You are about to enter a fantasy quite unlike anything you've ever seen or felt before - a fantasy built from the stuff of your very own mind. Tender Loving Care is not just a finely crafted suspense story; it's an exploration into your innermost perceptions, opinions, and attitudes. The unfolding story is shaped and changed by your responses to it, so that no two people will experience Tender Loving Care in exactly the same way.
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One of the best examples of "so bad, its good" 90's FMV games I’ve experienced, Tender Loving Care is a bonkers mix of 90's “erotic” thriller and Lifetime movie. Watch John Hurt get more and more confused and disgusted as you descend into a torrent of the most divorced cis straight guy thoughts on psychology and sex imaginable; where bisexual women are all nymphomaniacs, homosexuality is weird unless its two traditionally attractive women making out, and the only minor mention of transgender identity is essentially treated as mental illness. This game would make Sigmund Freud tell them to simmer it down with the sex obsession. The game actually seems rather reactive with the questions John Hurt gives you after each chapter as there are multiple different endings and scenes that can play out depending on them. As I said ultimately this game is bad, but man it’s the kind of deranged purestrain FMV shenanigans we could only get out of the 90’s and never again. Definitely entertaining.
This is what straight men think bisexual women are like.
As a film, TLC is a feeble low budget Basic Instinct/Hand That Rocks the Cradle mash up that might hold your attention if it was 3am and you were under the influence. But as a game, it's an insanely hilarious camp-fest featuring John Hurt asking you wildly invasive sexually probing questions, rippled with classic movie clips and deranged diary entries from the characters. A fabulous experience for those with the right sense of humor.
Grief can show itself in ‘interesting’ ways
this game is absolutely awful in every way BUT, its also incredibly funny, so
Some of the guys behind THE 7TH GUEST and THE 11TH HOUR go full 'interactive movie' and make an FMV erotic thriller. It turns out about as well as you would think.
The story is about three things: dealing with the loss of a child, psychotherapy, and sex, but let's be clear, it's really just that last one. The writing and presentation go far out of their way to try to class it up, but it's very obvious that they just wanted to make the "first" "adult" video game. It's overwhelmingly horny, but in a desperate, lame, middle-aged-guy-who-drives-a-red-convertible sort of way. So, needless to say, not 'erotic' in the fucking least.
Both the plot and the interactive bits (with certain scenes and the ending being changeable based on exploration, reading optional documents, and your answers to dumb psychological quizzes) hinge upon each of the major characters' motivations being ambiguous for most of the story, with their (variable) true intentions being revealed only at the end. The problem with this is that, with the exception of a hopefully well-paid John Hurt (who literally cannot help but lend some gravitas), none of the no-name actors in the other roles have anywhere near the chops necessary to carry that balancing act off, and the result is wild shifts in characterization and gaping plot holes if you end up following certain paths. Credit is due with regards to the endings - there are some pretty different outcomes possible, and they all work on paper, but many just feel wrong with the rest of the game, given that the awkward performances are either clearly leading in one direction for 95% of the thing, or are just schizophrenic and nonsensical the whole time. The writers bit off way more than the performers and the director could chew.
Tedium and pretention covering up dull game design ideas, pedestrian psychoanalysis, and cringey, basic-ass sexual fixations.
The story is about three things: dealing with the loss of a child, psychotherapy, and sex, but let's be clear, it's really just that last one. The writing and presentation go far out of their way to try to class it up, but it's very obvious that they just wanted to make the "first" "adult" video game. It's overwhelmingly horny, but in a desperate, lame, middle-aged-guy-who-drives-a-red-convertible sort of way. So, needless to say, not 'erotic' in the fucking least.
Both the plot and the interactive bits (with certain scenes and the ending being changeable based on exploration, reading optional documents, and your answers to dumb psychological quizzes) hinge upon each of the major characters' motivations being ambiguous for most of the story, with their (variable) true intentions being revealed only at the end. The problem with this is that, with the exception of a hopefully well-paid John Hurt (who literally cannot help but lend some gravitas), none of the no-name actors in the other roles have anywhere near the chops necessary to carry that balancing act off, and the result is wild shifts in characterization and gaping plot holes if you end up following certain paths. Credit is due with regards to the endings - there are some pretty different outcomes possible, and they all work on paper, but many just feel wrong with the rest of the game, given that the awkward performances are either clearly leading in one direction for 95% of the thing, or are just schizophrenic and nonsensical the whole time. The writers bit off way more than the performers and the director could chew.
Tedium and pretention covering up dull game design ideas, pedestrian psychoanalysis, and cringey, basic-ass sexual fixations.