The problem with trying to outlaw something is you just end up increasing demand. Ask D. H. Lawrence, the author of Spycatcher or anyone who’s ever tried to ban Judy Blume’s Forever from a girls’ comprehensive.
You also end up giving the thing an air of saucy mysteriousness it almost certainly doesn’t deserve. Spycatcher is basically about working in the civil service. Forever is about a boy who calls his penis Ralph. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is all billowing flanks and primordial tenderness, which is nothing compared to what you can watch women doing with lengths of rubber tubing on the internet these days.
Which brings us to We Dare, the Wii party game Ubisoft thinks is too sexy for the UK. They blamed the decision on our reaction to that advert – you know, the one where chiselled male models spank hot women in tweed skirts and they all laugh like they aren’t crying inside because they know the next rung on the ladder is porn.
The good news – or more accurately, for reasons which shall become apparent, the news – is that We Dare is available in the rest of Europe. You can have it delivered from France direct to your door for less than the price of a fun 20 minutes in the Quartier Pigalle.
Eurogamer purchased a copy from Amazon.fr after Ubi mysteriously declined to send us a promo. There is one user review on the retailer’s listings page for We Dare, or Petits Flirts Entre Amis as it’s titled round those parts.
I don’t understand much French, having spent most of my time at school reading Judy Blume’s Forever. But I suspect this excerpt probably sums it up: “De plus, la maniabilité est exécrable.”
For oui, mon petite coquilles Saint-Jacques, it turns out We Dare does not in fact offer a series of spectacularly enjoyable and arousing experiences which will leave you and your attractive friends rolling half-naked in the aisles.
Incroyable as this may sound, it’s just another rubbishy collection of simplistic mini-games. None of them will keep you entertained for more than 48 seconds and all of them are about as erotically charged as an afternoon spent reading out random item numbers from the Argos catalogue.