1670: At Your Side

[Edit, 16/08: Apologies for those who missed this yesterday — it seems I composed an entry and then didn’t publish it properly. I present it now, better late than never. As if you care.]

So I finally finished Sweet Fuse this evening and I’m very happy I did.

For those disinclined to look back over my previous entries about this game, here’s the quick version: it’s a visual novel for PSP (Vita-compatible) in which you play Saki Inafune, niece of Mega Man designer Keiji Inafune, as she gets trapped in a theme park at the behest of a terrorist dressed as a pig. Along the way, she encounters a selection of fine-looking gentlemen and, over the course of seven days, gets to know at least one of them very well indeed.

Sweet Fuse has an utterly ridiculous premise, but ultimately it’s little more than a gimmick or hook to draw you in to the game proper: the story itself plays itself admirably and consistently straight throughout, not being afraid to tone down the light-hearted humour in favour of some pathos or outright tragedy at times. Saki herself is at times a little ill-defined as a character, but such is the nature of the visual novel protagonist, whether they’re male or female: they have to be flexible enough to make the various routes through the narrative plausible, and also non-specific enough to make them identifiable with for a wide proportion of the audience.

The nice thing about Sweet Fuse’s story is that you don’t get the whole truth in a single playthrough. In fact, depending on which of the game’s cast members you choose to pursue, you might not get the truth at all. Follow the path for Towa Wakasa, young boy band idol, and you’ll have an enjoyably romantic little tale in which you find out a bit about Wakasa himself — and how Saki feels about him — but you’ll learn almost nothing about the motivations behind Hogstein’s hijack of the park and the deadly game he makes the cast play. (You do, however, get a tiny teaser which is easily missed if you’re not paying attention.) Conversely, play through the route for Subaru Shidou, detective originally intended to be in charge of the park’s security on its opening day, and you’ll get tantalisingly close to the complete truth without revealing absolutely everything. It’s not until you play the route for the “secret” character, which only opens up from a second playthrough onwards, that you get a full, final and complete explanation of what has truly been going on.

And, without spoiling it here, I was surprised at the nature of the truth. As previously noted, the expectation for Sweet Fuse, given its premise and setup, is for the story to be rather light-hearted in nature — and indeed, there’s a lot of self-consciously ridiculous stuff that goes on. But ultimately there’s a serious core to what has been going on — and it doesn’t feel out of place, despite the fact that the villain you’re pursuing throughout the narrative is almost constantly dressed as a cigar-smoking pig with a disco ball around his neck.

Ultimately, your response to Sweet Fuse will depend on how much you care for the rather “hands-off” nature of most visual novels: despite the premise of the game being somewhat akin to the Zero Escape series, there are no real “puzzles” to solve as such; the most you have to do throughout the game is pick the right choice when one comes up, or occasionally pick out the most important word or phrase from a monologue in order to proceed. In other words, the game is extremely light on “gameplay” and this may disappoint a few people — particularly given that the theme park that forms the game’s setting is supposed to be based on video games — but it works and, on reflection, is probably a sensible choice; breaking up the game with, well, “gameplay”, would break its flow and run the risk of you not being able to proceed due to, to put it politely, a deficit in your own skills. By handling it this way, anyone can see the story through to its conclusion, and thanks to convenient quicksave, fast-forward and rewind functions, going back to see other possible outcomes to various scenarios is quick and painless, too. I played through two whole routes in a single day today, albeit fast-forwarding through the first three “common route” chapters and just making the appropriate choices where necessary. That still left four unique chapters per character, though.

I’m glad I played through Sweet Fuse, as it ended up being really, surprisingly good. I was immediately intrigued by the premise — and I love seeing the face of people when I explain it to them — but what I found was actually rather different from what I expected, in a very positive way.

If you have a Vita or a PSP and are hungry for an interesting story-based game to while away some time with, you could do far worse than a copy of Sweet Fuse, then. Highly recommended.

1668: Gentleman Friends

Longtime readers may recall that some time ago I extolled the virtues of a (Vita-compatible) PSP game called Sweet Fuse — a game that I’ve recently returned to in order to clean up some endings I missed.

This peculiar game is a visual novel-cum-dating sim in which you take on the role of Saki Inafune, niece of legendary game designer Keiji Inafune (of Mega Man and Mighty No. 9 fame), as she gets caught up in a plot led by a terrorist dressed as a pig to take over the video game-inspired theme park Inafune-san designed. Along the way Saki (and you) will encounter several gentleman friends, each of whom has their own unique narrative path that branches off in the latter half of the game after a shared beginning.

Sweet Fuse is what’s known as an otome game, meaning it’s primarily aimed at a heterosexual female audience — or at least depicts heterosexual romances from the perspective of a female protagonist. Such games are relatively widespread in their native Japan, but it’s quite rare to get them localised for the Western market, which still seems to assume for the most part that the majority of gamers out there are testosterone-filled heterosexual men. As such, Sweet Fuse immediately sets itself apart from other games of its type — and this is without taking its unusual premise into account.

Speaking as a heterosexual gentleman who has played his fair share of bishoujo games (visual novels and dating sims aimed at a heterosexual male audience) I initially wasn’t quite sure what to make of Sweet Fuse. In this type of game you’re often encouraged to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist to such a degree that they rarely appear on-screen and, when they speak, their dialogue is unvoiced. This is, in theory, to allow the player to project themselves onto the protagonist and imagine it’s themselves embroiled in the situations depicted throughout — be they fantastic, romantic, erotic, strange or just plain messed up. It’s an effective device that tends to work well. But, I found myself questioning before I started playing the game for the first time, will this still work if the protagonist is a different gender to me?

The question of whether male players can “identify” with female protagonists is often mocked among the more social justice-happy members of the games press, but in the dating sim and visual novel space, where you’re encouraged to inhabit the role of the lead character a lot more intimately than in other types of interactive entertainment, it’s an important consideration. Part of the way these games work on an emotional level is down to your own personal opinions and tastes — who do you find attractive or desirable, physically, sexually, emotionally and in terms of their personality? If you’re outside the target audience of a work, inhabiting the headspace of a protagonist that pointedly is not you, and considering potential partners that are contrary to your own usual sexual preferences, can that really “work”?

Well, of course it can; most of us have read books, seen films, watched TV series where we’ve rooted for characters to get together, even if they don’t match our own characteristics or preferences — and for female fans of games, they have to do this a lot of the time anyway. All this is, I’ve found, abundantly true with Sweet Fuse. As a heterosexual dude, it’s liberating to play the role of Saki and consider the virtues and vices of these different men as I choose which of the narrative paths to pursue. And, it turns out, it’s not all that difficult to put yourself in Saki’s shoes and contemplate which one is most attractive or desirable. (Urabe. Without a doubt.)

Like any good visual novel, Sweet Fuse’s various narrative paths are all unique, but all feed into a single interpretation of what is going on. Pursuing a single character and then putting the game down gives you a satisfying ending to the story, sure, but in some cases doesn’t reveal any of the truth behind the bizarre situation that forms the basis for the game. Others provide teases of information; others still are clearly the “main” routes that provide the most information. All are worth exploring — and it’s for this reason that I’ve picked up Sweet Fuse again after quite some time not playing it.

With, I think, two routes left to go (plus possibly a refresher on the others I’ve previously completed) I still haven’t got to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Count Hogstein and his apparent vendetta against the main cast. I’m very much looking forward to discovering the truth — the paths I’ve played to date have been by turns heartwarming, touching, intriguing and thrilling; now, it’s time to see Saki’s saga through to its conclusion, and wonder if we’ll ever see a game quite like Sweet Fuse in the West again.

1355: Impending Lie-In

Good golly gosh, I’m knackered.

This is at least partly due to the fact that I didn’t really have a weekend last weekend. (Actually, there’s no “really” about it; I flat-out didn’t have a weekend last weekend, since although Eurogamer Expo was enjoyable, I still had to work through it, and also had to overcome my not-inconsiderable social anxiety in order to actually, you know, talk to developers and stuff. I think I did fairly admirably, all things considered.)

Anyway. Consequently, I am looking forward to having a weekend this weekend, and the first thing I shall be doing with said weekend is having a lie-in. I’ve been waking up relatively late each morning this week and desperately wanting a lie-in — in some cases even dropping off until about half an hour before I need to start work (which, fortunately, as you probably know, involves walking from my bed to my study, and I don’t even have to put on pants if I don’t want to) — and not being able to have it. But tomorrow morning, I can have a lie-in, and it will be glorious.

Except going on recent past experience, the opportunity to actually have a lie-in is usually a signal for my body to wake up promptly at 7am and be unable to get back to sleep. This is infuriating when it happens, because any hope of catching up on sleep is then completely ruined. Of course, it’s often quite nice to deliberately wake up early and have considerably more hours available in the day than usual, but come on. It’s the weekend. I want to lie in bed and not move for more hours than I’m normally able to, then get up, have a bacon sandwich (or similarly greasy equivalent) and do nothing of any value for the remainder of the day.

Ah well. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow morning. Perhaps I’ll play some Sweet Fuse until the early hours and see if that will lull me into a deep sleep filled with bishounen.

(Speaking of Sweet Fuse, I’m still enjoying it a great deal. What a silly game. I’m glad it exists. If you’d have told me ten years ago that one day I’d be playing a game in which I took on the role of Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune’s niece as she wandered around a theme park that had been taken over by a pig-like terrorist, I would have probably laughed in your face. I have since learned, of course, that anything goes in gaming, and when you take into account the possibilities of less interactive genres such as visual novels, you really can tackle pretty much any subject matter as a “game”. But that, as ever, is a discussion for another day, I feel; time to head bedwards for me — Saki Inafune and her harem of gentlemen friends is awaiting me.)

1332: Sweet Otome

I started playing the PSP game Sweet Fuse: At Your Side after finishing Corpse Party and it’s been an interesting experience, particularly given my gaming background.

Sweet Fuse is what’s known as an “otome game”, you see — in stark contrast to “bishoujo games” that tend to have a male protagonist and a veritable harem of dateable female characters, otome games are the complete opposite: female protagonist, veritable harem of dateable male characters. (There are also yuri variations where the female protagonist can date female characters, much as there are yaoi titles for men, where a male protagonist can date male characters. But let’s not get off the point: Sweet Fuse is an otome game in its purest sense.)

I was somewhat intrigued by the prospect of playing Sweet Fuse since although I’m no stranger to playing female characters in games, where romantic options exist I will still generally pair up my heroine with another woman in preference to anything else — my Dragon Age character made a beeline for Leliana, for example, while my LadyHawke in Dragon Age II went for Merrill, as I recall. Sweet Fuse, being an otome game, was going to make me (or rather, my female protagonist) date a male character and like it. And although I’m fairly open-minded about such things, I confess I did feel somewhat skeptical about whether or not I’d feel the same degree of emotional engagement seeing a relationship grow from the opposite way around to how it’s usually depicted in this sort of game.

Why shouldn’t I, though? In your average dating sim or visual novel, you are not playing as the protagonist; you’re along for the ride and making occasional decisions on their behalf. You see stuff unfold and occasionally get frustrated at the protagonist not doing things exactly as you would have done them — but therein lies a sense of dramatic tension. In practice, the only thing that is different between a bishoujo game and an otome game is the fact that the voices are all female in one and all male in the other; and the same for the on-screen portraits of other characters.

That is a reasonably big difference, to be fair, but the fact is that in both cases, you’re still watching two people who aren’t you get together rather than pretending to get off with some virtual girl/dude from the first person. In that sense, it’s not really any different to reading a novel with a love story, or watching a movie with love scenes. So why should playing as a protagonist of the opposite sex who becomes attracted to people who are the same sex as you make you feel weird?

Answer: it doesn’t. In the admittedly limited time I’ve spent following the adventures of Saki Inafune and her six gentlemen friends as they attempt to defuse the bombs a terrorist who is also a pig secreted in her uncle Keiji Inafune’s theme park — yes, that is indeed the creator of Mega Man — I’ve been surprised to find myself feeling much the same as I do when playing a bishoujo game.

Specifically, I’ve found myself playing “favourites” with the cast of dateable characters. I can’t quite pin down if it’s due to actually finding them attractive, or simply liking their characters, but I’ve naturally found myself gravitating towards one of the characters in my first playthrough, much like I would in a typical bishoujo game. (I tend to “go with my gut” for my first playthrough of this type of game, then go back and systematically pursue the remainder of the cast/endings one at a time in order to see everything the game and its stories have to offer.)

It helps that Sweet Fuse has a cast of male characters easily as diverse — possibly more so, even — than your average bishoujo game. There’s the cold, stern detective; the young boy band idol; the aggressive, overly-compensating male escort (who reminds me of Kanji from Persona 4 to a distracting degree); the world-weary reporter; the shut-in; and the “mystical guy”. The latter, a guy named Urabe, is the one I have my eye on for this first playthrough, but we’ll see where it goes.

I’m only on the second “stage” of my first playthrough so far so there’s probably quite a way to go yet. There’s some interesting mechanics in the game that I’ll talk about a bit more on another occasion. In the meantime, if you have the slightest interest in character-centric, story-focused games — and a PSP or Vita — then you could certainly do far worse than check out Sweet Fuse. Full review coming soon over on USgamer.