Viper V16 Review


Contributed by J. Sarunski aka Unicorn

Viper V16

Genre:
This game is a collection of two games. One of them (Imagine) is a multipath-multiending adventure, while the other one (Rise) also contains (multiple-choice) fighting sequences, which would interrupt the story and lead to an according ending, if lost.

Story:
1.) Rise
Three waitresses (Akira (a redhead with a temper and some fighting skills), Saki (blue haired, calm and rational), Karin (blonde, frightened and cheerful)) were abducted by a race of underground living humans in order to bear their childs. Not very pleased by this idea, they try to escape back to the surface-wold. The player takes the perspective of Akira, who tries to lead them all out of this...

2.) Imagine
The player takes the role of a guy, who takes computer classes at a (job-peparatory-?) school. At that school, also several kinds of artists take classes, as for example the acctress Haruka, the musician Takako and the voice-actress Nami. He makes the acquaintance of these three girls at school and depending onhis further decisions, he might become deeper involved with one of them.

Gameplay:
Both games consist of their story and some decisions, the player has to make during the story. While "Imagine" is a pure text adventure, "Rise" also contains encounters with enemies, that have to be fought in turns by choosing one out of three possible moves. If the right move was chosen, the enemy loses hit-points, otherwise the enemy hits and the own character loses hit points. Whoever loses all his/her hit-points first, loses the fight.

Sound:
The background-music consists either of average MIDI-themes, or quite better CD-DA-themes, that are only available, if the game is comletely instaled onto the HD-drive. In "Rise" all characters have voices, while in "Imagine" only the girls have voices (as in most other B-games).

Graphics:
As in Viper M1: I have seen better drawings in other games, but regarding the fact, that much of these graphics had to be animated, a little simplifying might be o.K. (even if of cause not desirable). As usual (at least for B-games, released by Hobibox, as far as I know them), the pictures and animations displaying the pubic areas remained mosaiced.

Animations:
Except of some standing pictures, most of the graphics are animated. Even in the standing pictures, the lips of the characters are synchronized with the spoken words of the voice-actors.

User Interface:
All the time, the Screen is split in a big upper part, that displays the graphics and a small lower part, that displays the current text or the possible choices in the current decision. From each of the two games, up to 9 positions may be saved by using the corresponding functions in the title menu. Anytime during the game, any of the previous saved positions could be loaded.

Extras:
Each of the games has a gallery, that displays the already reached endings. after selecting one of these endings from the gallery, the game plays one of the possible paths from the start to this ending, like a movie.

My personal opinion:
Even if this game consists only of two games, it shows some significant improvements, regarding Viper M1:

The fights in "Rise" are not as easy as im "My mothers" (Viper M1), because the enemies in Rise have different patterns of successful attacks, while in "My mothers" the player simply had to deal simple moves until the super-attack became available and then use it in order to win.

The story in "Imagine" is not that far-fetched and also not brutish (all the h-scenes in "Imagine" display consentual sex). Someone, who once called "Kango Shicyauzo" "Tokimeki CheckIn! light" would call "Imagine" "Tokimeki CheckIn! ultra-light", but still I think, it's enjoyable.

Also "Rise" becomes brutish only if some according decisions have been made (even, if they are not obvious). Two of the possible endings are even (almost) happy endings.

Each of the games occupies it's own CD and has it's own soundtrack. The soundtracks are also a bit better, than in Viper M1.

So, even if this game is far from becoming one of my favorites, it is at least not really bad. Of cause, there would be a lot of other games, I would advise to look at first, but for someone who knows a bit about B-games and already has those others, this collection could be worth a try.