Post by solidbatman on Oct 30, 2012 20:26:08 GMT -5
Fancy a visual novel? What about a sci-fi mystery aboard an abandoned colony ship where the only other people on board are two artificial intelligences? Wow, you're still reading? Awesome. Thats the set up to Analogue, you are commissioned by a historical society to salvage the logs on this abandoned colony ship. What you find though is a mystery and as the AI opens up more logs to you, some dirty secrets begin to come out about what really happened aboard the ship.
What stands out about this visual novel is the DOS command line like gameplay at certain parts. Remember, you are interacting with computers, and the game accounts for this. To switch between AI cores, you'll have to input the command. To access certain logs, you'll need to use commands. Its well executed and makes you actually feel like you are a detective. The rest of the gameplay is standard visual novel. Pick dialogue choices based off the conversations. Be prepared for a lot of reading as you go through the logs. It's a lot to go through, but it was all interesting to me.
Pros
- Mysterious, well paced story
- Solid command line mechanics
- Simplistic, yet futuristic artwork
- Well drawn characters
- No H scenes
Cons
- A ton of reading will put people off
- Visual novel gameplay is not for everyone
- Short, clocks in at about 2-3 hours
Overall: 8/10
A solid visual novel with no H scenes, but very short and extremely simple to get good endings. If you are new to visual novels, this is a good game to start with because of the simplicity of it. The command line aspect adds a fun wrinkle to the typical dialogue choosing gameplay.
