Virtual Dreams Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  4/3/2003

Running Time: approx. 52 min.

Production Date: 4 / 22 / 2002 through 8 / 22 / 2002

Director: None credited (probably at his or her request)

Cast: Nikita Deninse, Kelly Erikson, and “you”

Initial Expectations: I’m really curious about this one, and not quite sure what to expect.

Initial Reaction: It’s a dream all right, but not a good one.

Who Should Watch It : Extreme fans of Nikita Denise and Kelly Erikson

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody curious about voice activated or virtual sex DVDs

Audio /Video Quality: The audio is very clear and well balanced. It’s easily the best thing done on the DVD. The video is normally very good, but has problems. There are some bad flashes of pixelation during the sex portion of the feature, and some of the extra footage also has some noticeable pixelation.

Music: None.

Disc Problems: The voice activation part of the DVD doesn’t work. Considering this is the major draw for this DVD, I feel more than a little upset and thank God that I got this one as a screener rather than actually paying for it. The cover states that it’s compatible with Windows XP, 98, 2000, and ME, of which I operate on XP. When I found out that things wouldn’t work, I checked the website listed in the instruction manual for technical support, which is about as useful as a Democrat when it comes to cutting taxes. I didn’t find anything on the website different from what was in the manual.

Since that was a dead end, I e-mailed the technical support at Metro. I listed the two problems I was given, told them what I was running and all the little details. I even gave them a phone number they could contact me during the day to set something up, but suggested that since I’m very hard to get a hold of it might be easier to give me a number to call them and I’d call them. That was on Monday the 17th of March. I heard back from them on the 19th of March. Okay, they said they try to get back within 24 hours and I think I e-mailed them at night on the 17th. I’m more than happy with that response time.

The message however, was a different matter. They told me that the first problem was the uninstaller wouldn’t work, which didn’t seem to be too big of a deal. The second problem they thought was due to the program not fully installing so I should reinstall the program. This was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the error, so I tried reinstalling the program before I ever e-mailed them. I told them this when I replied back to them within forty five minutes of their e-mail (or forty one minutes to be exact since it was 10:28 am to 11:09 am) and asked them what next. I’m still waiting to hear back from them. At this time, it’s been over two weeks! I’m now realizing that if a programmer can’t figure out how to correctly code an uninstaller, there probably isn’t too much hope for the rest of the program.

After this kind of experience with Metro’s attempt at voice activated software, all I can do is recommend to people to wait a little longer for VCA to come out with their Double O Blonde with the voice activated feature. VCA was originally planning on bringing it out roughly two months ago, and it still hasn’t shown. They’ve shown themselves to be very meticulous in the past, and the only reason I can think of them taking this long is that they think it’s better to be a little slower and do something right than be the first and do such a horrible job that people think Vivid’s first attempts at multiple angles were the best thing since ribbed condoms.

Sadly, the voice activation fiasco isn’t the end of the problems. Some parts of the DVDs kicked me out when I tried playing it without the voice activation. During the section with Kelly Erikson, I could only watch her and Nikita work on each other. When I tried the ‘Suck Me’ choice, it went to the Metro Website screen and booted me when I tried anything. I could get the ‘Oral’ selection to work from the main menu, but when that was finished, rather than looping back, it also booted me out. There are also appear to be selections that are available with the voice activated mode that aren’t in the regular mode. I didn’t see anything like an ass to mouth type oral action available in the movie, the option to spank Nikita, or the ability to cum on her feet. By the time I found these things out, though, the problems were just like flies on the cowpie. They’re annoying but what else do you expect from a pile of crap.

False Advertising: Of course there’s the voice activation not working, but I’ve covered that enough already. More importantly, though, the cover makes it look like you get to have sex with both Nikita Denise and Kelly Erikson. The DVD is almost entirely Nikita, with Kelly only being featured for maybe a quarter of the DVD. It also claims that there are pop-shots in every position, when they’re only available in three of the four positions. Once again, it’s just more flies.

Menus: The main menu is okay at best. It seems more concerned with advertising Metro’s website than focusing on the feature itself, and the areas to select where you want to go in the DVD are small and not organized well. You can choose between the movie, the website, trailers, corporate information, the photo gallery, and the interview on the main menu, but the interview selection is in a completely different area of the screen than everything else. The first five choices are along the bottom of the screen, and centered there with plenty of space on either side. The interview selection, however, is in the upper right corner of the screen. When I first popped in the DVD to check it out, I didn’t even see it there, and went back to the boxcover to see if I saw something wrong or not. Needless to say, this only caused my impression of this DVD to drop further.

The Feature: Virtual Dreams has many things going for it when one starts it. You’ve got Nikita Denise, who you rarely hear a bad comment made about. Unlike most interactive DVDs, you also get a second girl in the form of Kelly Erikson. There’s a little lead-in to a couple of the sequences, which sets Virtual Dreams a little bit to the side of many other interactive DVDs. Sadly, most everything positive about Virtual Dreams ends right there. The feature is broke into four areas, foreplay, girlfriend, oral, and sex, and the girlfriend section is the only one to offer anything with Kelly.

In the foreplay section Nikita gives you several options on how you want to be teased or how you want her to get warmed up. There’s several masturbation options, including toys and anal as well as tease options. The loops last between a minute and a half and almost three and three quarters, and leave more than a bit to be desired technically. Nikita introduces what she’s going to do each time, and looks to be having a lot of fun in each sequence. Sadly, the loop goes back to the very beginning of the section each time. This is a problem I was glad to see virtually every other company out there move past, and I was hoping Metro would start out without this problem. Nikita’s vibrator work is also annoying since you can tell she’s just about to have a good orgasm when the loop ends and goes back to the beginning. By the time I got this far in the DVD, the orgasm seemed like it would be very natural, and having the scene cut out just as she’s about to climax made me feel robbed.

Next is the Girlfriend section, where Nikita calls Kelly Erikson to come over. The sequences here last between less than a minute and almost three and three quarter minutes, and lets you have the girls undress, kiss, eat, and rim each other. This was by far the weakest section of the DVD. Kelly and Nikita seemed to be into each other okay, but Kelly never says a single word, and Nikita tells you that she’s the only one who gets to play with her within seconds of Kelly’s taking the screen. Kelly’s silence got annoying right away, and by the end of the section I really didn’t care if I saw her again. The choice menu is also at its most offensive here as in sections like Nikita rimming Kelly it almost completely obscures Kelly’s face. The loops are also horrible here, but much of that is due to a horrible editing job. There are several times when you can tell that the girls are trying to get back to the position they started in so that the loops aren’t too noticeable, which is a noble gesture. Unfortunately, they get back to where they started and then stop and stare at the camera for several seconds until the loop restarts. I couldn’t help but wonder if the editor had opposable thumbs or not watching this, or maybe he was too busy jerking himself off watching the girls to hit the button to end the chapter there. Finally, you’re also to have the option of having the girls blow you, but every time I tried playing this part of the DVD, and I tried several times, it kicked me out and made me restart the DVD. I should have taken the hint and just put the DVD back in its case.

The oral section is the strongest area of the DVD sexually. It only lasts about three minutes, but Nikita gives some great eye contact and really puts her all into it. I could have watched this loop over and over, and Nikita’s face seemed framed in the loop well enough that the loop wouldn’t have been that noticeable. Unfortunately, as soon as the loop ended, so did the DVD. I like PowerDVD, really I do, but I’d much rather look at beautiful women doing dirty things than the PowerDVD logo! Of course, by this time I wasn’t too surprised, and was just happy that Metro didn’t try a new innovation of triangular DVDs so there wouldn’t be so much lost material when they were made.

Finally, there’s the sex sequences with loops lasting between a minute and a quarter and almost three and a quarter. This section of the DVD is what made me sure that this was the most inept DVD I’ve ever seen. You can fuck Nikita missionary or doggie style, or get some titty or ass fucking with some of the most inept authoring yet. I’m really not sure why titty fucking is here rather than in a foreplay section, but then again, I’m not sure I want to understand either. There are some mentalities that a person just doesn’t want to understand, and I’m adding ‘Metro Interactive DVD Author’ to the list that already includes axe murderers, child molesters, telemarketers, people who apply for the job of shaving Ron Jeremy’s back, and those people that chase you down in grocery stores to make you try some kind of meat on a cracker covered in Cheeze Whiz. Roughly the last ten seconds of each position is you popping on Nikita. If you want, you can have it pop sooner, but if not, you’re going to blow your load quicker than a virgin on prom night. You never have a choice on where you pop, and afterwards you go right back to fucking Nikita. The ass fucking sequence is a bit different. First, Nikita adds a toy to her pussy as you fuck her ass, which you don’t get a choice of. Second, you don’t get to pop in the anal position, despite the cover claiming pop shots in every position. Through it all Nikita looks to be having a very good time, but the authoring had me so ticked off that I really didn’t care.

In the past few years interactive sex simulators have come a long way, and Virtual Dreams runs as fast as it can in the opposite direction. The loops always go back to the very start of the loop, which often kills the heat. The menu clearly gives you your choices, but it’s so big that it frequently covers up a good portion of the action. It’s also a bit misleading at times. ‘Dance’ in the foreplay section isn’t Nikita doing a dance for you. It’s a close up as she gives you a lap dance. The ‘Undress’ choice in the girlfriend section is more of an oral warmup than a stripping section. Finally, there’s no multiple angles in the feature, which I started out not caring about but the camera work during the sex sequences made me change my mind. You never get to see the penetration and Nikita’s reaction at the same time. I guess this is realistic, but me fucking Nikita Denise in the ass isn’t so I want the ability to choose what I want to see and when I see it! Virtual Dreams reminds me a lot of the government. It works, but not like it should. There’s plenty of false claims and advertisements made and it seems best when there’s a bit of alcohol involved, but at least hear you don’t have to deal with Teddy Kennedy.

What else can I say? This DVD should never have been released. The sex simulator part, even without the voice activation, is at least three years behind the current technology. The choices you can make aren’t always very clear, the looping sucks, and the lack of multiple angles (which have been standard on every other DVD worth more than a decent six-pack of beer) holds the sex back. Virtual Dreams is a nightmare!

Extras: The photo gallery lasts about seven minutes with about six seconds per good looking snapshot or full screen photo. There’s also corporate information, trailers, and website information. There’s also an interview that’s supposed to be like a conversation, but it often gets caught in the loops and suffers from long pauses. Some of the pauses are due to Nikita asking you questions back, which to me just seemed laughable as heck. Just as laughable is Nikita talking about “the only scene she’s done with a girl”, which just happens to be a scene with the amazing April that I think might have from Babes Illustrated 11. Apparently Nikita forgot about her Buttslammers scene and her other all girl scenes, but I’m guessing that those don’t count since this one was for Metro. It’s not an all bad thing since it does mean you get to see April and Nikita work each other over in a jacuzzi bathtub.

Finally, you get to see Nikita’s scene with Mark Davis that I think comes from City Lust as part of the interview. Nikita gives Mark a nice hummer before he works her ass over with several fingers, as well as giving her pussy a little attention to warm it up. Mark goes straight to the A after warming her up, and works on her pussy a bit afterwards. He moves between her holes fucking her on the trunk of his car, and finally finishes things up giving her a decent facial. Sadly, the scene cuts out before the facial is finished, and the interview ends right there.

All in all, it’s an okay interview with some obvious technical problems. Luckily I was sitting down when I watched the interview, otherwise I might have hurt myself falling down out of shock finding technical problems here. The scenes are a nice touch to lengthen the interview and give you a little more of Nikita, but the portions leading into them seem very generic at best. Nikita talks generically about the scenes leaving the scenes to speak for themselves, but never mentions a single name throughout the interview. A little more thought and care would have made this section a lot better, as it would have gotten at least another half point for the extras rating if it were done decently, but that’s par for the course with this DVD.

Themes: Straight, interactive, tease, masturbation, toys, spanking, anal lesbian, rimming (female > female), oral, and tit-fucking

Raincoat Factor: Medium

Condom Usage: None

Overall: Currently, Virtual Dreams can be found online for between $23 and $50, with all but one store offering it for over $30. Don’t even think about paying that much for this one. The voice activation doesn’t work, which leaves this a poor man’s interactive DVD. Save your money for when VCA releases its voice activated DVD. I’m not sure how it can be any worse! I almost gave this DVD an overall rating of 0.5 because the interview wasn’t too bad, nor were the technical aspects, but then I remembered the false and misleading advertising on the cover and dropped this one all the way down to the bottom. I’m not sure it’s a coincidence that this DVD has the initials of V. D.

Note to Metro: Please pick up a dictionary and learn a few new words. I’d suggest starting with “recall”, “discontinue”, “fraud”, “incompetent”, and “fired”.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

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