 | At a Glance:Hentai games rarely deviate from their usual rape-simulator roots, but when they do they often deviate by a lot. "Viper Paradice" is one of those insane blends of Hentai with other genres, in this case the board game Candyland and lysergic acid. It's also one of the most maddeningly difficult and confusing games I've ever played. From the shitty Engrish to the mysterious game mechanics playing Viper Paradice was an exercise in frustration. The game has no plot but makes up for what it lacks in plot with an aggressively insane board game in which you progress along by rolling dice while being pursued by a man made out of woodchips who forces you to play roulette with him. During the course of this very slow chase you will collect a variety of special cards and movie cards that will replay very small and grainy movie clips from other Viper games. If you're worried that the lack of plot and rape scenes will make this game review dull, fear not, Viper Paradice was too batshit crazy to be boring. Language: Roughly on par with your average Korean trying to speak English on Battle Net. Sexual Content: Mosaics hide their darkest secrets. Available From: J-List. |
An ill omen.Game Concept: : I had extremely high hopes for this game from the minute I saw the installer. It was a blank white screen with the words "please wait some minutes…installing…" that really did sit there for some minutes while the game installed. No status bar to inform me of the installation progress, just a stark Engrish splash screen to let me know that some minutes might need to be waited.
You'll notice that this section, which is normally called "Game Plot" is called "Game Concept" because Viper Paradice has no plot. In place of a plot it has an idea, one stripped from the bizarre fever dreams of some undersexed board game designer in Japan. Imagine the board game "Candyland" where all of the candy-themed locations have been replaced with a nauseating mélange of sexual imagery such as spurting penis mushrooms, a forest of breasts, and distended condoms. What's even more perplexing is that some of the imagery for the board in Paradice isn't sexual, it's just…well…fucked up. For example there are two ghost like creatures on a stone slab that look like they have been coated in semen, I don't know what they are or why they are in the game, but they are no less disturbing than the ejaculating mushroom woodlands.
This is the payoff for playing and it is "totally worth it."Through this distasteful landscape, you and up to four friends can follow a path of various squares, each either hindering or helping you along your way. Let's be honest though, if you had friends you wouldn't be playing Hentai games, so you can expect to enjoy a brutal rape courtesy of the cheating computer. Each player takes a turn and rolls a six sided die. At the beginning of the game a "fortunate number" is declared and whenever you roll this on your turn you receive a bonus card. Various cards are usually your reward for landing on spaces in the game and these are vital to game play although none of them ever seemed to help me get even close to beating the computer. Let's look at some of these cards and what they do for you in a bit more detail.One of my favorite things about this game, and I use the term "favorite" loosely, are all the time-wasting nonsensical interludes. For example, one card allows you to choose another player to duel. The game then loads up some horrible 3D window that shows three dice and you and the other player bet on one of them. The dice then race on a roller-coaster track and the outcome of the race is completely random. I never won a single duel, but hey, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger.Double Dice
Manual Description: You can throw 2 dice at the same time.
My Description: You can throw 2 dice at the same time and it won't matter even if you roll two sixes, the computer will still end the game with more than twice your score.
Manual Description: Real Telephone cards that SOGNA has produced. You can use them in the game to listen to the voices of your heroines, and there's also a surprise.
My Description: OOOOH! A surprise! Here's something that's no surprise: these cards are worthless. You waste a turn to listen to a phone ring and then an audio clip that is usual one second of moaning or screeching plays. I don't care if King Songa or whatever made these cards in real life, they're fucking horrible.
Manual Description: You can throw 3 dice at the same time.
My Description: Three times the worthlessness.Ahh sweet Dunball.
Manual Description: It is not a big use, unless you have a particular card.
My Description: I have no idea what this card does or what the description in the manual even means. The wood chip guy that chases you with the wheelbarrow and the roulette wheel is named Dunball so, uh, whatever.
Manual Description: You can jump. The more you are behind the more you can jump.
My Description: This card is great for moving way ahead on the board, but that doesn't help one damn bit. I got to the end of the game and got a whole bunch of point by judiciously using these cards and the dice cards. You know what happened? I got to sit and watch the computer finish the game for almost ten minutes and then when it tallied the score the computer had almost three times my score. FUN!
Manual Description: It takes you away points at each turn.
My Description: Horrible translation aside, the most notable thing about this card is that it looks like a Dunball card with UN-LUCKY written on it in shit and features a picture of a turd at the bottom. That's not my interpretation either, that's what it is. Also notable is that the game does not refer to it correctly, calling it instead "Unhappy Card".
Manual Description: It can only be found in the Dungeon. False card, loose points.
My Description: My points spent a lot of time on the loose anyway so the Mimic Card did not affect me all that much.
Manual Description: You will not know its use until you reach the goal.
My Description: I had one of these cards, I reached the goal, I do not have any fucking clue what its use is.
The game board is a litany of sorrows and broken dreams.Difficulty: As mentioned previously the game is completely impossible. The only real point of even playing it is to collect all of the movies for the gallery, a task made more difficult because to get them to appear in the gallery you have to actually win the game that you collected them in. Since you CANNOT BEAT THE GODDAMN COMPUTER good luck getting all the movies in the gallery.Defining Moment: Dunball is the defining moment of the game. He's a millionaire that's made out of wood, carrying wood chips and roulette wheel. He defines the game because he is total nonsense. Maybe to the Japanese he's the equivalent of having Bob Barker host "The Price is Right" but to me he's a weird and slightly creepy wooden monster in a sex game.
Final Thoughts: I played through the game three times and never want to see it again. At first I was sucked in by the whimsical style of the game and the fact that it was not just another dating simulation. Then I discovered that there are things less fun than looking at and thinking about every single thing in a game, like losing to the computer even after you beat it to the finish line and the game forced you to watch the computer play through the whole board. That was a lot of fun, and I really am glad that the Viper Paradise robbed me of those minutes of my life that I will never have back.
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Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).
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About This Column
Hentai Games are by and large a unique perversion of the Japanese, although many of them have been translated to English for the enjoyment of equally perverse Americans and possibly the British and Australians. The games generally involve trying to have sex with poorly drawn cartoon women by using incoherently shitty pick up lines or violence. We have created this section in an effort to catalogue these high quality games. Some of the pages may not be safe to read at work although we have attempted to censor the really bad stuff (all of it).
