Live Magazine February Issue February 2014 | Page 20

RIDE TO HELL: RETRIBUTION
(Eutechnyx, Deep Silver) (2013)

Good lord, what an awful game. Trying to horn in on the popularity of the TV series Sons of Anarchy, Ride to Hell offered a broken and completely boring game with absolutely no redeeming qualities. The icing on the cake however,
was a fairly hardcore (yet fully-clothed) sex scene early in the game between the game’s protagonist and some
random woman he helps out of an abusive relationship. Because that’s what women want, right? To be saved from
one violent pervert by another, and then violated through denim jeans?
There are other sex scenes in the game, and absolutely none of them make sense. It feels like the developer gave
up on creating a decent game and just added the sex scenes in to make up for an absolutely garbage product. I
would say that the sex in the game crosses the line, but Ride to Hell gets nothing right at all, even its tacked-on sex
scenes.

MASS EFFECT

(Bioware, EA Games) (2007 - 2012)
Bioware’s Mass Effect series has some of the best dialogue and relationships found in any AAA games. The
sex presented in the game is mature, but it still managed
to cause a stir based on the presence of homosexual relationships. Damned if they did and damned if they didn’t,
the fact that to women could have a sexual relationship
but two men couldn’t infuriated many gamers and caused
debates on both sides of the argument. The reasons behind the lack of a male to male relationship are still up in
debate. Some say the male Commander Shepard voice
actor refused to record homosexual dialogue, while others say EA games pressured Bioware to remove it out of
the game for fear of hindered sales.
The sex scenes in question were tasteful, and only occurred at the culmination of a well-developed relationship
between two characters. I actually think that if more people viewed sex and sexuality in the same light as Bioware, the subject of sex in gaming would be more widelyaccepted.