Sociolotronics Review

Socio, as its fans refer to it, has just finally gone live after being in beta for a full two years. A ground breaking effort in several regards, which is made all the more remarkable by the fact, that it was all been created by a single developer!! This bizaare game is an electric mix of multi-user sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. It defies all efforts to categorize it. I'm not sure where to even start in trying to explain it. Unlike any of the mainstream reviews I've read about it, I'm not going to act like I'm all shocked about any of the stuff that goes on here, ok? Afterall, we're all adults here and you are reading this on an adult site, right?

Multi-User
Yes, the game is multi-user, although not as massively like your Cities of Heroes or Worlds of Warcraft. The game currently has a player base numbering somewhere in the hundreds, but this actually works in its favor. As you begin to play, you start to notice familar faces after awhile, and pretty soon you have made a group of friends. Unlike the massive A-list titles, where you can play for weeks and never really get to know anyone outside of your guild, here you'll actually get to interact and converse with people. Then you start learning things about them, what they like, whom they like, and before you know it, you are sucked into a fantasy world of unlike anything you've ever experienced. The drama here knows no bounds, and you can't resist getting the daily gossip, because it feels like you're hearing about real people you know. Rest assured this is all STRICTLY adults only, we're talking some really wicked and twisted stuff, gobs of sex, back stabbing, murder, rape, kidnapping, payoffs, dirty money, your imagination is the limit!

Role-Playing
One of my favorite parts of the game, is that most players are really role-playing. You don't typically run into people arguing out of character over which p2p technology is the latest and greatest, or stuff like that. People make their toons (avatars, characters, etc) with actual personalities, crazy I know, since this type of game play has all but disappeared in the last 5 years with the glut of first person shooters and RTS games. There is only one game server, so unlike some games that have some servers for RP and some without, there's is just the one with RP. Thankfully, if you do happen to slip out of character, most people don't bat an eyelash. Of course, you'll always have that one fanatic who will complain if you break his immersion. Bottom line, if you happen to be an old school MUD player like me, you will *love* this game!!

For the Men
One of the great things I've found is that there are actually a lot of women who play this game, like around a 50/50 mix, which I still cannot comprehend. If someone told me there was a game like this, I would have bet money - cold hard cash - that there was like 1 girl for every 100 guys. For some reason I can't quite fathom yet, thankfully I was dead wrong. There are no shortage of women about, and for the most part, they all seem to be looking to have as much sex as the guys! W00t!! Very curious about this, I took some informal polls from the fairer sex. Mostly they seem to be refugees from other MMORPGs, that were disappoined by the lack of sex in those games. They come to Socio to live out romance novel fantasies, and yes, sometimes even rape fantasies. Oh my!

For The Ladies
If you happen to be of the female persausion and aren't offended by a good old fashion romp in the hay, you should check this game out. There seems to be a lot of appeal to both sexes here as I mentioned above, although being a man, I can't exactly put my finger on it, but all these women here seem to really love it! Whether you're looking for a white knight in shining armor to defend your honor, to play the part of a good little subby who wants nothing more than to please her master, or you want to be a Xena inspired bad ass bitch who can take any man on in a fair fight, there seems to be a role to fulfill any ladies fantasy!

Good vs. Evil
As with any good game, there is the classic struggle of good vs. evil. You can play any type of character thru any shade of grey imaginable. Want to be the most horrid, despicable serial killer that ever lived? Want to be a hardened detective toiling away to put bastards like that behind bars? Either way, in this game, you can do it. The fascinating thing is that if you do it well and role-play, stay within the rules, people will love your character, even if you are pure evil. In fact, the women here absolutely love a scoundrel, if you play the part well and aren't a just another jerk. The old adage "nice guys sleep alone" can certainly ring true in this world. Most of the women I found will swoon at your feet if you have a splash of macho bravado, but can manage to keep just a notch below arrogant bastard. Now if you're just another l33t d00d looking to ruin everyone else's fun, you will be hunted down and killed, a lot. And not in a good way either. Perhaps surprisingly, a lot of guys find it's actually easier to play a good guy, I guess because most of us are pretty good at heart, right? ;-)

UI
The UI is broken up into several areas, there is a large window showing the graphics, a text output window, a text input window, a control window, a paperdoll, and an inventory window. The graphics here are 2D isometric, like the Diablo games. Honestly, they are passible, but pitiful compared to an A-list title. But while you may get to stare at Night Elves ample bosoms in WoW all damn day, you'll never get to do the things to them that you can do here!! The toons here actually kinda hot in their own way. The interface to move around and interact with other players and objects is notoriously bad and quirky. With no tutorial in the game, you will spend your first hour struggling just to move around in the world. Single clicks here, double there, right button for this, left for that, it's going to take you a couple days to get the hang of it all. The text window contains textual descriptions of many in game actions, people speaking to you, etc. There is also a lot of 'sex dialog' that appears in the output window while you're busy getting your groove on. Frankly, a lot of this text is odd, bizarre, and down right repulsive to read, even to me as a guy. I asked some of the players about this in another one of my informal polls, and while there is an interface option to turn the sex text off, most people leave it on. You just see the text often enough, you get acclimated to it after awhile, and don't really pay that much attention to it. Most of time during sex, your partners will be using emote commands to be more descriptive about what they are doing anyways. Apparently, the 'sex text' quickly becomes a non-issue, even for women.

The Sex
The good news is, you WILL have sex. And I mean, a lot of sex. You will have so much sex, you will even turn down offers of having sex. Thankfully, the game designer built in many, many reasons why you need to have sex into the game, so even if you don't want to have sex, quite often your toon will *need* it. After all, even they have urges and needs that must be satisfied, literally! So males and females alike, find themselves having sex constantly, ok, well I'll say once a day! And yes, in the rare event you can't find anyone else, you can masterbate!! OK, I know, I know, you want to hear what the sex is like, right??! Well, it is quite amazing the number of positions you can have sex with another person! We're talking just about any type of sex, hand jobs, oral sex, vaginal, and yes guys even anal!! (Put your tongue back in your mouth Fido.) For each type of sex, there are from 6 to 12 different positions you can chose from, some of these I've never even tried in real life!! The sex itself is nice and messy, just like in the pornos, heh heh. The sex text that scrolls by is extremely graphic, often bordering on offensive, but of course, you're really too horny to complain about it. There are a few notable missing features here, like being able to 69, and for us real sluts, you can't have multiple partners at the same time. Sorry DP lovers, you'll have to use emotes to simulate that!

Consequences
One of the most interesting things about this game, is that yes, you can do anything you want in this game even without other people's consent. However, there are always consequences!! This gives the game a terrific feel to it, missing in all the other games out there. Want to knock over that store and steal their stuff? Well you can, but there will be a crime scene afterwards, and a good detective will make case against you, and send you down the river! Yes, your toon may very well spend a week trapped in jail for it. Yes, I mean a real week of your life with your toon trapped in jail. Want to rape that sweet, supple lady walking down the street? Go right ahead and try, but be ready to defend yourself as she uses her cellphone to call for help and a dozen fully armored guys show up in seconds ready to beat your ass. You better be prepared to run fast if things go south! Of course, all this sex also gives way to fun stuff like kids and venerial diseases! (Children are how you carry on your family line in the case you are perma-killed.) Cheat on your wife? Well when you show up at home and a big glob of pussy juice you forgot to wipe off splashes on the floor in front of her, pots and pans will be flying at the homestead!! Guess what? She'll throw you out, change the locks on the house, and you'll spend the night sleeping with the bums on the benches at the train station.

Player driven
A cool feature of the game is that the economy is 100% player driven. By this I mean players must harvest all the raw materials, players must do all the crafting of items, all stores are run by players, virtually everything you buy and use in the game, was made by another player. Also the entire government and justice system works the same way. The judge, the prosecutor, the jury? All players! So yes, if you have the money and got caught doing something you shouldn't have, perhaps slipping a little bribe to prosecutor to 'accidentally' lose your case is in order. Or perhaps you could hatch a scheme to kidnap the judge's wife and hold her hostage until you are found innocent? Surely he won't notice a few extra miles you put on her while you had her chained up in your personal dungeon, right? Maybe if you were good enough, she'll secretly start coming back to you begging for more of your unique brand of punishment afterwards? Oh the scandal!! Now you better watch out for who sees her showing up at your doorstep in the middle of the night, if a nosy journalist happens across your little tryst, you could make the headlines tommorrow in the papers! Oh the shit will hit the fan after that!!

But that's not all !!
The ruleset for this game is extremely rich and complicated, I'm talking orders of magnitude more than other games. I've been playing the beta for six months, and I still learn new things every day. There is just so much I haven't even covered here in this review, magic spells, secret cults, demons, and for you really naughty boys and girls, nine planes of hell to explore!!

Final Results:

Game Play	Awesome. The depth of things you can do in this game is mind boggling.
Graphics	Poor, but thankfully the toons have killer bods! Medium if you happen to like 2D isometric views like I do.
Sound	None, there are a couple sounds here and there, but typically you'll be listening to CDs while you play.
UI	Poor/Medium You'll get used to the quirks soon enough.
Stability/ Uptime	Medium. As we get closer to final the server crashes have largely cleared up. There is a daily outage for server maintenance.
Cost	Very afforable. Currently only $4 for your first month, and $9.95 each month afterwards. Unlike the A-list titles, you don't have to pay anything for the software!
Player Interaction	Off the charts!! After you pump your first load in some hooker's ass, (or whatever you personal fantasy is) you'll be coming back to play every day.