Okay so I've been trying to write some sort of recommendation for Analogue:A Hate Story or at least one of the other Christine Love games, but it's difficult because I only ever played one of the games.
But I'll still try to get a few people to at least check out the first two free games she released, because everybody likes free stuff!
Digital: A Love Story (
for 0 moneys here) is pretty much a text only affair and clocks in at about an hour long. It's a "computer mystery/romance" which has you scouring the BBSes of the world in pursuit of who might be the girl of your dreams.
That's the one I played and liked quite a bunch.
Kieron Gillen on RPS had the following to say:
:
Attention-getting top line: right now, I can’t think of a better love story in the western medium.
The proviso on that statement is the “right now”. I’m in a jetlagged state, so there’s all sorts of things I’m missing – like full control of my limbs, and eyes which see an unblurred world – so I’m not going to give it a GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER WITH KISSES AND HUGS AND FLOWERS AND SPECIAL HOLDING award. But it’s a game which I played a couple of weeks back, and has stuck with me ever since.
Don’t Take It Personally, Babe, It Just Ain’t Your Story (
here for the price of only your time) is edging closer to the classical VN, in fact it's pretty much one of them with a japanese style look and dialog boxes.
Not having played it yet,
I can only let RPS speak for me again, this time Alec Meer:
It’s a game about love, sex and the internet, as was its forerunner Digital: A Love Story. This spiritual sequel takes the form of a visual novel, told with text and very occasionally animated anime art. The latter means it’s an instant turn off for some, but quite frankly I suspect anyone with so stubborn a reaction was never going to take all that well to an only semi-interactive tale of emotional drama and catastrophe anyway.
[..]
While I can’t help but feel it’s a slightly lesser game than the starkly affecting anonymity of Digital, none of this undoes the powerful tragic-comic horror of watching young lives collapse and rebuild and collapse and rebuild. It’s happened to us all: errant crushes, unflinching belief that you know love, utter devastation following rejection, fear to act, the sick of thrill of knowledge you shouldn’t have…
Visual novel it may loosely be, but this isn’t simply an observation – it’s direct action. Through your control of Rook’s occasional decisions and persistent digital voyeurism, you are made very much a part of these events. You will feel like they’re your fault. Don’t take it personally, but this is your story.
And finally the steamy
Analogue: A Hate Story 4.99$ on Steam. Directly from its page:
:
Back 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.
You can find NeoGAFs
slightly underpopulated OT here. There is also a demo available either on Steam or from it's
homepage here. One last time
RPS's Alec Meer shall have the word:
:
You could technically call Analogue: A Hate Story a visual novel, but that would be a little like saying a panther was ‘just a cat.’ Analogue doesn’t so much evolve the largely linear, information drip-feed structure of visual novels as mutate it wildly, chop it up into chunks then offer it up to you in a tin you can pluck the parts out of as you like. It’s a detective story first and foremost, with you as the detective. A sort of space-Poirot if you like, but one whose only forms of communication are picking a left or a right answer to someone else’s questions, rather than Belgian bon-mots and moustache-stroking.
[...]
Analogue is the missing link between visual novels and adventure games, with a touch of RPG-style NPC relationship-juggling thrown in, and while I suspect it’s more a glorious aberration than a watershed moment for a genre many gamers have quite understandably struggled to understand the appeal of, it’s certainly a great leap forwards for Christine Love. Yes, I do personally question the wisdom of using that visual style, on both a commercial level and in terms of atmosphere, but, putting that aside, Analogue is a sit-up-and-take-notice achievement in storytelling, in interface, in research, in mechanics and in moral ambiguity.
It got into my head, and I suspect it’s going to stay there for a while. I don’t ask much more from a game.
If you are put off by the visual style, or simply want to have a little laugh, also check out this little fun RPS put up for the game:
This assumes you say you don't want to play with that artstyle
