For the record, not only did Indigo Prophecy completely fucking suck from about the last 3rd on (while being amazing in the beginning), the "adult" stuff really seemed sort of superfluous and weird. I wanted to play the uncensored version just because I always want to see everything the dev intended the game to be, but afterward, I wished I'd just played the censored NA version. The euro version's extra stuff just felt cheesy and unnecessary. Not even inappropriate or nasty, just... out of place. It didn't work.
Also, I've been playing Thrill Kill for about 2 hours now, and I have to disagree, Sy. The crazy violence and semi-deviant outfits of the characters probably would have been a bit more controversial at the time of the game's original planned release, but yeah, they're really not particularly crazy at this point. I mean, it's all over the top and stuff, but nothing so shocking. It's almost more funny. The game, on the other hand, is quite fun and actually a lot better than I expected.
Mini-review:
If there's a plot, I missed it. But the general idea is that you've got 4 people thrown into a really tiny room with no exits. To win, as you might expect, you have to beat the living crap out of the other people in there with you. As you might also expect, you also have to do this by tracking your progress by a colored bar while you beat them. The difference is that instead of subtracting to your bar every time you get hit, you add to your bar every time you hit somebody. The idea is to fill the bar the fastest, because whoever gets it all the way up first gets to kill one of the other contestants. They get a quick scene with them going all hardcore, then they basically chase down one of the other hapless fuckers, hit a random attack button, and kill him instantly. Then the next round is the same thing, except there's one less character and the character who killed him in the previous round gets a slight bonus to his meter, getting him just that much closer to victory at the beginning. It's actually good stuff. The rounds are pretty tense, the moves are decently varied and useful in different circumstances, and the characters all seem to have different strengths and weaknesses (though I'm just basing that on the way they fight... I've mostly just used one guy). This would really make a great multiplayer game, just for that last moment where you have three guys cowering in a corner trying to see if they can get away from the executioner who's got a decapitation with their name on it. Classic. If nobody gets killed and the executioners meter drains away (which it begins to do slowly after he goes crazy), then the round resumes. Damn hard to escape from that, though.
The rest of it is... marginal. The graphics aren't bad for a PS game, but they aren't a wow from an artistic standpoint. That said, they're fun and functional. Everything is consistent, at least, around the weird theme. The arenas are all back alleys, sewers, padded rooms, iron cages, industrial stuff, whatever. They're all very small and very square. So no variety there, but that isn't really the point. The point is to keep you smashed right on the other guys. The other guys themselves are pretty entertaining. You've got a giant super-hulk kind of dude, a contortionist chick, a sort of s&m nurse type chick, a midget on stilts (who has some really funny outfits), the "tormentor" guy who's basically another s&m type, then a guy in a straight jacket, a crazy doctor with a metal jaw, a guy who blows fire out of himself, and a cannibalistic redneck. There's also two sort of last bosses, one of which is basically just a crazy demon woman, and the other which is too awesome for me to spoil. Seriously, play the game and find it. Its name is "Judas" and it had me cracking up when I realized what it was. There might be more, I dunno'. I only beat it once. Playing it on my PSP, so it crashed once during my first game.
Oh, and the music kind of sucks. Also, the finishing moves are pretty lame. Some of them are rather funny, but I'm not sure what dictates getting what animation. There seems to be an awful lot of the exact same decapitation move between the various characters. So that's a little disappointing. Still, a lot of the normal moves are fun, and some of the executions do okay, so it isn't really that big of a deal.
It's actually giving me a little bit of a Twisted Metal: Black feel. Just with the sort of morbid sense of humor, and the fact that each character has some crazy video you get at the end of the game. Which is like a lot of fighting games I guess, but these just strike me as like the ones at the end of TMB. Well, the one I saw anyway.
So yeah, try the game out. I think it's actually pretty fun. I think it would be great to play at the next OWmeet!
