History is fucked up, isn?t it? Christopher Columbus is celebrated as a hero when he sparked several genocides and wars and actually failed miserably in his quest, more people have died in the name of God than for any other reason, and Ronald Reagan. Let?s face it, if we went extinct tomorrow we totally deserve it. But don?t take my word for it, here?s a visual novel where you investigate events involving a dark-ages Korea in deep space.
?no questions damnit, I don?t know how the hell it happened, the fucking novel has plenty of plotholes.
Analogue: A Hate Story is a visual novel available on Steam, though it?s normally $10 for a full download there is a free demo and at time of writing Steam has a sale going on and I actually got it for $5. It?s apparently the sequel to another visual novel and part of a series that heavily revolves around kind of a Clamp philosophy that true love is possible in anything with a personality be it living or not. In Analogue: A Hate Story it?s possible to win the affections of an artificial intelligence depending on your reaction to the history of what happened onboard a ship you are investigating. Yeah, weird, I know.
Anyway getting to the review, in Analogue you control an investigator hired by a Koean group trying to preserve human history to investigate the recently discovered derelict spaceship Mugunghwa. Set in the distant future after mankind has left Earth?s orbit, the Mugunghwa was meant to be a colonial vessel that would inhabit a planet capable of sustaining life 100 light years away from the solar system, however it was launched BEFORE faster than light technology was available and was designed as a liveship in Mass Effect terminology, a ship capable of sustaining human life. However at some point during the Mugunghwa?s run a disaster hit and the ships crew apparently had a complete societal collapse, you discovering that at some point it had fallen into a dark age modeled largely off of Joeseon Dynasty, a time of history for Korea known for brutal repression of women. During the dark times the Mugunghwa?s crew lost sight of their goal with the only clue to their past being an AI called *Mute, which kept track of the ships functions but which didn?t know what happened prior to the reestablishment of the dark society, referring to it as ?Year One.?
However, when you arrive on the Mugunghwa and access it?s computer files you find out that a few hundred years before the events of the novel, the life support systems apparently were shut down and the entire crew died. Well how the fuck did that happen? Also while your briefing on the ship state it?s onboard AI is called *Mute (All AIs have an asterisk in front of their name) but the only available personality is called *Hyun-ae, the same name as the previous user. Enabling *Hyun-ae you begin to sift through the mail of the ship?s crew before their inevitable excrutiating death, later on discovering a way to enable the AI *Mute who begins accusing the AI *Hyun-ae of being the one that wiped out all life onboard the ship. Your objective is to discover the truth or just download the ships logs and hightail it to the nearest space bar to wash the memories of *Mute away.
While I will give Analogue some credit and say the mystery was pretty good and it comes closer to most in what it set out for, there is a lot of failed ambition on display. The music and art for the AI avatars tend to undercut the tone when they?re trying to throw at us surrender, abuse, dismemberment and rape and I?m wondering why the fuck *Mute looks like a furry and *Hyun-ae can dress like a maid. Also there isn?t enough meshing of the two routes, you can either side with the AI *Mute and end investigations after seeing her evidence for who pulled the plug on the ship or you can talk with *Hyun-ae for an opportunity to get a ?Good ending? where *Hyun-ae declares she loves you. Oh well isn?t that nice!
The problem with the two routes never meshing outside of one really fucking stupid harem ending that was released as part of the DLC is that a lot of very important questions go unanswered. Minor spoilers but to get the harem ending you have to find a way to save both AIs during a sequence where the ships reactor begins to malfunction and show the AI *Mute one of the tortures that lead to a character referred to as the Pale Bride becoming mute, but at the same time it makes it abundantly clear *Mute is largely desensitized to the patriarchal society because it can?t remember what happened before the society collapsed in the first place, instead the objective should have been showing *Mute what lead to the responsible parties ultimate psychotic snap since it ties to a character *Mute talks about fondly, but no, we have to cheat to even get the harem ending since for some reason you can?t convince *Mute to unlock all data logs. It?s also impossible to do the harem ending if you?re pursuing *Hyun-ae?s route, you never relay to her the fact that she would have been sympathetic to the abuses the perpetrator suffered through if you approached it from a certain angle, instead it?s this BS Clamp ?True love can happen between man and machine? thing that frankly got old after Chobits. I mean my interest instantly died when I unlocked all logs and saw all the endings, and I did that all in the frame of six hours, but you?d think a tale that TRIES to focus on LGBT issues and women?s rights issues in a spot trapped in the dark ages would be right up my alley when I?m someone who actually came to the defense of people trying to reduce sexism in games.
There are a lot of plot holes, the novel never makes an attempt to explain why the Mugunghwa devolved into what it was even though you?d think that would be a major plot point. So, what, it suddenly goes from a colonial ship that likely had military staff because of the importance of it?s mission suddenly loses all track of it?s medicines and even written language (Though you do still somehow communicate with the AIs so they switched to some preexisting dialect seamlessly) and devolves into the wet dream of Kenji from Katawa Shoujo? What the fuck? Better question, how did *Hyun-ae even come to be? It?s clear she used to be one of the crewmates who survived the oxygen purge by making a copy of *Mute?s rudimentary programming and inserting her own memories into it, but just how exactly DID she do that? How did *Mute not have the ability to restore the life support? How did the perpetrator even manage to kill everyone when NO ONE remembered how to program the ship?
Here?s another big question. Why didn?t *Mute ever intervene? The AI had knowledge of the ships workings, why didn?t *Mute ever try to re-educate the crew? Why did *Mute ever accept their society when even if it didn?t have access to logs prior to year one, it should have seen the society evolve and should have realized it was hazardous to the ships objective of colonization. I mean okay I don?t expect every AI to turn into HAL but for fucking in church, as soon as you ask ?Why? almost every single aspect of the Mugunghwa?s settings falls apart!
Okay, okay I?ve bitched way too much. While it is flawed It?s worth mentioning this is a small project and even though it fails in what it sets out to do for the most part, there is still some talent on display and I?m going to go ahead and recommend this item simply because I would like to see more from this writer Christine Love. Who knows? We may finally get a really good item. Analogue: A Hate Story is available for download on Steam for $10 ($5 at time of writing since Steam is having a sale) and while I?d recommend you download the free demo first just to see what you?re in for, I should also mention it?s based on the same engine as Katawa Shoujo and should be able to run on bottom of the line laptops. It?s an interesting mystery and while short, I certainly don?t regret paying what I did for it. And this is coming from an unpleasable bastard like me, chances are good if you?re already a fan of visual novels you?ll love this, so go ahead and check it out.
One thing I must get out of the way in this outro though: I really do like the title ?Analogue: A Hate Story?
--Pyramid Head
Next Non-Game Review: Power Rangers Time Force (No questions damnit)
Captcha: You are happy
No, i just shat out a hasty review while in a painful adjustment period to a new laptop. Stop mocking me!
?no questions damnit, I don?t know how the hell it happened, the fucking novel has plenty of plotholes.
Analogue: A Hate Story is a visual novel available on Steam, though it?s normally $10 for a full download there is a free demo and at time of writing Steam has a sale going on and I actually got it for $5. It?s apparently the sequel to another visual novel and part of a series that heavily revolves around kind of a Clamp philosophy that true love is possible in anything with a personality be it living or not. In Analogue: A Hate Story it?s possible to win the affections of an artificial intelligence depending on your reaction to the history of what happened onboard a ship you are investigating. Yeah, weird, I know.
Anyway getting to the review, in Analogue you control an investigator hired by a Koean group trying to preserve human history to investigate the recently discovered derelict spaceship Mugunghwa. Set in the distant future after mankind has left Earth?s orbit, the Mugunghwa was meant to be a colonial vessel that would inhabit a planet capable of sustaining life 100 light years away from the solar system, however it was launched BEFORE faster than light technology was available and was designed as a liveship in Mass Effect terminology, a ship capable of sustaining human life. However at some point during the Mugunghwa?s run a disaster hit and the ships crew apparently had a complete societal collapse, you discovering that at some point it had fallen into a dark age modeled largely off of Joeseon Dynasty, a time of history for Korea known for brutal repression of women. During the dark times the Mugunghwa?s crew lost sight of their goal with the only clue to their past being an AI called *Mute, which kept track of the ships functions but which didn?t know what happened prior to the reestablishment of the dark society, referring to it as ?Year One.?
However, when you arrive on the Mugunghwa and access it?s computer files you find out that a few hundred years before the events of the novel, the life support systems apparently were shut down and the entire crew died. Well how the fuck did that happen? Also while your briefing on the ship state it?s onboard AI is called *Mute (All AIs have an asterisk in front of their name) but the only available personality is called *Hyun-ae, the same name as the previous user. Enabling *Hyun-ae you begin to sift through the mail of the ship?s crew before their inevitable excrutiating death, later on discovering a way to enable the AI *Mute who begins accusing the AI *Hyun-ae of being the one that wiped out all life onboard the ship. Your objective is to discover the truth or just download the ships logs and hightail it to the nearest space bar to wash the memories of *Mute away.
While I will give Analogue some credit and say the mystery was pretty good and it comes closer to most in what it set out for, there is a lot of failed ambition on display. The music and art for the AI avatars tend to undercut the tone when they?re trying to throw at us surrender, abuse, dismemberment and rape and I?m wondering why the fuck *Mute looks like a furry and *Hyun-ae can dress like a maid. Also there isn?t enough meshing of the two routes, you can either side with the AI *Mute and end investigations after seeing her evidence for who pulled the plug on the ship or you can talk with *Hyun-ae for an opportunity to get a ?Good ending? where *Hyun-ae declares she loves you. Oh well isn?t that nice!
The problem with the two routes never meshing outside of one really fucking stupid harem ending that was released as part of the DLC is that a lot of very important questions go unanswered. Minor spoilers but to get the harem ending you have to find a way to save both AIs during a sequence where the ships reactor begins to malfunction and show the AI *Mute one of the tortures that lead to a character referred to as the Pale Bride becoming mute, but at the same time it makes it abundantly clear *Mute is largely desensitized to the patriarchal society because it can?t remember what happened before the society collapsed in the first place, instead the objective should have been showing *Mute what lead to the responsible parties ultimate psychotic snap since it ties to a character *Mute talks about fondly, but no, we have to cheat to even get the harem ending since for some reason you can?t convince *Mute to unlock all data logs. It?s also impossible to do the harem ending if you?re pursuing *Hyun-ae?s route, you never relay to her the fact that she would have been sympathetic to the abuses the perpetrator suffered through if you approached it from a certain angle, instead it?s this BS Clamp ?True love can happen between man and machine? thing that frankly got old after Chobits. I mean my interest instantly died when I unlocked all logs and saw all the endings, and I did that all in the frame of six hours, but you?d think a tale that TRIES to focus on LGBT issues and women?s rights issues in a spot trapped in the dark ages would be right up my alley when I?m someone who actually came to the defense of people trying to reduce sexism in games.
There are a lot of plot holes, the novel never makes an attempt to explain why the Mugunghwa devolved into what it was even though you?d think that would be a major plot point. So, what, it suddenly goes from a colonial ship that likely had military staff because of the importance of it?s mission suddenly loses all track of it?s medicines and even written language (Though you do still somehow communicate with the AIs so they switched to some preexisting dialect seamlessly) and devolves into the wet dream of Kenji from Katawa Shoujo? What the fuck? Better question, how did *Hyun-ae even come to be? It?s clear she used to be one of the crewmates who survived the oxygen purge by making a copy of *Mute?s rudimentary programming and inserting her own memories into it, but just how exactly DID she do that? How did *Mute not have the ability to restore the life support? How did the perpetrator even manage to kill everyone when NO ONE remembered how to program the ship?
Here?s another big question. Why didn?t *Mute ever intervene? The AI had knowledge of the ships workings, why didn?t *Mute ever try to re-educate the crew? Why did *Mute ever accept their society when even if it didn?t have access to logs prior to year one, it should have seen the society evolve and should have realized it was hazardous to the ships objective of colonization. I mean okay I don?t expect every AI to turn into HAL but for fucking in church, as soon as you ask ?Why? almost every single aspect of the Mugunghwa?s settings falls apart!
Okay, okay I?ve bitched way too much. While it is flawed It?s worth mentioning this is a small project and even though it fails in what it sets out to do for the most part, there is still some talent on display and I?m going to go ahead and recommend this item simply because I would like to see more from this writer Christine Love. Who knows? We may finally get a really good item. Analogue: A Hate Story is available for download on Steam for $10 ($5 at time of writing since Steam is having a sale) and while I?d recommend you download the free demo first just to see what you?re in for, I should also mention it?s based on the same engine as Katawa Shoujo and should be able to run on bottom of the line laptops. It?s an interesting mystery and while short, I certainly don?t regret paying what I did for it. And this is coming from an unpleasable bastard like me, chances are good if you?re already a fan of visual novels you?ll love this, so go ahead and check it out.
One thing I must get out of the way in this outro though: I really do like the title ?Analogue: A Hate Story?
--Pyramid Head
Next Non-Game Review: Power Rangers Time Force (No questions damnit)
Captcha: You are happy
No, i just shat out a hasty review while in a painful adjustment period to a new laptop. Stop mocking me!
)