Later Daters - Premium

this is a game i really wanted to like, make no mistake. and i will give my props to the developers for trying to make a game like this at all; not shying away from the realities, both good and bad, of the elderly in a media culture so obsessed with youth and all that jazz, as well as not shying away from the fact old people do have sex. a lot. one of my complaints about this game would actually be that it isn't sexually explicit enough! seriously, for as much as the game flirts with sexuality, i expected to see some uncensored nudity somewhere, if not an explicit sex scene, and was a little annoyed when i got neither. and that segues into my main complaint with the game: it feels very toothless. nothing you or the other characters do feels like it has any real consequences at all. i understand that the tone of this game is meant to be silly and uplifting, and i don't have any particular problems with that, but there were a few scenes with particular characters that i feel should have led to you reaching a failstate with that character; ie, [spoiler]the bit with Jax and the movie relatively early on, and there's a plot point involving Albert near the end of the game which really exemplifies both points i'm mentioning.[/spoiler] i don't know. maybe some of this is addressed on other routes. (i only did Blair's, for complete transparency) the game also feels very rushed. i think two weeks of in-game time is way too short for any convincing relationships to be formed, especially when one of them is taken up by a nonsensical dream sequence [i]that completely breaks with the established, relatively grounded tone of the game[/i]. if you couldn't tell, [spoiler]]the mac and cheese dream sequence[/spoiler] was bar none my least favorite part of the game. but anyway, i feel the narrative could have massively benefited from having more breathing room, more time to stretch things out and let the player get a feel for these characters, etc. in spite of all these flaws, and the many other problems that other reviewers have pointed out, i don't hate this game at all. i do think it's worth playing at least once, if only to be able to learn from its issues, and because the concept itself has promise — i can see the bones of a better experience in this game, and i want more games like this to be able to exist. but as it exists now, [i]Later Daters[/i] is just a very weak product and a forgettable experience. this does not feel like a 15 USD game to me.