enjoy!
Hehe and looking up skirts. Not a given with these people either. Speaking of which, In Georgia, it’s not illegal to look up skirts and even take pictures. We have plenty of sexist laws here in America and people say we don’t need a women liberation movement.