Oh boy, here we go... deep breath... okay, ready or not, here I come.
Although I normally dislike reviewing, much less giving an overall
judgement to, games that are as of yet incomplete, it is probably high time (maybe
even a bit overdue) to spill the proverbial five cents on Being A DIK, one of the most revered and admired AVNs of the past
decade. I have at least two pretty good excuses: (a) judging by the current
speed of Dr. PinkCake’s updates, it is less and less likely with each day that
the game will ever be completed in my (or his, for that matter) lifetime
anyway; and (b) running a little ahead of the story — I strongly believe that
the game’s greatest, finest days are long since over, and I am not really sure
what kind of miracle is needed to get it up to the benchmark-setting glory days
of its first two «seasons». So while I certainly reserve the right to update
and amend this review anytime in the future, I’ll also try to write it with a
bit of a conclusive flair. If the future proves me wrong on any counts, hey,
I’ll be glad to be proven wrong. (But I doubt it).
THE HAPPY PART: BECOMING A DIK
Anyway, let’s go back to the beginning, which is where I was lucky to be
at — I’d just gotten into the art of the visual novel around 2019, back when
Dr. PinkCake had just finished his first AVN, Acting Lessons, and was putting the finishing touches on the first
episode of his new project, which was apparently going to be set in the same
fictional universe and focus on a much younger protagonist during his early
college days — an AVN equivalent of the coming-of-age school drama à la American Pie or something. Acting Lessons was a fine AVN in its
own right, a classic «use-your-right-hand-to-jack-off,
use-your-left-hand-to-dry-your-tears» melodrama that made good history on its
own — but it was Dr. PinkCake’s first experience, and thus, a bit too short and
a bit too rough around the edges from a technical perspective. Subsequently,
while we can only speculate, I do believe that Dr. PinkCake made a solemn vow
before the altar of Beelzebub (or somebody with a comparably respectable
pedigree) that his next try would yield the single finest adult visual novel
ever made by a single mortal man.
And Beelzebub listened, because at that time we hadn’t really seen
anything like Being A DIK. There are
many parameters according to which we can rate an AVN — the storyline, the
choice system, the game mechanics, the graphics, the animations, the sound, the
replayability value, etc. — and while nothing made in this world is completely above criticism, one thing
that was immediately visible about the very first episodes of the game is that
its creator took care of everything. All of these parameters were seriously
taken into consideration. All of
them. There are many wonderful AVNs around that try to woo you with a few of
these aspects, but they almost always end up lacking in one department or
another. Great story, but no sound. Mouth-watering animations, but a dumb
story. Magnificent choice system with near-endless replayability, but scarce
and laconic artwork without animations, and so on. Dr. PinkCake looked at all
that and said, «Fuck that shit. I’m gonna be the hardest-working man in this
business, like James Brown, and I’m gonna make the best-rounded adult video
game of all time».
And for quite a while, the man delivered on the promise. If you take any
single aspect of the first two
seasons of Being A DIK, there will
probably be at least one, usually more, games that do it better (except maybe
for the music, which I will touch upon in more detail later). But the greatness
of Being A DIK is precisely that it
is a jack-of-all-trades, the most well-balanced, nutritious meal you’re getting
in a single setting. If it is indeed true that the man takes care of everything
on his own, without any outside help, he’s not even James Brown — he’s frickin’
Paul McCartney playing all of his instruments on his own. The story, the
renders, the animations, the mini-games, the choice system, the licensed music
tracks... to be able to take care of all that and to take care of it so good, honestly, sometimes I wonder (or,
at least, used to wonder) how much better off Earth might have been if we all
had Dr. PinkCake as Lord God Emperor watching all over us. He’d probably be
able to stop all wars, eliminate taxes, give everybody central heating, and ban dubstep from the airwaves all at
the same time. At least, for the first two seasons of his rule.
Unlike Acting Lessons, a
short game which was largely structured as a single melodramatic story with a
classic story-telling progression, Being
A DIK is more of a TV show equivalent — the diary of a young man going
through the trials and tribulations of college, with all of its ups and downs
but no carefully pre-planned story arc. That said, although the game has
elements of «sandbox» («free roam») gameplay, the overall progression is linear
— it’s not just a dating sim where the main storyline hardly ever takes
precedence over adding more hot bangable chicks to your harem, like Summertime Saga; it’s a «journey into
adulthood», where your character is supposed to gradually progress from the
level of young inexperienced party animal to that of a mature, responsible
member of society with potential of real commitment. Along the way, there’ll be
plenty of specific adventures, but mostly it’s a character study — both you and
your nearby male and female NPCs are supposed to grow and learn to understand
themselves and others (which still, fortunately, leaves plenty of space to get
wild).
This progression, according to Dr. PinkCake’s original plan, may go
along two (or three, if you so prefer) possible paths: the «DIK» route and the
«CHICK» route, or a balance between the two (which, like most «neutral» paths
in choice-based RPGs, is actually the least interesting strategy to take, because,
with a few exceptions, all it does is lock you out of the most exciting
«extreme» choices on either side — you are, in fact, strongly encouraged to
keep two different playthroughs from the very beginning, so as to get the most
out of the game). The «DIK» strategy involves the player being more
mischievous, arrogant, extravert, and (occasionally) asshole-ish, while the
«CHICK» choices are consistently more gentlemanly and considerate of others —
which, of course, means that your chosen path will endear you to a certain type
of girls, while a certain other type
will soon learn to avoid you like the plague. I sometimes lament about the lack
of truly tricky strategies that would somehow allow you to get on the good side
of both Quinn (the game’s equivalent
of Chaotic Evil) and Jill (the embodiment of Lawful Good), but I suppose even
an AVN magician like Dr. PinkCake couldn’t convincingly design such a strategy
on his own, so I guess we’ll have to make good with swapping between different
save files.
That said, much of the time you do have enough leeway to veer between
the «Renegade» (DIK) and «Paragon» (CHICK) sides of things — for instance, be
generally courteous, romantic, and understanding for the ladies but mean and
violent when it comes to handling the gents, be they of the more assholish
persuasion (the Alpha jocks) or even your own pals. If you prefer a single
playthrough, options for your own scenario are nearly limitless — most likely,
though, nobody is going to prefer a single playthrough, because we all come
here for the goodies, and any single playthrough, want it or not, locks you out
of at least some of them unless you make use of unofficial mods or any other
trickery.
Besides, different playthroughs involve doing different things and
holding different conversations with a lot of the NPCs, and Dr. PinkCake’s
principle is that all the NPCs, even
minor ones, should have their own quirks and personalities. As unrealistic as
the college in which most of the action takes place really is (we’ll get down
to that soon enough), it feels like it is populated by real people, not just a
bunch of tits and asses surrounded by a swarm of faceless, interchangeable
minor characters. Most of them have their problems, which you will have to
volunteer to solve if you want to get on their good side, and many of the
choices will be tough to make in the situation of a single playthrough (e.g.
yield to sweet temptation and reap an instant «cheap» reward — or resist it and
hope for a bigger, deeper, more satisfying reward later on).
As he did in Acting Lessons
(and now does it in more details and with more depth), Dr. PinkCake generally
respects his women — despite, every now and then, making a point of poking fun
at «woke» exaggerated feminist values and stuck-up leftist attitudes. Like in
most games, the ladies are generally divided into the «slut» and the «prude»
camps, but the distinction is never black and white, as the «sluts» eventually
reveal their own soul, sensitivity, and intellect, while the «prudes», with the
right approach, can be prodded into revealing their own inner slut as well. All
of this is usually taken at the right pace — not too quickly, but so as not to
leave you blue-balled for too long, either — and with enough realism, as long
as we make peace with the general porn game convention («all women are supposed
to instantly fall for a guy with a sweet smile and a big dick — unless they
don’t quite understand it yet, in which case it’s only a matter of time. A small matter of time»). Well, I guess if
we didn’t have that porn game convention, we probably wouldn’t have any porn
games, so Dr. PinkCake may be excused here for the exact same reason why most
of the women in this game have (on the average) twice as large breast sizes as
you’d expect to see in real life. Porn game conventions!
From the very beginning, game art and animation were among Dr.
PinkCake’s strongest lures as well. Despite working with the same generic DAZ
models as everyone else, he somehow possesses the gift of squeezing more lifelike-ness,
charm, and sexiness from them than the absolute majority of his competitors. I
am not a big fan of the MC (particularly his awful buzz cut which is probably
meant to stress his simple working-class pedigree, but what kind of girl could
really fall for that hair?), but
there is probably not a single girl in the game on which I have not developed
at least a small crush (except the exaggeratedly depicted «woke» feminists, of
course) — even the heavily tattooed ones (and I am normally not a fan of tattoos
in real life porn). Dr. PinkCake is always generous with his renders, shifting
perspective and expression for his characters multiple times over a single
scene, and his girls can do everything — joy, sadness, seriousness,
hilariousness, seduction, rejection, orgasmic bliss, and deep tragedy. A
character like Quinn can remain the Impenetrable Enigma until she softens up to
have almost tender sex with the MC — and a character like Isabella can be the
stern, unbreakable Ice Queen until you thaw her out into an intimate emotional
breakdown.
Animations, generally (though not always) reserved for the sex scenes,
at the time of the game’s first episodes were really at the top of the heap and
still look fine today, though, of course, some developers with bigger budgets
and larger teams can now do technically far more impressive jobs. Technically,
but not substantially: when Dr. PinkCake’s beauties start to shake their tits,
wiggle their asses, or take charge in the cowgirl position, the effect is
absolutely lifelike. The scene in Episode Six where Bella, the Ice Queen
librarian, finally relents and gives you her first titjob, is downright
mesmerizing when it comes to animations — and it’s not just because of the oversized boobs, as the eyes and lips
communicate a whole host of thoughts at the exact moment that her titflesh is
smoothly sliding around your throbbing shaft... whoah, sorry, got carried away
there for a moment.
 |
| "Eyes up here... no, eyes down there... no, up here... oh fuck." |
As if the beautiful visuals and silk-smooth animations weren’t enough,
from the very beginning of the game Dr. PinkCake also made the best use of that
one invisible force which, often, can turn even a generic AVN into an
experience — the
music. The game has
no sound effects, which some people can probably get upset about, but this
seems to have been an intentional «tasteful» decision on the game designer’s
part, and I can respect that: to some, if your characters aren’t voiced,
throwing in sounds of sloppy blowjobs and orgasmic moans can feel weirdly out
of place. But the game does have music a-plenty, and here Dr. PinkCake
continues with the same flair he’d already demonstrated in
Acting Lessons, except on a whole new level, now that his income
has allowed him to license higher quality and more diverse music for various
episodes.
Unfortunately, the tracks that constituted the bulk of the game’s
original musical content and, for a long time, were most closely associated
with Being A DIK — a set of
rambunctious, catchy pop-punk tunes by the Swedish band The Friday Prophets —
eventually had to be removed from the game, apparently, after the band members
understood that the only way they were going to be remembered in this world was
through a porn game (well congrats boys, now that you’ve revoked the license
you aren’t going to be remembered through much of anything). Hopefully there are still some unofficial mods that help
you return the original music, because, honestly, I cannot imagine any of the
episodes of the game’s first two seasons not
opening up with the merry "LET’S GO!!" of ‘Punk Rock Flu’. It’s not
very great music on its own, but it fits perfectly with the game’s
mischievous-but-in-good-fun atmosphere — as does most of the rest, with Dr.
PinkCake collecting a great selection of pop, rock, folk, electronic, and even
classical tracks that always fit and enhance the general mood of the scene.
While some AVN creators pay more attention to musical accompaniment than
others, I can state with certainty that not a single game I’ve played in the
genre even comes close to lavishing the same sonic care on its players as Being A DIK does.
But probably the single greatest thing about Being A DIK — especially if, like myself, you have been steadily
following the new episodes, impatiently waiting for each new one to appear —
was the feeling of expansive growth and endless creativity of its author. Each
new episode was bigger than the previous one, and not because of simplistic and
boring padding (e.g. walls of generic dialog that many AVN creators often fling
at us just to artificially inflate the game’s running time), but because of
real worthwhile reasons. Each episode added new characters with new
personalities, or drastically expanded on the personalities of characters from
previous episodes. Animations got longer and more detailed. New musical tracks
continued to be licensed. Mini-games, winning which helped you get extra
bonuses (such as hidden renders or money), got more challenging — or, if their
challenge was exhausted, got replaced by other mini-games. (I am not generally
a big fan of mini-games in choice-based visual novels, but Dr. PinkCake’s
challenges are so diverse and cover so many bases, from QTE stuff to word games
to puzzlers to everything in between, that I make an exception in his case).
The culminating moment of this growth happened, I believe, sometime
around Episode 6 ("Damage Control"), midway through season 2 of the
game. Not only was it huge, but it had everything, absolutely everything going for it. A swarm of new
music tracks. The mansion-repairing mini-game (quite a marvelous
micro-management simulator). Some moments in the library which finally reminded
us that college is not merely for
having parties and wild sex, but is sometimes, you know, a place for studying.
A long and twisted sequence of D&D playing with different strategies
designed for the DIK and CHICK paths. Most importantly, the best sex scenes up
to date — Josy and Maya proving "for real" that their much-touted
lesbian relationship was not just a trendy put-on; bad girl Quinn showing her
sensitive and vulnerable soul for the first time once the MC takes her under
his wing after her terrible setback (with the accompanying I made a journey through the darkness... soundtrack adding a whole
lot of deep mystery); Isabella’s previously-mentioned titjob actually feeling
like a glorious moment of sexual self-liberation (Origami Pigeon’s ‘We Can’t
Slow Down’ accompanying it really
enhances the atmosphere of "fuck it, I can’t fight this feeling, I want to
just go with the flow and be happy").
At this time, I was ready to forgive all of the game’s weak points — to
which I’ll get in a moment — and just lose myself in this fantastic universe
which seemed to have it all. Burgmeister & Royce really felt like a
paradise, inhabited by the best friends and hottest girls you could only dream
of (or, rather, couldn’t even dream of) in real life. Episode Six is the main
reason why my rating for Being A DIK
will always be a five out of five — no matter what happens in the future,
because a sprawling work of art should always be judged by its peaks, not by
whatever depths it might eventually sink to due to unfavorable circumstances.
THE SAD PART: STAYING A DIK
Unfortunately, though, this is precisely what happened to Being A DIK. Once you’ve gone all the
way to the top, sooner or later, there will be nowhere to go but down — particularly if you have no idea of when
to stop. What I shall write below will, no doubt, sadden (maybe even offend)
the large army of Dr. PinkCake’s fanatical followers who have fallen under the
game’s spell so hard they probably wouldn’t abandon it even if he’d sold the
executive producer rights to Kathleen Kennedy — but while I always try to look
for the best aspects in every AVN I play, and am ready to defend, for various
reasons, a lot of the titles that attract dissatisfied reviews, I also refuse
to put on rose-colored glasses even for my favorite games, and, most
importantly, I am a firm believer in the power of brevity. Like a great TV show, a great episodic game, adult or not,
also has to know when to stop, so as not to descend into boredom,
self-repetition, or even self-parody. At a certain point, great aspects of each
great venture start getting bleak and bring in diminished returns, while the poorer aspects of each such venture
start to show with more and more vehemence. This, alas, was the fate of Being A DIK.
Most of the «endless», episodically released adult games, sooner or
later, end up bogged down in their own problems — but at least those games that
follow the simulator-in-a-sandbox principle can theoretically be kept up running forever, as long as the developer
keeps thinking up small separate stories with various characters, as well as
adding new, fresh faces all the time (this is the way simulators like Mythic Manor and Summertime Saga work, for instance — or, rather, used to work
before their developers got lazy and complacent). Being A DIK, from the start, was different; it wanted to tell a looooong story — a saga of several
tightly interconnected characters within one small environment — and once the
going got good, it decided that the story could pretty much run forever. After
all, the MC has at least four or five years of college before him, so why hurry
and wrap things up?
The problem — and here we go from worshipping Dr. PinkCake’s innumerable
strong sides to reluctantly admitting his weak ones — is that the game creator
is not really all that much of a story-teller. This was already evident with Acting Lessons, which wooed us with its
visuals, music, and player agency, but the story itself was largely an
amalgamation of generic tropes which, if you just stuck to the dialog without
everything else, would be corny, soapy, and shallow. For Being A DIK, Dr. PinkCake did not unexpectedly grow himself any
major writer’s talent. Some of the dialog is tolerable and modestly witty, some
tolerably humorous (this is a college
dramedy, so expect quite a bit of below-the-belt locker-room humor), but on top
of all the porn and all the dirty jokes, Dr. PinkCake wants to pile up drama... and he’s not really good on
drama, unless you’re actually determined to count teary stories of 18-year
olds’ hook-ups and break-ups as modern day Shakespeare.
And as the game goes on, there is more and more drama. Characters
originally introduced as lightweight and sweet get their «personality growth»
through all sorts of traumas and misfortunes and family problems and stuff that
we’ve all read and seen in pulpy novels and cheap sitcoms. Of course there’s going to be family members with terminal
illnesses. Of course there’ll be
weird love triangles. Of course
there’ll be jealousy and revenge and unrealistic coincidences. Of course there’ll be the usual
Romeo-and-Juliet-meet-21st-century stuff, utterly unimaginable in the real
world (one of the most despised antagonists is even called Tybalt, for Chrissake!). As long as the drama is kept relatively in
check — not overwhelming everything else — tolerating it, and even getting
sympathetic to bits of it, especially when it is well fed with the visuals and
the music, is not difficult. But by the end of Season Two, every other aspect
of the game seems to pale and retreat in the corners compared to the Big
Psychological Conflicts of the characters... most of which, frankly speaking,
seem to be puffed up to ridiculous heights.
Given the scope of the game, it would take kilometers of text to
properly explain everything that does not make sense about the emotional
manipulation in the game — but let me limit myself to just one serious point:
in all of its duration, the game still has not managed to properly explain what
kind of intellectual or pragmatic benefits does staying at the «Burgmeister
& Royce» college actually bring. There is not a single student in the game
who is even close to understanding if
this sort of «education» matches his / her dreams and expectations (other than
the «easy credits and vaginas» ideology espoused by our pal Derek, easily the
most honest of them all because he, unlike all the others, has no problem
admitting that he’s nothing but a lazy deadbeat, and proud of it). In fact,
there is not a single student in the game who has any dreams at all — everybody
just lives for the moment, said «moment» usually meaning ‘hooking up’ and
‘partying all night long’. Even the admittedly diligent and earnest ladies like
Jill or Maya mainly just... exist, as objects of the MC’s admiration and lust.
Because of this, it is difficult — impossible, even — to take any of the
game’s drama that is directly related to college life seriously. The worst
culprit is unquestionably the big plot line that has to do with Maya’s
inability to pay her tuition: it’s one thing to never have heard of student
loans (or maybe they just don’t exist in Dr. PinkCake’s alternate universe),
but quite another thing to make us care for a character whose happiness depends
on being able to stay in a place whose usefulness has always been in doubt from
the very beginning. Dr. PinkCake does not seem to understand that Big Drama
does not grow on any random tree branch on which you decide to stick it; Big
Drama needs proper context, and if he has failed to present his imaginary
university as a place whose attraction runs beyond the simple pleasures of beer
in a plastic cup and pussy galore, how can
there be any believable drama attached to this place? And how justified can it
be to expose us to more and more and more of that drama with each new episode?
But where the game really hit
rock bottom with the melodramatic approach was in between Seasons 2 and 3, with
the lengthy «Interlude» that temporarily took the agency from our MC and put it
in the hands of his former crush, Zoey. Apart from one nice sex scene and an
okayish temporary change in art style with Zoey’s diary (very strong Life Is Strange vibes in there), to me
this felt like a couple hours of time wasted on resisting being emotionally
manipulated into sympathizing with a confused teen making all sorts of stupid
decisions, socializing with a bunch of largely unsympathetic deadbeats (if you
are a great fan of tattoo art, this will make things easier for you; I am not,
which made this a more aggravating factor). There was no humor. No dialog
suggesting even the tiniest hints at these characters’ individuality (they were
just cut-outs spewing the usual life-is-hard-but-life-is-beautiful banalities).
No dialog depth extending beyond the blandest, regurgitated philosophical /
therapeutical common places and clichés. And, worst of all, almost no lewd stuff — as if Dr.
PinkCake had finally forgotten the game’s one true purpose, converting himself
into believing that Being A DIK is,
first and foremost, Great Modern Drama with a bit of adult content for extra
artistic purposes (and not just to satisfy your loins). If not for the fact
that Episode Nine at least redeemed itself with some heavy action, I might have
dropped the game in frustration back there and then.
Speaking of heavy action, though, there is another serious looming
problem here. Theoretically, sandbox-styled games like Summertime Saga or Mythic
Manor can run forever, like GTA
Online, because all their creators have to do is occasionally come up with
new mini-stories and create tons of extra side characters to keep things fresh.
But Being A DIK, despite having an
impressive variety of girls for you to choose, is a story with a plot, meaning
that, want it or not, you have to keep the emphasis on your main characters —
Maya, Josy, Bella, Jill, Sage, Quinn, and others. Sooner or later, interacting
with them, both emotionally and physically, is bound to run out of steam. They cannot simply go on uncovering
hitherto hidden aspects of their personalities forever — so every once in a
while, Dr. PinkCake has to resort to really weird deus-ex-machina plot twists
that become less and less believable as the game goes on. And sex? Gradually
«conquering» each of the girls over the first two seasons is great, but where
exactly can you go once the conquest is made? At least in Episode Nine, Dr.
PinkCake came up with the idea of the Halloween setting, taking the cosplay aspect
of the game to its limits. But already in Episode Ten, once the partying is
(temporarily) over, much of the fucking becomes perfunctory, just fucking for
fucking’s sake — something that might be great in real life, but can’t help but
become tedious on-screen.
And the developer’s decision to «stick to realism» does not really help
in this situation — things could certainly be spiced up if we saw, for
instance, our hero have a threesome with Jill and Quinn, or introducing Jill to the joys of anal sex, or
double-teaming one of the girls with Derek (though I suppose most fans of the
game aren’t really into sharing), but any such fantasies would go against the
rules of the Being A DIK universe,
so... can’t be done. (To alleviate this issue, we have the «special render»
system, but these are just isolated fantasy pics, not full-fledged scenes). Not
that the rules of that universe always match those in the real world — have you
ever seen a real-life college that would allow its students to dress that sluttily on campus? or its
teachers, for that matter — but they do have their own logic. And by Season
Three, that logic has pretty much run its course with most of the established
characters. There is nothing refreshingly new we can learn about them, unless
Dr. PinkCake decides to spring another unbelievable Luke-I-am-your-father jack-in-the-box at us.
One thing I have noticed is that the last few episodes of the game have
attracted a lot of user complaints about the pervasiveness of annoying and
distracting mini-games — something that rarely happened in Seasons 1 and 2,
even if mini-games had always been an integral part of the whole experience,
and, like everything else, actually kept getting better and better with each
new episode. It is true that they got a bit more complicated and demanding in
the latest season (like the math class game, for instance, which has subtly
progressed from kindergarten level to a genuine puzzler), causing extra
headaches for those who just want to relax and have fun. But I think the real
discomfort comes not from the games as such, but more with the fact that we now
perceive these games as desperate filler, masking the lack of fresh new ideas.
The typical episode used to be something like FUNNY — MINI-GAME — FUNNY — DRAMA
— LEWD — FUNNY — MINI-GAME — HOT SEX — DRAMA. Now it’s more like DRAMA — DRAMA
— MINI-GAME — MORE DRAMA — MINI-GAME — NOT TOO FUNNY — LEWD — DRAMA — DRAMA —
DRAMA — DRAMATICALLY DRAMATIC DRAMA — MINI-GAME — A BIT OF SEX (finally!).
Another frequent complaint is about the free roam sections, which I
wouldn’t mind too much if they were equipped with a better navigation system —
getting from Point A to Point B in any of the frat / sorority mansions is
always a chore because the direction arrows tend to be confusing. Other than
that, the free roams were generally designed with the noble purpose of
rewarding the player for being attentive, inquisitive, and curious — during
these, you had the option to play extra mini-games on your phone, search for
cleverly hidden special renders, do tasks for extra money, and pick up brief
additional encounters for more relationship points with the girls or friendship
points with the boys. But, again, as time went by, the free roam sections
became bigger and bigger, sometimes disorienting and confusing rather than
entertaining, and ultimately just pissing off the not-so-patient players.
Again, it would not be so bad if
each of the free roams had its own identity. And earlier in the game, they did
(there were short free roams in your house, in the different dorms and
mansions, in Bella’s house, etc.). But eventually, «free roams» began to
correspond to «parties» — and it became just one party after another, one after
another, so that I finally lost count. At some point, everything in Being A DIK
started revolving around parties. If you’re not having a party, you’re probably
preparing for one, or recovering from a hangover after one before it’s time to
start planning for the next party. Yes, we get it, frat life is about partying
— but I, for one, would think that there’s pretty much nowhere to go after the
huge-as-heck Halloween party in Episode Nine, and yet here we go again...
Cutting an already overlong story short: Being A DIK is a game that, as of today, can be accused of falling
to its own greatness. With the first two seasons (all the way up to Episode
Six, to be precise), Dr. PinkCake set the AVN bar as high as it could possibly
go — that would have been the perfect
point to start thinking about how to quit while still on top. Perhaps that one
super-important choice you make at the end of Season 2 — going steady with one
of your main love interests or staying single and open to hook-ups — should
have been the final big choice of the
game, rather than simply the beginning of a very painful process where each new
episode now had to feature at least five or six seriously divergent paths, each
of which drastically limited your options (I have to keep about a dozen
different save files now to get access to all of the game’s content, instead of
the former two, one for the DIK route and one for the CHICK one). Perhaps that
big, sprawling, visually inventive Halloween mega-party could have been the
final big event of the game, heralding a new start for our MC. Perhaps all of
his choices and decisions could be somehow summarized at that point, counting
to your ability or inability to select the ending that works best for you.
Perhaps...
...but anyway, it’s too late for dreaming. Miracles do happen every once
in a while, and I, for one, would be glad to see Being A DIK somehow managing to return to its former glory — except
that I think it’s about as possible at present as finding the Fountain of Youth
or breaking the speed of light. I will, of course, continue to follow the
game’s progress — out of respect and admiration for Dr. PinkCake’s former
glories, if nothing else — and like I already said, I reserve the right to
update or modify this review as I see fit. But for now, to me, Being A DIK is six episodes of funny,
touching, and ridiculously hot entertainment, followed by a long after-life in
which blandness and tediousness occasionally mix with flashes of nostalgic
bliss. For those six episodes alone, my rating is forever fixed at five stars
and won’t ever budge, no matter to which potential depths of boredom the game
might sink in the future. But somewhere in here lies a hidden lesson to artists:
Remember your natural limits. Don’t lose your head over success. Try not to
succumb to fan pressure or commercial gain. Retire — or, at least, change your
game — while you’re still on top. Do you really want to go the way of The Office or Lost?
Bottomline: Thank you, Dr. PinkCake, for giving us a beautiful and unforgettable masterpiece
of a game. And damn you, Dr. PinkCake, for slowly and inevitably turning your
masterpiece into a trainwreck.
