Tinder Parody Game Tries To Turn Your Controller Into A Massager

Mr. Massagy is a PlayStation 4 game in which players go on Tinder-esque dates with a variety of women to unlock, ahem, massage settings for your controller. Who is this game for, exactly?

Let’s pause for a moment: is Mr. Massagy actually intended for massaging? All the packaging of the game points to no. In the game, you use an app called Limber and go on dates. In those dates, you have to charm the pants off a woman, and then you both disappear off screen to have some fun. At the end of this, you unlock a massage setting for your controller that you can access at any time you need a good rub (lol). The game is both tongue in cheek about its sexuality, but also distinctly nonsexual. It’s like the That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch set in a bawdy, 1970s hospital, where everyone is always talking about sex, but in a not very sexy way and also no sex occurs.

After unlocking a few, I tried some of these settings out on my back, and, well, they didn’t do much for me. There are two intensity settings you can unlock per character, and getting the more intense setting is difficult. Mr. Massagy plays around with the tropes of dating sims, where finding the best ending can be a wild goose chase. This is funny, but not conducive to unlocking all the massage settings. This kind of teasing and then eventual release doesn’t really seem like a fit for a massage, and it suggests that this game might not actually be about soothing your back muscles.

The lower intensity settings don’t vibrate strongly enough to relax my shoulders. They pulse, going from a low rumble to a terrifying growl, but not in a consistent way. Sometimes, they stop vibrating altogether. On higher intensity settings, your controller will vibrate more consistently, but it still has long pauses that interfere with the soothing vibrations.

Real talk: all the things that make Mr. Massagy a bad back massager would also make it a bad masturbation aid. Getting yourself off really comes down to personal taste, but kinda just doing nothing for ten seconds does not seem like a scenario that would induce an orgasm.

So then what is Mr. Massagy? A funny game with lots of double entendre and a parody of Tinder that probably felt more apt when it came out on PC in December of 2016. That’s not to say that there’s no value to Mr. Massagy—watching Markiplier play it is pretty cute—but it’s limited in its application. Your PlayStation 4 controller isn’t going to become the 2017 equivalent of the infamous Harry Potter vibrating broomstick toy any time soon.