Gamma Gals by Christopher Cole

I've only recently become familiar with Cole's work, since it was only
this year (2002) that he started releasing games. As it turns out, he's an
excellent game designer who's produced some high quality games, among which
Gamma Gals stands out as among the best.

The Good Points:

The point of Gamma Gals is to have sex with every member your
girlfriend's sorority. To convince each of the girls to give it up, you must
complete certain things for them, ranging from the typical "find item A and
give it to person B" to more abstract (and rewarding) puzzles that require
you to gain information rather than objects. That's really where the game
stands out; each NPC can be questioned about all the other NPCs, and in
order to get several of the girls, you have to use the information you learn
from others. While lots of IF games are just a boring scavenger hunt, Gamma
Gals requires you to actually interact with the NPCs in order to win the
game, rather than just walk into the room, hand over the item, do your
business, and leave.

The sex scenes themselves are not overly long, but they are well
written and contain a good amount of detail. When scenes take several
screens to finish, I tend to get bored, but when they're just a line or two,
I feel almost cheated. Cole has found an excellent middle point between the
two, the scenes being long enough, and well written enough, to hold my
interest without boring me enough to just skip it and go to the next one.
After all, there's only so many ways you can describe sex, and if you use
them all in the first few scenes, there's not much point in including more
scenes, is there?

The Bad Points:

To be honest, there's not much bad I can say about this game. The
characters all consist of sex-crazed perverts, but after all, isn't that
what we've come to expect from AIF? To ask for more would seem silly. Also,
the characters seem to enjoy dropping important things under and behind
pieces of furniture, so the two or three items you do need to find require
you to pore over the damn house looking for them. Other than that, though, I
have no real complaints.

Overview:

All in all, Gamma Gals is an excellent game, and definitely one of the
best I've played. With the large number of NPCs, there's plenty of variety,
and for the most part the puzzles are actually fun to figure out, rather
than the standard scavenger hunt fare. The game is long enough that it might
take more than one setting to beat it, but short enough that you'll likely
come back to play it over again. In case you haven't noticed, my point is
that Cole has found the excellent middle ground here, everything about the
game sitting nicely in the middle, so to speak, appealing to everybody. It's
odd that taking the average attributes of AIF should create such an
above-average game.