Analogue: A Hate Story Review (Mac)

I went back and forth on this one.

See, Analogue: A Hate Story was released last year, and we’re trying to keep the Reviews section for new (or recent, at the very least) games. I’m going to write a Hate Plus review, because it’s a 2013 game and writer/designer Christine Love was nice enough to send me a code, but that review is going to be nigh impossible to write unless I provide some context with a review of its predecessor. We’re not going to do this for every game; I don’t need to repost my Black Ops II review to properly talk about Ghosts, for example. But since I’m in charge of coverage as it relates to reviews, I guess I can do whatever I want?

Right off the bat, you should know that Analogue: A Hate Story has a very large amount of words. It’s one of those games that just barely falls under the super vague banner that is the visual novel genre, but has enough going on to escape the usual pitfalls (no skill required on the part of the player, stock characters, very little interaction outside of choosing dialogue) and stand out as something genuinely special, even though it’s got some weird issues all its own.

It is the near future, and you are a complete blank slate sent by some nameless employer to investigate the Mugunghwa: a relatively ancient Korean colony ship. The ship hasn’t made a transmission in over 600 years, and (surprise!) you arrive to find it completely deserted. Your job is to download everything you can from the ship, and hightail it back to your superiors. However, the files you need are locked behind an admin password, and your only companion is an AI construct named *Hyun-ae (the asterisk is silent). You must look through a bunch of text logs, find the password, and activate the other AI — a security AI named *Mute — if you are to piece together what happened to the Mugunghwa…if you can stop flirting for more than five minutes.

You see, the gameplay in Analogue is mostly relegated to doing a bunch of reading, then checking back with whichever AI you have activated to discuss what you’ve just read. Maybe you’ll get some backstory, or they could unlock more reading material? It can get a little tedious at times, especially when you’ve got a lot on your plate. Around the halfway mark, I chose to ignore *Mute entirely, simply because spending time with both started to feel like busywork. This could be intentional on Love’s part, however; both Analogue and Hate Plus seem to be going for a more ‘realistic’ kind of romance simulator. There’s also a command-based prompt menu that you’ll have to interact with at certain points in the story, which did a really good job of making me feel like I actually know my way around computers.

Although you’ll certainly be spending a lot of time dialogue wheel-ing it up with your artificial ladies, as I mentioned before, you will spend most of Analogue just reading things. There are many sub-plots in the game, with many royal families to keep track of. If you’ve spent all your life ingesting only Western media, all the Korean names and culture terminology might be a little hard to keep track of at first, but everything falls into place eventually. There’s not really any one story that stands out as the “main” plot initially. Early on, the novelty of reading about a backwards society existing in a futuristic setting is enough to carry the whole affair, but the middle — the area of the game where you’re juggling the most characters and stories — does tend to drag a little. It’s all really well written, mind you! There’s just a lot of it.

Once you reach a point of no return, where you’re forced to choose between the two AI, everything does comes together in a satisfying, albeit deeply unsettling, conclusion. Or at least it did for me, anyway. Your experience is likely to vary significantly from mine, due to the game’s initially loose presentation and numerous branching paths. A little more context for the respective AI’s “main stories” (for lack of a better term) would’ve been nice, especially considering how Hyun-ae’s story ends.

If my critique of the game’s story seems a little vague, well, that’s because it kind of has to be. I’m not sure how different your playthrough will be, especially if you can ignore *Mute’s sexism and homophobia long enough to get to the soft center I’m sure is hiding just below that hard exterior. Although this makes talking about the game ridiculously challenging, it’s also refreshing to see a video game where choices actually matter for once.

Also, and this may seem like a petty complaint, Analogue’s highest resolution is an inexcusable 1024×640. Running the game in fullscreen looks pretty bad when compared to the windowed version. I’m no videogame developer, but it seems like resolution shouldn’t be a problem in 2013.

But that’s really the only problem I can think of; what Analogue: A Hate Story does is so unique and compelling that it’s hard for me to knock it for what is honestly a small issue. How to use the interactive nature of video games to successfully tell a story is a conversation that isn’t going away for a very long time. And, unlike other games that purport to explore that concept, Analogue brings some interesting new ideas that make it absolutely worth seeing.