Ah, the Criminal
Girls controversy. This game ignited the latest massive moral debate in the
gaming landscape— a debate not as virulent as the one surrounding Mortal Combat’s gory Fatalities back in
the days, granted, but still prominent enough to generate heaps of internet
ranting, both in the game’s favour and against it. In the end, and ironically
enough, no one seems to be satisfied with Criminal
Girls: some slander it for being too kinky, some for being too soft and
heavily censored, and others for simply existing.
What is that game that generates such intense
controversy and seemingly fails to cater genuinely to any audience? With its
title vaguely reminiscent of the ’70s Women-in-Prison flicks, Criminal Girls: Invite Only positions itself as a fully mature
game aimed at the adult audience that supposedly favours the Vita. This 2014
Vita remake/port ramps up the fan-service considerably when compared to the
original Japanese-only PSP instalment; however, everything else was left
untouched, from graphics to gameplay mechanics. Upon coming to the West, the
game was famously censored, to the utter dismay of some gamers who wanted the
whole package, moans and crotch shots and all; this added another layer to the
already existing controversy, with a portion of the targeted audience now being
unhappy with the final product. Some went as far as importing the original game
from Japan, which must have delighted Nippon Ichi Software as well as
Imageepoch.
Where do I stand in all this, you may ask?
Well, I’ll be blunt: I absolutely adored Criminal
Girls. In fact, it’s fair to say that I was literally glued to my Vita
during the course of my Criminal Girls
run: I would play for hours on end, entranced by the intoxicating gameplay, and
didn’t touch any other game in the meantime—heck, I didn’t even think of any other game in the meantime,
so deep was I stuck in that Criminal Girls trance. And yet, when all was said
and done, I felt some strange reluctance to write about that game that I had
loved so much. I was wondering how to talk properly about Criminal Girls, or even whether I should talk about it at all. The game has been so thoroughly
dissected due to the controversy surrounding it that one feels there is nothing
more to say about it: from the fighting system to the scandalous mini-games,
everything has been mulled over ad
nauseam, and the prospect of repeating the process here didn’t thrill me in
the slightest. After a bit of pondering, I decided to concentrate on the game’s
overall concept, deliberately glossing over the technicalities of the gameplay.
Gameplay in a nutshell
I’ll still dedicate a paragraph to the matter,
though—just in case someone who never encountered any other review of Criminal Girls is reading that post and
wants to figure out what you actually do
in that game. (Highly unlikely, but you never know.) I’ll keep it short and
dry: Criminal Girls is a pure dungeon
crawler with turn-based random battles. The encounter rate is decent, you can
flee from battles and encounters can be avoided entirely. The characters level
up quite fast and regularly from beginning to end. New abilities must be
learned by successfully completing touch-screen based mini-games involving
rubbing and poking the Vita’s front and rear screens. These mini-games are
obviously the infamous kinky bits involving risqué shots of the characters, and
you cannot skip them if you want to
be able to progress: the bosses are tough cookies and you cannot hope to beat
them without mastering the abilities granted by the mini-games. “Mastering” may
not be the exact word, since you cannot freely choose the move you want to use
while fighting: instead, you have to select one of the four moves suggested by
your party—one suggested move per character. This introduces a welcome dose of
strategy in all things fighting, as well as an uncertainty than can be
thrilling; and since the A.I. is usually spot-on, there is virtually no risk of
losing a battle due to bad suggestions. Resting is free, you can save anytime and
anywhere and there is a good range of useful items and field skills designed to
make your roam easier: as a whole, Criminal
Girls is very user-friendly. There is a modicum of narrative, woven into
the dungeon-crawling in a clever and seamless way—which is rare enough to be
praised—as well as a couple of sidequests with benefits. And that, ladies and
gentlemen, is the gist of Criminal Girls’s
gameplay for you.
Unexpected ties
Now that I’m done with the gameplay exposition,
I can focus on a deeper, juicier analysis of Criminal Girls’s premise: in other words, the pervasive and
in-your-face fan-service, which was by and large Criminal Girls’ biggest selling argument. Unlike the campy
fan-service present in Senran Kagura Burst, which was merely an addition to the game’s rock-solid mechanics, the
fan-service in Criminal Girls is
tightly woven into the gameplay and thus pretty much unescapable. It impacts
the storyline as well as the gameplay mechanics in a way that I found very
reminiscent to a much more famous gaming series. More than reminiscent, in
fact: the similarities are seriously uncanny, and so blatant that they may have been at least partly intentional. For, lo and behold, Criminal Girls is basically a risqué, human-based take on the Pokemon gameplay mechanics, and could
easily bear the subtitle “Pokemon: Pervy Version”. Here’s how the striking
resemblance unfolds:
—The two games feature the same core principle
of forcing weaker creatures to do your bidding through the use of brute force.
In Pokemon, you beat down wild
animals a hair’s breadth away from death in order to be able to capture them
without resistance; in CG, you whip
young women into submission. The infamy of your actions is somewhat concealed
behind weak justifications such as “Pokemons get hurt fighting in the wild, so
it’s actually better for them to be under the protection of a Trainer” or
“These girls are have committed minor crimes and are on their way to commit
bigger ones, so they must be put back on the right track by any means necessary
for their own good”, but these pretenses don’t survive a sharp examination.
Sugar-coat it all you want, but the bottom line is that you’re acting like a
big coward bully by forcing your will on free, independent beings that were
asking nothing more than to live their life and follow their own way
unhindered.
—Once you forcefully enrolled these free
beings, they are expected to fight on your behalf, standing in the front line
while you shout orders in the back. Of course, they also fight on their own
behalf in order to avoid being killed; but the point is that the character you
incarnate is not physically involved in the fighting, preferring instead to
oversee the operations from the safety of the rear. As a result, Pokemon and CG focus primarily not on the Trainer/Warden that you incarnate,
but rather on the charges that are in your care, who then reap the biggest part
of the fighting glory—which is only fair. Of course, your main character—and
thus you— is also regularly hailed as
a great leader who managed to steer the course of action in the desired
direction—the proverbial iron hand in a velvet glove.
—In Pokemon
as well as CG, your charges seem to
accept their destiny as semi-slaves quite quickly and without too much resistance.
Sure, they are wary and sulky at first, and follow you somewhat grudgingly: an
analysis of your newly enrolled ’Mons’ gaits will reveal that they don’t feel
too warmly about you, and the CG delinquents will regularly snap at you and
rebuff your attempts at kindness. However, said ’Mons don’t go straight for
your throat as soon as they are out of their Pokeballs, and said delinquents
don’t try to give you the slip or to sting a knife between your ribs when
you’re asleep like any real wild
animal or delinquent would do in such circumstances, so they can definitely be
considered compliant. This unexpected meekness can alleviate your own guilt
over enslaving your charges, should you have any: since they keep following you
even after it becomes clear that they could take you down in two hits, together
or separately, then they must somehow be happy with the whole situation and
consent to it.
—In the wake of this begrudging acceptance of
their uncomfortable situation, your charges develop a serious case of Stockholm
syndrome by becoming exponentially attached to you. The more time they spend
with you fighting on your behalf, the more affectionate they become. You will
suddenly discover that the analysis of your ’Mons’ gaits reveal a deep fondness
for you and a complete trust; as for CG’s
delinquents, they will start singing your praises in earnest, and their
grimaces of pain and insults during and after the punishment sessions will be
replaced by dreamy smiles and thanks.
—The feeling is mutual, since you also develop a sincere fondness for
your charges in the meantime. You may consider them from a purely utilitarian
point of view at first, but that will change as playing hours go buy and allow
you discover them and witness their interesting evolution—in every sense of the
word. (Interestingly, CG’s
delinquents can go through a transformation that is very similar to Pokemon’s Evolution, granting them a new
appearance as well as more powerful moves. Even the transformation scene itself
is strikingly similar to the Evolution scenes in Pokemon.) Before you know it, you will find yourself lovingly
cooking puffins for your ’Mons and showering them with accessories, or diligently
running all around the place to find some lost items that the delinquents care
about and pouring all your energy into helping them overcome their hurdles. The
evolution of CG’s punishment
sessions, or “Motivation Time” as they were renamed in the Western version, also
shows plainly this change of heart: the punishments get lighter and lighter,
until you finally tickle the girls lightly with a feather duster and massage
them gently with a soft cushion. Well, that’s certainly a major improvement from
whipping or electrocution. In a highly ironic turnaround, you finally find
yourself in a position where you
serve your charges instead of the other way around: you may be the one bossing
them around, but the whole game is about them,
and they are at the heart of the
action. This aspect is even more pronounced in CG, which completely glosses over your main character: the whole
game is about the delinquents’ life and struggles, and your character is only presented
as a helper assisting them on their path to redemption.
—To crown this evolution, the two games serve
you a positive finale in which everyone’s warm feelings towards one another are
cemented and presented as the basis for fruitful and enduring relationships. Pokemon games treat you to the grand
Elite Four victory, in which your Trainer and ’Mons are presented as a seamless
unit and collectively hailed; if you didn’t already feel the deepest devotion
towards your ’Mons by that time, this
scene will certainly tip the scales. As for CG,
it veers towards a romance sim right before the end, and keeps steering in that
direction during the whole postgame segment. As a result, the pre-postgame end
treats you to a romantic ending with one of the girls, while the postgame part
allows you to woo the other delinquents and delivers a “harem ending” in which
all the girls are seemingly smitten with you and make plans to keep you in
their lives, hopefully forever. As a whole, your interaction with your charges
is presented as an unabashedly positive experience that only brought favorable
changes: your charges became stronger and wiser, you became kinder and gentler,
and everybody reaped some love and fulfilling relationships in the process.
Whether or not you’ll be able to appreciate or
even tolerate Criminal Girls really
depends on how readily you can take in that whole Stockholm syndrome-friendly
development. Compared to this chain of events, the actual content of the risqué
mini-games is a moot point: there is really nothing more to it than randomly
rubbing your fingers over a collection of suggestive images ten times tamer
than anything you can find in a hentai anime—not to mention that you’ll be too
busy keeping track of the areas to rub to ogle at these pictures in earnest. To
see the girls repay your bad treatments with love and promiscuity is much more
disturbing, and swallowing the whole concept requires a good dose of suspension
of disbelief—and dignity.
Flailing about
Although I totally adored that game, I won’t
deny that I also felt a modicum of discomfort at times, and the malaise only
increased as the game went on. This uneasiness can be blamed on one main
factor, and that factor is the striking lack of focus and direction of the
whole fan-service package. Unlike the brand of fan-service at work in Senran Kagura Burst’s or Code of Princess, which was blatantly
self-derisive and campy, the fan-service featured in Criminal Girls doesn’t know if it wants to be parodic, titillating
or romantic, and ends up mixing all three moods together in hopes of getting an
enticing result. Unfortunately, it is not happening, and the result comes
across as an incoherent clutter sending uncomfortably mixed messages.
Take the infamous rubbing mini-games, for
instance: despite being at the center of the controversy surrounding Criminal Girls, they clearly lean on the
parodic side. The tone is set from the beginning, when it turns out that the
reason why the delinquents don’t wear their prisoner garb during these segments
is because your character asks them to wear cosplay outfits before starting. I
swear that I laughed out loud when I discovered that ridiculous justification,
and that was only the first of many laughing and cackling fits generated by the
mini-games. The subsequent poses of the girls and the fact that their outfits
seem to crawl mysteriously back on their bodies, conveniently revealing
increasing amounts of flesh, are so over-the-top that they definitely come
across as more hilarious than salacious. I could nearly picture myself
surveying the operations and issuing ridiculous orders to get these results:
“Okay, now take that pose… Good…And now, lift up your top a little more… Voila!” Add to this the wonky theme
track and the exaggerated moans, insults and comments emitted by the girls in
the original Japanese version, and you get a package that looks and feels like
an assumed parody of your average otaku’s hentai fantasies.
On the other hand, the fact that the
delinquents wear short and revealing prison garb by default, completed by
sexually laden accessories such as dog collars and high socks, is obviously designed
to arouse the player. So is probably the round sofa on which they lounge while
in the “Infirmary”, which seems to come straight out of a porn flick and makes
the place looks more like a brothel than like the infirmary it is supposed to
be. Things get even more lascivious toward the end, as the girls go through the
Knight transformation and shed their prison garb to don outfits that are
considerably more risqué. This is a very straightforward and transparent attempt
at titillation that doesn’t pack the slightest bit of self-derision: the
purpose is clearly to shove as much eye-candy as possible into the game in
order to satisfy the player’s ogling urges. It could also explain Criminal Girls’ refusal to follow the
current hot trend in its own niche, namely the addition of a male touch into
the fan-servicy mix. Senran Kagura 2 comprises a male character who can be stripped just as easily as its
female counterparts, Akiba’s Trip integrate
as many males opponents as females, and Conception II is rife with bromance and yaoi
innuendos; yet Criminal Girls didn’t
dare to follow that trend, maybe for fear of alienating its intended audience
and spoiling its own candid attempt at titillation.
Last but not least is the romantic side of Criminal Girls, which comes into play late
in the game. After they go through the Knight transformation, the delinquents
are bound to start experiencing feelings of love toward your main character and
expressing them in unambiguous fashion. This new direction involve cheesy
sentences along the lines of “I want to make you happy” and “Please let me stay
by your side forever”, as well as an ultimate mini-game that looks like some
kind of foreplay and insinuates in hardly veiled terms that you and the
involved delinquent will have sex afterwards. When you beat the final boss, you
get a romantic happy ending with the delinquent of your choice, all frolicking
around and swearing eternal love to each other; then, the postgame lets you woo
the rest of the crew before treating you to the ultimate “Harem Ending”, in
which the girls chat together about their feelings for you and decide to take
turns on dating you, giggling about the fact that you’ll certainly be vigorous
enough to satisfy them all despite your ripe old age. This sequence is a little
bit sickening: although it’s fun to see the tables being turned and the girls
talking about using your character like some kind of sexual prop for their own
gratification, it’s hard not to feel grossed out by the cynicism of the whole
thing. I do admit that this particular scene and the romantic direction as a
whole screamed “Stockholm syndrome” a little
too loud for my comfort.
Needless to say, these three highly different
tones clash vigorously with each other. The romantic orientation comes
completely out of the blue and feels like it has been hammered into the game,
either to cater to the mawkish love fantasies of your regular otaku or to
soften the impact of the game’s softcore sadistic undertones—maybe both. The
in-your-face attempt at titillation comes across as bland and run-of-the mill,
the kind of tired fan-service seen a million times before in a million games,
and the parodic charge of the mini-games is defused by both the unsubtle
eye-candy and the late romantic twist. I really wish Criminal Girls had picked a single mood and stuck to it all the way;
this would certainly have made the whole experience easier to digest and less
nauseating. My design of choice would have been to tone down the eye-candy and
restrict skin exposure to the mini-games, thus making them more rewarding, and
to drop the saccharine romantic outcome entirely in favour of a grittier ending
in which everybody admits that their time together is done and proceeds to
follow their own path without turning back. No syrupy crap such as going to
school together and living happily ever after as a harem, but rather something
like “We had some unpleasant moments together, some much more pleasant, and we
all learnt and grew from the experience; but it was just a phase, and it’s
over. Adieu, you pervy warden, and
may we never meet again!” Proceed then to show the utter dismay of the abandoned
main character, who sincerely believed that women would fall in love with him
even if he treated them like crap just like in all harem animes, and you’d have
had the cherry on top of the parodic cake. Or, had Imageepoch had the guts to
follow the “male touch” hot trend of the moment, they could have included sequences
in which your main character had to endure the punishment sessions at the hands of the girls—what goes
around comes around, karma’s a b*tch and all that, you know. That would have
been hilarious, and I would definitely have loved to see—and play—that kind of
twist.
Still, there’s no denying that I loved Criminal Girls through and through,
despite its uneven tone and Stockholm syndrome-laden intrigue. It is a
brilliant dungeon crawler with gorgeous aesthetics that offers a deeply
fulfilling roaming experience, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to any
aficionado of the genre who feels they can stomach the game’s peculiar brand of
fan-service. As for me, I will most certainly play it again sooner or later,
although I may abstain from clearing the sickly postgame segment during my next
run. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!
Yup, the gameplay really does make up for the unbelievability of the story/premise.
ReplyDeleteIn the original they only wore their prison uniforms during Punishment, which made more sense IMO. I mean it's silly to complain about your character being a cosplay fetishist on top of all the other stuff he does, but somehow that makes me cringe. I'd rather believe he's a relatively normal guy in an impossible situation (and apparently 'relatively normal' guys make the best torturers) than think he's getting off on watching the girls writhe in silly outfits. You know what, I'm just not going to think about it.
That Pokemon comparison, though... haha, I never thought of it that way before.
Yes, it does! It's clearly one of the best dungeon crawlers I've played lately, and the fighting system is just incredibly intoxicating. And it's just a detail, but I loved the bright colours and stylised shapes. Come to think of it, it's kind of weird to see such a cute, nearly "girly" aesthetic coexist with such a perverse premise... Ha, the mysteries of moe culture.
DeleteThe cosplay outfits, well... I guess that's what happens when you want to ramp up the fan-service in a game that's already loaded with it. Some of this stuff was fun, though: seeing Tomoe in a cow outfit made me roar with laughter. Am I seriously supposed to get titillated by this? WHO is, for that matter? :D
I'll make both your opinions mine. The gameplay was superb, definitely who of my favorites dungeon crawling experience on the PSP. Too bad NIS had to compromise the game/serie's future by turning it into a ecchi game. I'm still surprised they actually localized this game.
DeleteDefinitely; that's the issue of a game's legacy, which is ALWAYS tainted by fan-service no matter what. As little as I mind fan-service in games, I wish developers would sometimes abstain from shoving some into their creations in order to avoid ruining promising gaming formulas... Oh, well. That certainly won't prevent me from replaying Criminal Girls in the future!
DeleteFor what it's worth, my theory is that the localization of "Criminal Girls" may be tied to the unexpected success of "Fifty Shades of Gray". BDSM-lite themes and imagery are quite fashionable these days, and maybe NIS saw an opportunity there... Pure speculation on my part, of course. :D
I never heard any kind of controversy about this game whatsoever.
ReplyDeleteCould this be sweet, sweet irony? I get the feeling it is. :)
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