It's no secret that I thoroughly enjoyed Analogue: A Hate Story. The writing is stellar, the music and graphics are stylish, and the interactive gameplay elements are immersive. I also appreciate its unapologetic attitude toward mass appeal, instead opting to please a very specific kind of gamer. Those who want to see a fine example of elevated video game storytelling would do best to check this game out. It may not be a long ride (5-7 hours for a single playthrough), but it is a satisfying one.
Can games be art? Hardly.
But sometimes you may find a game with good story and gameplay of it is based on... reading this story. These games are often called Visuals Novels where player constantly reads walls of text. It's like reading a book (good one if you're lucky) but with ability to choose (it leads to different and often unexpected endings).
This game is harder than many other VNs because here you may find many letters (with many words) not just dialogs. And if you are used to playing fast paced games (like shooters or RTS) you will ****. You need patience and cup of tea.
But after you get accustomed to this style you will find beautifully written texts as well as great plot mixed with atmosphere of middle-age korean stuff. And then you'll love this game I swear.
I recently played all the way through this title for the second time, and I still found myself scribbling notes on little notepads trying to keep the facts together. Analogue is a delightful game that is a joy to play. It has a wonderful story that you piece together in an interesting way. The two characters you actually interact with are very well done. All the supporting characters are the people you read about in the log files, each one having very real and deep character development. You honestly feel like you know these people, which speaks very well for Christine Love's writing ability.
It's a game that doesn't have the luxury of distracting you with clever mechanics and satisfying challenges to excuse its lack of narrative. It's just you and the story and how exactly you digest it. If you're interested in dystopian sci-fi and intriguing mysteries and like getting angry about patriarchal misogyny, then it's certainly something you could enjoy.
My feelings about Analogue are nuanced. For every thing Love nails, there's another place where the experience falls short. The middle stretch doesn't live up to the standard set by the intro, but the finale is just satisfying enough to even it all out. If I had to sum up the whole game in one word, it would be "ehhhhhhhh". Don't take it personally, but this just ain't my story.
Great in every sense. I don't even normally like anime or graphic novels, but as a game and a story, Analogue triumphs in so many ways it's difficult to describe.
I don’t usually enjoy these types of games, but I liked this one. It’s sort of like an interactive mystery novel with pictures (be prepared for a lot of reading). The reason I liked it is because the story is, shockingly, pretty interesting. It also introduces enough game elements to prevent it from being nothing more than a pure text adventure and the length is just right.
You play the part of a salvager who is trying to uncover what happened on a derelict generation ship, which is one of the theorized ways humans might be able to explore the galaxy. The way this story goes is how I think such an attempt would end in real life, too (I’ll stop here before revealing any spoilers).
There are different levels of depth to be discovered to the story as well as multiple endings. What you uncover depends on what questions you ask and how deep you dig. The game is also timed, in a way, so that after a certain point certain endings become impossible depending on what you’ve done so far. Thankfully, the game’s length is paced excellently so right around the time you are getting tired of reading the text, you’ll find yourself near the end. You’re also able to speed through much of the text on subsequent playthroughs to see different endings, which is nice.
I liked the music a lot, too. It sets a very appropriate mood throughout the story. I played this with headphones on and I’d recommend that. It greatly increases the immersive feel as this game is best enjoyed with a couple of hours blocked out and no distractions to take you away from it, not unlike reading a book.
Is it worth $10, though? That’s a tough call and will depend on just how much you like this sort of thing. It will only take you 2-3 hours to get through this and considerably less to view the alternate endings, if you even care about doing that. And once you beat it, there is little reason to play through it again. I bought it during a Steam sale, though, and am content with what I paid for it.
I will say that the music and writing are above average and the artwork is well done. This is essentially an adventure game that removes all of the pointing & clicking and walking around aimlessly through the same maps. To me, that is a good thing.
For what it's worth, this is a very good Visual Novel that has a few problems that arise from being a game. The story is excellent, but definitely on the depressing side. It's wonderfully done and the A.I's that accompany you on the journey were excellently written. The issue arises with the override terminal that's in the game. If you don't have some idea on how to already use a computer terminal in this way, you definitely will have issues, like I did, especially in the later stages of the game where you must use the thing in order to advance in the game with a time limit. It's frustrating and annoying and something that definitely didn't need to be there. If this game was more along the lines of it's sequel, Hate Plus, it would have been alot better. But the fact that there's an element to give it more **** feel ironically makes it a worse game than it should have been. Still a good game and worth the 10 dollars I spent on it. But that terminal did not need to be there at all.
I love sci-fi stories and many of the virtual novels I've tried so far. But this is profoundly boring.
It is probably something to do with my personal cultural bias and inability to suspend disbelief for this game, but the focus on genealogies and conversations between people via emails is mind numbing tedium. I can't bring myself to read this beyond the first part. Even the AI keeps apologizing for it not being interesting. I don't know what to follow up on because there is -nothing- I find interesting about this story.
If there's a nugget in this game somewhere it's well hidden behind walls of endless personal drivel.
Kudos for the music. That's about it.
This game is incredibly boring. Don't even expect a game, this is a visual novel. You interact with a computer, trying to rebuild a story. After few minutes of gameplay I gave up: it is just BORING.
SummaryBack in the 25th century, Earth launched a generation ship into deep space, with the goal of establishing the first interstellar colony. It dropped out of contact and disappeared, never reaching its destination.
Thousands of years later, it has finally been found.
Uncover the mystery of what happened to the final generation aboard ...