Speaking of killing, the gameplay further misses the mark when it takes aim (in this case literally) at some incredibly contrived arcade action. In two separate mini-games, players will engage in either some long distance target practice or shootouts with cops and criminals. Like most simplistic action sequences in adventures, the trick here is not to shoot first and ask questions later, but to identify patterns and then overcome by repetition. That said, the shootout segments in particular will present a problem for those who struggle with dexterity challenges, because you'll have to deal not only with opponents firing back, but a drifting crosshair that simulates an unsteady hand. Worse still, your vision becomes more and more blurred each time you're hit, which is a silly and pointless nod to "realism". Experienced action gamers should have no great difficulty, as I finished even the hardest of these in only two tries, but if Wak-a-Rat is enough to get your blood pressure up, expect to require some CPR before you're finished here. There are only two instances of each mini-game throughout Lula, but the endgame consists of five consecutive shootouts of increasing difficulty. Fortunately, the game auto-saves between each one, and by then you should be fairly comfortable with the activity, but it still seems an inappropriate and unnecessarily grueling finale. Depending on your proficiency at such tasks, at best it will feel repetitious and tiresome; at worst it will be a punishing frustration.

But enough of blood and guts (figuratively speaking, as none are ever shown), as I realize that people most interested in this game really want to hear about the skin. Sure enough, there's plenty of it on display here, and the game wastes no time by opening with a cinematic of Lula doing a striptease. At regular intervals throughout the game, you'll encounter often-identical-looking NPCs bumping uglies quite openly – whether straight, lesbian, or bi-sexual (no gay men action that I noticed), traditional or with bondage; twosomes or threesomes, it's a smorgasbord of sex. Even our protagonist isn't shy about doffing and boffing, or gratifying herself if alone near a bed; she's not picky. It's all quite graphic without being blatantly hardcore, as the game draws the line at depicting actual penetration, showing black censor bars in the one sequence where the camera gets up close and personal.

While the nudity and sexuality are plentiful and utterly gratuitous, however, keep in mind that it's ultimately just a cartoon, and not a particularly artistic or convincing one at that. The game's 3D engine is anything but cutting edge, and while the background graphics can be reasonably attractive, the word "lifelike" will never come to mind where the ridiculously-endowed character models are concerned. A serious case of the jaggies certainly doesn't help, especially when the game's main selling feature is its curves. Throw in all sorts of clipping problems and you can pretty much kiss any last vestige of the titillation factor goodbye. So if you're looking for skanky, you'll find some here, but if you're Internet-savvy enough to be reading this review, you've undoubtedly found more substantial free porn by accident than what you'll find here. Heck, even the Bouncin' Boob Technology proves to be a farce. I don't think I ever saw a single bounce, and implants are strongly suspected, though Lula claims otherwise.

The developers were really focusing on the wrong assets, anyway. They'd have been better off developing a Bouncin' Bum Technology, as the vast majority of the game is spent staring at Lula's partially-concealed thonged derrière. Well, maybe "staring at" is overstating, but the player trails just behind her in a third-person perspective throughout the game. Control is done through a familiar mouse/keyboard combination that is functional but not without its problems here. The biggest issue is that Lula moves too darn slowly, even at her "run" speed. She also comes to an abrupt halt if you catch her on any little obstacle, except her trusty bloodhound Dusty, whom she'll frequently walk right through as if he weren't even there. And for some unknown reason, many indoor areas switch to a fixed camera and character-relative navigation scheme, which means you'll have to continually adjust to the controls. Presumably this was done to avoid tricky camera issues in tight quarters, but other times the camera momentarily switches to a first-person view to avoid obstructions, which works fine and is a far more intuitive solution, so it's a mystery why this wasn't done consistently throughout.

As with most direct-controlled games, there is no cursor or default onscreen interface in Lula 3D. Interactive objects are identified with a text label when you maneuver Lula close enough. This largely works fine, although some hotspots require finicky positioning. Actions are initiated with the mouse, but Lula will never do anything automatically, even when there's only one option. Instead, an action menu comes up with available options, very similar to a dialogue tree. It's simple enough to use, but it ends up feeling needlessly cumbersome since you have to manually select "end" for every interaction, and most objects have only one or two options anyway. Even the inventory is clunky, because in order to de-select an active item, you'll have to open the inventory again just to put the object back manually. These sound like a minor inconveniences, but the frustration adds up over time, and it's just another example of how poorly the game is designed in even the most fundamental aspects. A better game would have survived such things, but a better game probably wouldn't have such problems in the first place.

There's not a great deal of aural pleasure (yes, I spelled that correctly, thankyouverymuch) to be found in Lula 3D either. Music is used sparingly outside of the agonizingly long load times, and sound effects get the job done while being fairly nondescript. Voice acting ranges from pretty good to downright awful. Lula herself has a pleasant voice, albeit with an indiscernible English accent of some kind. Unfortunately, each character pauses vocally for breaks in the subtitles, which sounds completely unnatural. Your faithful canine companion, meanwhile, continually sounds like he's in pain, or at least inconsolably forlorn. If I could translate doggie language, I'd guess that his sorrowful yelps and whines are probably saying, "is this game ever going to end?"

Eventually it does end, of course, after maybe 12-15 hours of gameplay, with an anti-climactic (don't go there) conclusion that I can only respond to with an emphatic... "Huh??!!" But by now you've deduced, no matter which brain you're using, that you should really never reach this point yourself. At its best, Lula 3D has moments of being a reasonably playable adventure, but ultimately any flashes of potential prove to be an unfulfilled tease. Not a single aspect of the game ever rises above mediocrity, and the experience is continually marred by all kinds of shoddy design and production issues that drag it further down. The end result is an impotent game selling porn that falls flat, and while cheap and trashy content may have some temporary thrill value, cheap and trashy quality is never a good thing.