GBAtemp Recommends: Super Seducer 1 & 2

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Valentine’s Day can be hard on single people. Being surrounded by images of happy couples celebrating their love can not only make you feel lonely, but can make you feel like a failure for not finding anybody yet. It seems so easy for everybody else. What secrets do they have that you don’t? What's wrong with you that you're the only person who can't find a partner? It’s times like these that a game like Super Seducer can help, to remind you of the seedier side of the dating world. That there are calculating, manipulative people out there who only see you as a formula to be filled in and as a means to an end. That, sometimes, you’re better off staying single.

Super Seducer comes to us from Richard La Ruina, pick-up artist and self-described "guy who does everything." This is his attempt to translate his pick-up artist lessons into an interactive medium, using full-motion video to present players with a variety of situations where they might meet and want to pick up women, and let them try to win the girl. Essentially, you'll watch a short scene and then be given two to six options on how to proceed, following which you'll watch another scene, and so on, until you've reached your goal. The acting and direction in these scenes are fine for the most part, though the actresses sometimes struggle to convincingly convey interest in Richard. Each scenario is fairly linear, as, if you choose a wrong answer, you will simply be asked to choose again with no penalty, but some passing options will only grant you half marks while others will grant you full marks. There's some decent progression here, as your performance in one instance may affect your later choices. For example, one scenario ends with you getting a girl's number, unless you've gotten full marks on every decision, in which case she'll go out with you immediately. For those completionists out there, each decision you've made is helpfully catalogued in the advice book on the main menu, along with all the tips Richard gives you along the way.

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You see, after each decision, Richard will appear to tell you why what you did was either right or wrong, and these are the moments where you really learn who Richard La Ruina is. First off, these teaching moments take place in a hotel room, with human set dressing to let you know how well you did. If you fail the test, Richard will be on the bed alone. If you get half marks, Richard will be accompanied by two large-breasted, scantily-clad women on the bed, but they'll be sitting far away from him and looking disinterested. If you perform perfectly, however, Richard will appear on the bed with those same two women sitting closer to him...and still looking disinterested. You can't help but wonder if their refusal to look him in the eye during these scenes was a stipulation on the models' part, or if Richard considers it a bonus for women to not try to engage you on a human level. While that pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Richard, there's still some fun insights to be gleaned from these scenes. There's some typical pick-up artist stuff, like negging, but there's some stranger bits of advice thrown in as well. When trying to stop a woman on the street, for example, he advises you don't approach from the side as it'll be too easy for her to brush you off and get away.

Richard also throws in a lot of joke answers, like looking up a girl's skirt in the middle of the street. They don't really work comedically because they start too broad, then never go farther than the initial weirdness--he'll look up the skirt, she'll get mad and walk away, then the scene just sort of stops, with no good punchline. But their inclusion is the spanner in the works this game needs, as it's sometimes hard to tell what's going to be a joke answer at first. Early on, when trying to keep small talk going with a woman on the street, Richard will advise you to ask for her name, then say that that's your name as well. It's such a lame, strange joke that it's hard to imagine a self-styled player going for it, but it's actually the option that yields the most points. The best part is that choosing that option plays out pretty much how you'd expect in real life: Richard says that they share a name, she expresses mild surprise, before he sheepishly admits he was just kidding and they awkwardly move on. Yet, in the advice video, Richard boasts about the efficacy of this method and how it turns a necessary-but-boring pleasantry into a memorable moment that shows off your personality. It keeps you on your toes and genuinely interested in where any particular response could possibly be going, and there was an embarrassing (for Richard) number of times when I immediately gravitated towards what I thought was the worst possible option, only to be congratulated on what a smooth operator I was.

Super Seducer has, for the last three years, been stranded on PC, criminally limiting its potential audience. However, just in time for Valentine's Day, Super Seducer 1 & 2 will be launching on the Nintendo Switch, expanding the reach of its guidance to the console market as well. This is a game everybody should play, a vital teaching tool--not on how pick up women, but on the duplicitous people out there, how they try to blend in to manipulate us, and the type of shallow vanity project their engorged egos will lead them to foist onto an unsuspecting public.​

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I hope you enjoyed this edition of GBAtemp Recommends. If you'd like to see more, leave your feedback in the thread below or check out our previous articles.

GBAtemp Recommends Issues

Pixel Ripped 1995 - #20
Animal Crossing e+ - #19
Tall Bagel - #18
Jazzpunk - #17
Mario's Super Picross - #16
Dread X Collection Volume I & II - #15
Journey to the Savage Planet - #14
Collar X Malice - #13
Persona 4 Golden - #12
Call of Duty: Warzone - #11
Uno - #10
Frog Detective Series - #9
The Simpsons: Hit & Run - #8
Catherine - #7
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red & Blue Rescue Team - #6
Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku Series - #5
Dead Rising - #4
Classic Fallout - #3
Silent Hill 1 - #2
Danganronpa Series - #1

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