Still tangled

Okay, so the write up for Love Tangle was getting seriously long so I thought I'd do a part deux. I'm still kinda surprised I'm still playing it but it's the same reason as before -- it's easy. And now I've got lots of stuff in it. Still haven't spent any money on it either.

Anyway...when last I wrote, I had just started on Miguel, the Olympic swimmer. I did finish his route and it was decent. The MC was a bit more...um...thirsty in this one. At least, she sure did think about his swimmer bod a lot. And he was a nice guy, so I don't have any particular complaints. I wouldn't say it wowed me either. No hankering to write fan fiction or revisit him, if you know what I mean. On the plus side, during the early chapters where you're still officially torn between the two characters, I did figure out that Nolan (who always seems like such an ass in other people's routes) might actually be a decent guy. So I'll probably do his route at some point.

Yeah. Dean totally takes a bullet for you. Talk about dedication.

After that, I went onto the Dean route. He's the "cheerful but unlucky" policeman and is paired up with Wylder, the artist. There's a whole plot about a big discovery at the lab and some evil corporate pharmaceutical company that wants to steal the data. Dean does a whole lot of saving the day in this route. Dude gets shot. Wylder's connection to him is that he was also once saved by him. Plot-wise, this was probably one of the better ones that at least somewhat made sense (well...okay, not really, but at least it was more thrilling than most). Dean is unflappably cheerful for someone who considers himself cursed with bad luck. Their relationship seems fairly balanced, so...all in all, not bad for this app.

Around the end of the Dean route, they released a brand new route for Earl. He's paired up with Celina, the first female love interest in the game. However, she's not released yet (though presumably she'll be coming next). So I'm doing Earl's route to get all the goodies you get with a new release (Steampunk outfits this time! I hate to admit I am slightly excited as I do like steampunk stuff, though the dress up your avatar thing is definitely NOT why I play these games).

Earl is an extremely anti-social taciturn computer programmer genius dude. Which, okay, I kinda get it -- I used to work at IBM. I worked with those guys. But heaven knows I never tried to romance one. Besides the fact that I was married, they're...um...fairly intolerable to chat with. And so is Earl. I mean, it's like pulling teeth in this route. The MC's attraction for him seems to be completely out of left field and with absolutely NO encouragement from Earl at all. It's really rather painful. If I weren't playing for the steampunk gear and extra bonuses, I'd probably have quit by now. There are hints of Celina being a bit of a sly dog too, but at least she's friendly.

I'm probably about 2/3 of the way through now and I can say that the story is pretty much telegraphed loud and clear and I'm not all that wowed by it. This time it's hackers but...eh...just not feeling it. Probably because I'm just not feelin' Earl. And his name. Earl. That is not the name of a computer programmer. That's the name of a guy who drives a pickup truck with a gun rack in the back.

Maybe I'll go back to Nolan or Wylder after this one is over. I'm still mostly saving up gems or diamonds or whatever they are for Timo.

Edit: So, finished the Earl route. Very meh about the whole thing. He never really improved at all. The story didn't make much sense: hey, yo, I'm a whitehat hacker and I burned down buildings with police knowledge but it's okay because it was to stop potential terrorist recruitment activities (because, of course, burning empty buildings would totally stop them) and who cares, insurance will pay for it anyway...um, what? That's not how things work. The whole hacker thing here also made no sense. And they even claimed he developed his own operating system and "everyone" uses it? WTF? Is he supposed to be a more attractive but even more socially inept Bill Gates?

And, at the end, he goes off on some kind of self-imposed sojourn, comes back after creeping on you by more or less bugging your computer via a little hacking thing he gave you before he left (not that he told you what it did), leaves a cryptic message for you to meet him at the airport, and then grabs and kisses you when you get there even though he had, up until that point, given NO indication of any romantic interest in you whatsoever. In fact, he pretty much tells you to go away throughout the entire route. But, stupid scientist that you are, you're okay with this. So, yeah. MEH.  Definitely not my route. Made me wonder all over again why I'm still playing this one.

So I'm back on to do Nolan's route now.

Edit: So, yeah, I did Nolan's route. It's weird. They made him relatively decent (compared to how he always is in all the other routes) in the first chapters up to the decision point where you have to choose him over Miguel. And then...boom...he becomes a pompous ass again. I wouldn't say he's the worst that this game has thrown at me, but I also wouldn't say it was particularly enjoyable and, eh, character development? On either side? Not so much.

But I finished it. Mostly because I'd gotten so far along that it seemed a waste not to finish it and get the diamonds and story tickets you get if you finish. Miguel was better.

And they've now released the Celina route (with the special event stuff), so I'm doing that even though I didn't find her particularly interesting. Haven't made it out of the first chapters yet, but we'll see. At least I'm racking up some diamonds to use on Timo. I'm hinging my hopes on him still. There's gotta be one route in this game that's good all the way through...right?