This fucking game. I haven't hated a game this much since Antichamber. Maybe the arc of my experience will be similar, where I start off so completely out of my element that I can do nothing but flail in rage, but gradually, as I become acclimated, come to appreciate the game's strengths and end with a grudging respect. I don't know, though. I sort of thought that the strange premise of the game would become normalized over time, and I'd gradually stop noticing it, but I'm starting to think that's not going to happen.
The underlying story of Hatoful Boyfriend is charmingly simple, with hints of mystery, and would probably be moderately entertaining were it not populated by fucking birds. The main character, Hiyoko Tosaka, is an earnest and straightforward girl, who must adjust to a new school while wooing a boy that falls into one of several appealing and/or familiar types (or so I imagine, like I said earlier, I'm not too experienced with the dating sim genre, but over the years, through cultural osmosis, I've gathered a thing or two about these sorts of stories). You have your childhood best friend, Kawara Ryouta who is also a fucking bird; the supportive "cool" teacher with an odd character quirk (narcolepsy) who is also a fucking bird; the attractive and confident rich kid who may be excessively haughty, but probably has a softer side who is also a fucking bird.
You can't forget the birds. Every time I found myself buying into Hiyoko's situation, and caring about these goofy romantic cliches she was living through, one of those damned birds would appear on the screen and completely shatter the illusion. I think I could handle it if Hiyoko herself were a bird. Then it would just be one of those cartoony animal stories, and the birds would be essentially anthropomorphized characters, but Hiyoko is a human, so there's this constant reminder that the birds are actual birds, and it is deeply weird to be romancing them.
As near as I can figure, this game takes place after some kind of nuclear war and the world is in a weird "planet of the apes"-type situation, but with birds. Hiyoko is a hunter-gatherer who lives in a cave, but in addition to the notable "school for gifted birds," St Pigeonation's, there seem to be modern cities that must be populated with birds, because even when you leave school grounds, there's not another human to be seen. Whatever happened, the bird society is definitely modeled on Japanese culture, with a few bird-centric twists (like Legumentine's day, where you give beans to a bird you like, which is apparently a mutation on an actual Japanese bean-throwing festival). It's deeply, aggressively weird.
I'd be lying if I said it wasn't funny. I mean, I hate the game, but much of that hate comes from the feeling that I'm being subjected to some kind of elaborate practical joke. In my more relaxed moments, I can laugh at myself (I spent an hour romancing Nageki, the shy kid who hung out in the library and turned out to be the ghost of a boy who committed suicide years before, and is also a fucking pigeon), but it's an embarrassed kind of laughter. I feel like I've been successfully trolled, and it's an elegant enough troll that it comes across as hilarious, but damn.
I suspect, once enough time has passed, I'll view Hatoful Boyfriend as an unpleasant rite of passage. Like a fraternity hazing for video game nerds. I'll be able to look back at it and chuckle knowingly, that I was able to plumb the depths of madness for the sake of my hobby.
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