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[Review] Analogue: A Hate Story
Topic Started: Sep 22 2013, 04:16 PM (134 Views)
Namorax
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This game was bought on a whim to kill some time while I was sitting on a train. The game itself isnt that large, it's "just" 60MB big and a Visual Novel Type of Game. This isn't the first time I played this type of game, more like the 2nd... but thats not the point of this thread.

The setting of the Game is quickly introduced at the beginning: At some undetermined point in the future (~1000 years or something?) you are a name- and faceless person working as some kind of space courier. Your employer/buddy offers you the job of finding out what happened to the generation-ship Mugunghwa that never reached her destination.
(In case you are wondering: Generation Ships are big space ships that travel at sub-lightspeed and are usually intended to create a colony once they arrive at their destination. Basically a slow-moving colony ship where the initial passengers never witness the end of the voyage. Instead it will be up to their descendants to finish what they set out to do. Since it takes multiple generations to reach the end of the voyage, they are called Generation Ships. At least thats what I believe...)

The rest of the game your one-man-spaceship lurks around the empty hulk that was once a colonyship and "hack" into the logs in order to find out what exactly happened. Since it is impossible to check out centuries worth of comm-logs, you deputize the AI of the Mugunghwa. In the end you check out ~10 blocks of 9 commlogs to uncover the past events.
The wikipedia-entry of Analogue summarizes the important events of the game, but it is one thing to read a summary.
It is another one to actually read the seperate entries, show them to the AI (due to "malfunctions" you are unable to directly interact with the AI) and find other relevant entries of past events. You get a small window through which you can peer into the lives of strangers which is rather fascinating.


One of the "bad points" of Analogue is that at first you are more or less overwhelmed by the suddenly introduced strangers whose logs you are snooping through. Your only "help" is a rather useless family-tree that only shows a few names and next to no data telling you more about the people you are dealing with. There is also a section where you are forced to discover the captain's admin-password to access the Mainframe of the Mugunghwa. You also have to "disarm" the overheating fission reactor of the Mugunghwa with a DOS screen and the appropriate commands while a timer is mercilessly counting down.
On the upside, after a while you get a hold of who's who and no longer need the (un)helpful family tree to remember who wrote the message you are currently reading. I've also happened to have already "solved" the challenge of the reactor meltdown before it even happened. This just shows how free you are in your decisions on what trail to pursue and how to interact with the Mugunghwa.

Story Spoiler:
Spoiler: click to toggle


The narrative is very gripping even if the interface takes a bit getting used to.
If you need to kill time and like good stories I suggest giving this a try.

8,5/10 Points from me:
-0.5 Points because it was rather short
-1 Point because of the interface that could've been better. You use it for the whole game after all...
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