*pantpantpant*

Okay, insomnia’s good for something. I FINALLY beat “Rule of Rose.”

At about 2 AM.

Then I spent another goddamn hour and a half cruising the internet looking for a bloody explanation. Which was difficult to find, because people kept expounding their theories about what it all meant and the symbolism and whatnot, without saying, for example, “This happened, then this happened, and you remember that bit? THAT’s what happened.”

Still. Found it finally. Okay. I think I’m clear on what happened when now. Sort of. Kinda. Maybe.

Mmm. ‘Kay. I suppose that works.

Huh. Well, yeah, that’s kinda freaky, I grant you.

I cannot recommend this game on the basis of gameplay, and the writing is sort of interesting but I wasn’t really gripped, possibly because I detested the main character so thoroughly. She had no spine and no sense of humor. Her only redeeming feature was that the dog liked her. Now, I grant you, in a survival horror situation, I might find myself spineless (you never know until the zombies show up…) but I will have a sense of humor about it!

What weirds me out is that there was tons of controversy about the game based on possible depictions of underage lesbianism and freakish cruelty to the heroine. It got banned in a few places.

Nobody mentioned cruelty to animals. Look, if I was gonna ban this sucker (which I wouldn’t, not being a banny sort) I’d have left off the hint of lesbianism, which was so understated you had to be looking really closely for it, (and excuse me, were you ever a pre-teen girl? Yeah, well, AHEM.) and gone straight for the number of times some member of the animal kingdom got shoved in a bag and beaten with sticks. I mean, crimony. Way to get bent outta shape over the wrong things, people! (Not that anybody should get bent out of shape over video games, damnit.)

Besides, as said before, the heroine deserved anything done to her, as punishment for having the worst combat engine ever.

Meh. It was creepy. I was interested enough to try to find the explanation of what happened. The gameplay was poor. If you like writing, borrow or rent, if you need gameplay, avoid like plague.