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This post may be of limited interest to people who haven't played Analogue: A Hate Story, as Hate Plus is a generous bonus track rather than a fully realized game. On the other hand, what exactly is stopping you from playing Analogue? (My review is the second half of this post.)
As expected, Hate Plus tells a sad and horrifying set of interwoven stories. Following your departure from the empty generation ship Mugunghwa, having learned what happened there, you're presented with new files that tell you why the society turned out the way it did -- who the bastards were who had and implemented the fantasy of Neoconfucianism in space, and how doomed they all fucking were to start with anyway. It's a tragedy leavened with only a few moments of humor, and it's beautifully done despite feeling constricted in a way the original game doesn't.
It's hard for me to specify what it's a tragedy of. Linear thinking and dueling conservatisms. AI psychology as a consequence of immortality. Because of Love's impressive scripting of the interacting factors and characters, I think the ending was inevitable from the point at which our view starts, but going farther back, of course it wasn't.
( Spoilers, I think )
Interface-wise this is not as much fun as Analogue, and the reasoning for having a dialogue wheel again is a joke. However, as an add-on for people who have played the first game, it's fine. It's odd and annoying that the game requires real-time delays between stints of reading; it produces the opposite of immersion, not usually what you want, but there has to be a Day 2/Day 3 transition for the plot to work. (There's an in-game skip option, or a person can change their system clock to sneak around it.)
It's sad, I can't say it's not, but as a piece of storytelling craft this is a worthy addition to Analogue. I recommend Analogue highly, and you should definitely continue to this if you enjoy it.
As expected, Hate Plus tells a sad and horrifying set of interwoven stories. Following your departure from the empty generation ship Mugunghwa, having learned what happened there, you're presented with new files that tell you why the society turned out the way it did -- who the bastards were who had and implemented the fantasy of Neoconfucianism in space, and how doomed they all fucking were to start with anyway. It's a tragedy leavened with only a few moments of humor, and it's beautifully done despite feeling constricted in a way the original game doesn't.
It's hard for me to specify what it's a tragedy of. Linear thinking and dueling conservatisms. AI psychology as a consequence of immortality. Because of Love's impressive scripting of the interacting factors and characters, I think the ending was inevitable from the point at which our view starts, but going farther back, of course it wasn't.
( Spoilers, I think )
Interface-wise this is not as much fun as Analogue, and the reasoning for having a dialogue wheel again is a joke. However, as an add-on for people who have played the first game, it's fine. It's odd and annoying that the game requires real-time delays between stints of reading; it produces the opposite of immersion, not usually what you want, but there has to be a Day 2/Day 3 transition for the plot to work. (There's an in-game skip option, or a person can change their system clock to sneak around it.)
It's sad, I can't say it's not, but as a piece of storytelling craft this is a worthy addition to Analogue. I recommend Analogue highly, and you should definitely continue to this if you enjoy it.
