The Dating Games: Episode 02: Rose of Winter

First a pigeon and now a beast man. Are Abby and Ben trying to satisfy their animalistic lust or their lust for animals?

Was expecting these to be a longer term full playthroughs at first rather than being like the horror series where they play a bit of each game.

Abby's basically doing Andie MacDowell from Groundhog Day.

I was excited for a Ben and Abby series, but these are just boring the hell out of me unfortunately. Maybe next time.

Abby's Southern accent had me cracking up the whole way through! Also, Ben's boar/horse (?) growls were great.

I used to come here to watch likeable people play video games together and be insightful.

Now all I see people wishing they were comedians playing soft core smut that a lot of people don't ever regard as video games.

Where did it all go so wrong?

@ksck26:

Leave then?

@ksck26: Giant Bomb has literally always been "insightful video game commentary" and "hilarious goofball humour," so I don't know where the hell you've been, my dude.

Well I enjoyed it, Abby often seems to bring out the best in Ben.

Small quibble: I dislike how the emphasized words in her thought bubbles are not italicized. It's barely noticeable. I'd prefer either normal font with emphasized words italicized or bold, or like this but with emphasized words in bold instead.

I don't understand why so many people are being hyper critical. Its not like Giant Bomb even mentioned games from this genre before Abby and Ben showed up.

I, for one, am glad to see new genres penetrating the duder's minds.

The art and music in this is really great! I may have to give this a try.

This is extremely good and nice

I'm enjoying this series a ton! I think I recognize art from Butterfly soup in the series thumbnail and I really hope they play that one too in a future episode :D Thank you Abby and Ben!

I don't care at all for dating game VN games myself, but this video feature is fantastic. I want a whole series of just Ben and Abby reading trashy grocery store romance novels now, haha.

Also that said, the game in this episode was much better for the format since it can be played all the way through in one sitting- the bird game seemed like it was setting up for a lot of late game reveals and twists. Regardless, i'm down for whichever games you guys decide to next- great stuff!

I can feel the love tonight, these are great guys, thanks!

I feel this feature is kind of a dud. It would've been better to pick a game and play it through to its conclusion leading into 2/14, since apparently these "take so long to get going" according to other posters here.

So thirsty. Goodness what a situation.

Really enjoying this series! Looking forward to the rest of them.

This was great

Hey! I wanted to share this dating sim! I played it way back in 2001 maybe. I really liked it, I played through several times. I have not played very many dating games, so if this game sucks, well sorry, I didn't mind it. haha it's based off an anime series that I read way back around then as well, when you could go to a Borders and read everything in the store for free.

http://www.y8.com/games/love_hina_sim_date_rpg

@ksck26: soft core smut? are you for real dude????

I can't help but feel like the main character is just a tweaked Rose Quartz from Steven Universe?

Her armor's kind of funny, it looks like she has a placard over what the artist presumably thought looked like chain mail and no cuirass or pauldrons, and no helmet.

Good series. Shout out to all the haters!

@lain46: What a hard game! My strategy of naming myself BOBBY THE BRAIN H(eenan, it wouldn't fit), putting all my points into power (and age), and fighting everyone I could immediately didn't work at all. I'll have to think of another plan of attack for this game! (Pun intended.)

@Gafgarion: yeah I know! It is pretty hard dating sim! I really liked that about it. It took me a while, to figure it out. You figure out what each girl wants but they always want to fight you. It has strat to it. I need to play that game again. It’s so good.

Keep screwing with it, you’ll figure it out. I’m going go back and play it again this weekend, it’s been years so I’m pretty excited. Haha

They have cheats for the game online. I’ve never used them though, cause well, that’s no fun.

@onewaytrip: hell yeah they should

Well, this isn't what I had in mind about this feature. I thought they are gonna go through a route in each VN and then move on to the next game. But, since they boxed themselves into this short timeframe, leading up to Valentine's Day, this was expected. Bummer but, ehh, I'll live. At least they are looking at these VNs. Although I hope they are gonna go with better ones in the future.

No one. But since Abby happens to be a woman, any criticism must come from a sexist perspective. Duh.

"So many people are being hyper critical", eh? There's only 9 people who wasn't showering Abby and Ben with praises like the rest and most of those people are just bummed out by the format. But you're right, let's go with the "so many" and "hyper critical" narrative. That's good. That's good.

@whatshisface: there have been a loooooot of deleted comments in here. Being pedantic and talking about 'narratives' is kinda weird dude.

@speedhuntr:I guess I am? I cancelled my premium after the GOTY debacle. I suppose it only hurts because this site was so integral to my adolescent years.

I'm only going to do this once, so here we go:

I came here in '08 during my high school years. I genuinely feel like many things, from my sense of humor to my media tastes including games, movies, and books, have been deeply impacted by the GB crew. My starting major was journalism, then video production (both due to my love of GB), and finally audio engineering. I began writing in my free time in part because of people like Ryan Davis, because of his deeply personal writing style that felt not unlike a conversation with a friend who's opinions I trust, and also because of the news breaking publications from Patrick Klepek, because I loved seeing a real journalist working in a field I care for so deeply.

I've defended this site through all sorts of divisive times: Davis' passing, the hiring of Ryckert, the comings and goings of both Klepek and Walker, the splitting of offices into East and West. Defended this site. Told people they were being "hyper-critical" when I felt the integrity of the site had remained intact... things have changed.

I was fully prepared to accept the new hires, but the dynamic of content has thoroughly shifted. No other GB "video producer" has forced themselves into all content the way Abby has. No premium has ever been abandoned because it was an unfunny, unprepared mess the way Kingdom Heartache was. They are both hires because, to put it bluntly, they have personal connections to the site while being completely unqualified. The West office puts out a video a week, if you're lucky, and whats the excuse now? Are they still "settling in to the new studio" or "getting ready for E3"?

I'm fucking sick of it. It hurts my fucking heart to watch this happen. I don't really care if any of you give this post 45 seconds of thought or just happily jump on the bandwagon of acceptance. This website used to be special, and I don't think its unfair to expect a consistent level of effort and quality from people you are paying to be entertained by.

So here's my final farewell; after having my voice get on the bombcast and chatting with Alex during multiple shows, partaking in the community spotlight for years and sharing this content with every close friend and significant other I've ever had.

I guess you could say the site is just not very cohesive or good anymore.

@ksck26:

I think... in general... things change. You could loose interest in some things in a variety of ways and thats fine. You might want to take a step back and ask yourself how much you have changed also.

Personally I find this series to be in line with most of content that has come out of this site since day one... and I'd argue the site has ALWAYS been a bit of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks... remember the farmville series? That... kind of went no where? Things always seem a little bit better in hindsight I've found.

There have also been quite a lot of ebbs and flows of the site being "structured" and a total mess of content over and over again... I think that's kind of the beauty of Giant Bomb... it's kind of amorphous and is always changing aside from mainstays like the bombcast.

Also... I guess I just kind of cringe a little when the reasons for leaving are so personal against team members, and you even say you have defended the site in the past over similar gripes. When Ben and Abby joined the crew they did that "my first e3" series and the reaction seemed overwhelmingly positive. They are just good together. So it kinda seems natural to keep that ball rolling and this series is what comes from that. It makes total sense to me.

But I also think its totally fair to loose interest in something and leave, and I hope you do find something that fills that void that it seems this site used to...

@humanity: Maybe he models himself on those wrestlers who don't talk. Like maybe he's a Paul Heyman guy (I believe that's a thing).

I ended up checking out of this video about 40 minutes in. It's not really for me. Fair play to Abby and Ben actually going through with voice acting the characters (a joke I'd made before the first episode) but I'm more interested in them commentating on whats going on rather than just doing silly voices for VN games.

Also since it looks like the banner is done - people who want to comment on every video about how bad they are and how they're not respecting the "medium of VNs" by playing classics - maybe just look at the banner and check out now instead of harping on about how once again someone on the internet is playing something wrong.

Ok, bye dude! You seem like a pretty toxic person. I am curious, though ("GOTY debacle" ?? aside). What is it about Ben and Abby's performances that makes you think they're unqualified? I wouldn't be surprised if suscriber-ship is way up since they joined. I can't really point to anything they've contributed that wasn't a positive. As for specific content you don't like, I didn't watch Kingdom Heartaches because I think those are terrible games. Maybe you could do the same with series like this?

If you look above the comment field, you can see 2 different "Comments" numbers. The one with the double speach bubble icon tells you how many comments have been made overall and the one with the single speach bubble icon tells you how many of those comments are visible. The difference gives you the number of deleted comments. As of right now, that number is 3.

I'm pedantic because I'm an asshole.

@shoddyrobot: That was a very thoughtful and considerate response. It is nice to see a comment which shows the kind and respectful community Giant Bomb can be at its best.

Loving this series!

Maybe there should be a "[DELETED]" placeholder when mods delete comments, so people like you can't exaggerate like crazy to further the narrative of "criticizing Abby = sexism".

Yeah, I can't watch this.

wow this is fucking garbage. glad I cancelled my subscription when drew left.

@ksck26:You may never respond to this if you're truly done with your time here but I've some questions about your comment.

No premium has ever been abandoned because it was an unfunny, unprepared mess the way Kingdom Heartache was.

None of us know the real reason for KH being canned. Some people suggest it was unfunny, others suggest it was unprepared. Others think the whole thing is some sort of meta-joke and it never intended to run past those few episodes.

However, other premium series that never really got off the ground. KH has 5 episodes a week apart. Ranking of Fighters has 7 episodes since starting in 2015. Game Tapes started in 2016, it has 7 episodes too. Neither of those features are by new hires. There was also that thing Vinny did one time - which may or may not have been a premium feature - where he gave a quick run down of some games they tried but decided not to do quick looks of.

I'm not calling them out for this stuff, but KH is hardly the only feature to ever either be abandoned or on an extremely rocky schedule.

They are both hires because, to put it bluntly, they have personal connections to the site while being completely unqualified.

So I know that Ben used to be an intern. How was Abby personally connected to the site pre-hire?

The West office puts out a video a week, if you're lucky, and whats the excuse now?

Between today and the start of the year there's been 16 videos uploaded by the East and 18 by the West (this excludes the video podcasts). So what you're saying here doesn't track at all.

Maybe so, but the total number of comments is definitely three less than when I posted my comment above.

This is great, Ben and Abby are very funny together and listening to how well Abby can act is really quite enjoyable.

@ape_dosmil: hey thanks! :) and supportive comments like this are why I also love GB community.

I appreciate you guys reading the dialog. I missed a lot of Yakuza's dialog because I'm almost always multitasking while watching videos.

That game would be better if it was just that. The dungeon crawling JPRG combat isn't great in p5.

More please

I liked this a lot, surprisingly. Really appreciated the tongue-in-cheek voicing, especially from Abby.

These comments, though...we're not even in February yet and already some good picks for the worst comments of the year.