Finding Eros

Game developers and publishers are becoming more cunning and creative when it comes to dealing with nudity in computer games. Rather than just having a slideshow of pretty girls in various states of undress (too obvious an approach, and too hard to stand out from the crowd), they're designing it so that if you want basic (and we're talking about as basic as you can get) titillation, then you have to earn it via low-level gameplay challenges.

One such example is Finding Eros, where you're given two small, poorly defined images of an anime-style semi-naked woman, one of which has five incredibly small differences from the other one. The object of the game is to spot and label those five differences before the time runs out. Simple. But here the developer has tried to add some backstory, as believe it or not, there's actually a point to all this.

The plot has to be read to be believed. Computers rule the world. You are a hacker, living on the run while battling the computers. You're task is to hack the main computer A.Y.U. of the affiliated group Avalon, penetrate the security system, find five system errors in the software and expose fake guardians.

Right, so reading between the lines, it's all nonsense and completely unrelated to the game until you get to the last sentence. The 'five system errors' are the five differences between the two pictures – often cunningly disguised as a missing nipple, birth mark or stocking top. And the fake guardians are, we presume, something to do with naked ladies with large eyes and enormous breasts. If that's the case, then it's certainly fair to call them fake, as they look nothing like any woman we've ever seen.

Despite the simplicity of the gameplay and the obvious dubiousness of the imagery, the game behind all this nonsense is actually mildly enjoyable. The differences in the first of the seven images are fairly obvious, but it doesn't take long before you're stuck. Then it's impossible not to feel slightly wrong with the whole idea, as you stare intently at a breast or bum cheek, looking for a slight (and they're usually very slight) difference.

When you do find the differences, all you need to do is add a tick and you're on to the next one. The timer does give you 90 seconds for each round, but that soon goes, and things are hindered further by the arrival of a series of 'magnets' (small rotating lines) that move slowly around the picture and knock off one of your four lives if they touch you.

Finding Eros isn't a bad game, and it's certainly not as offensive as something like Vivid Bombs 'N Boobs, but it still falls into the trap of relying on poor and tasteless imagery to try and disguise the fact that the actual game behind it all is subpar.