Injuu Kangoku ~Dirty
Prison Ship~
For our
next review for Halloween we’ll be moving on from our little planet and turn to
the stars for our setting and the extraterrestrial for our monsters. The game
we’ll be looking at will be the first (and at this moment only) eroge to be
released by doujinshi circle EROQUIS! on August 18, 2011: Injuu Kangoku ~Dirty
Prison Ship~ …Please try not to click the back button just because of the name…
Pros: Decent story for this genre, Liz, core cast of
characters are interesting and likable.
Cons: Aoi’s route has a terrible set of endings, the game’s
shortness limits the game’s story potential, a couple instances of
unintentional humor with the alien designs, skip function has problems.
WTF?!: Believe it or not that guy on the right hasn’t been
taken over by the alien…yet.
Injuu
Kangoku has you playing primarily from the point of view of Jonathan Hopkins
(called John by his friends), the vice-captain of the exploration vessel
“Settler”. With the exploration mission nearly over, the ship is on its way
back to Earth when a derelict research vessel is found. Exploring the ship
yields a few usable supplies but no survivors, but unbeknownst to John and the
rest of the crew, one of their number secretly knew about this ship and what
its crew had been researching: an alien life form. Having been assigned to
retrieve a sample of the life form, the crewman does so and brings it aboard
only for it to break loose and unleash a parasitic horror that one by one
begins to take members of the crew.
Okay,
before I discuss the story any further I have to make a confession: this was
kind of a last minute addition to this year’s Halloween reviews. I basically
came across this by accident on VNDB on the last week of September and from the
look of things I thought it was an eroge ripoff of Alien (and yes, it’s a
really weird coincidence that the week I post this review James Rolfe covers the
Alien series on this year’s Monster Madness) with tentacle/monster ero
scenes replacing character death. Since it was marked as short and I could find
it for a decent price online, I got it figuring I could make a short review
making fun of it. The thing is… the story was actually not what I expected… in
other words I think Injuu Kangoku’s story is pretty good, especially
considering its genre. No, I have not taken leave of my senses and you should probably
look outside to see if the moon’s turned blue because Injuu Kangoku is one of
the rare tentacle eroge that not only tries to have a story but it’s of the
even rarer kind that, for the most part, succeeds.
While the
influence of the much beloved sci-fi horror classic Alien is obvious at first
glance, one would actually be only three quarters of the way right in that
assumption. Injuu Kangoku’s story borrows not only from that movie but also
from another much beloved sci-fi horror movie: John Carpenter’s The Thing. Story
structure wise IK does borrow quite a bit from Alien, a couple things from
Aliens, and from The Thing there’s obvious influence for the concept of the
alien’s base form (and if you can read the above picture I know it sounds
ridiculous but the writer actually managed a good monster based off that
concept) and the use of a blood test to see who’s infected by that form. What
prevents IK from being a ripoff, at least in my view, is it does its own thing
with the elements that it borrows from said movies. For example, things go
differently with the aforementioned blood test than in The Thing depending on
which route you’re on, and the shadowy organization’s plan for recovering a
sample of the alien makes more sense than in Alien. Basically the plan comes
off as sensibly prepared and the only reason it goes wrong is because they
assigned it to someone who didn’t know what they were doing. Seriously, I get
why you’d have to move the sample to another container seeing as the old one is
damaged and it’ll die otherwise but why would you
handle it (something you know is dangerous to kill an entire ship’s crew) with
your bare hands?!?!
Another
thing that helps Injuu Kangoku is it has a good cast of core characters. For
starters, our main character John is a good lead, being a good and likable character
that also benefits from being different from your typical eroge protagonist by
being an older and more mature man. The writing does a good at portraying him
as someone dedicated to protecting his colleagues when the aliens attack and
you actually do feel for the guy when he loses so many friends over the course
of this game. Of course being the vice-captain of the ship he gets his awesome
moments, the best of them being in Liz’s route where he battles the alien’s
main body in a final battle that I know from the below CG looks familiar but
manages to be epic in its own way.
Speaking
of the routes, I guess we should start with my route preference:
1)
Liz
2)
Rail
3)
Aoi
Out of all the three possible
routes I’d say Liz’s is the best of the bunch as she’s the one who gets the
best writing. A good example would be how well she’s involved in the route as
she fights right alongside John when the time comes for the few surviving crew
to find a way to either escape or kill the aliens and is a more than reliable
partner in that role, which we see especially in the final battle of that
route. It also helps that when it comes to romantic development between her and
John it’s written pretty well starting with the two having a platonic history
together that’s supported by a convincing combination of writing and acting
that helps make their friendship believable (which in itself is pretty
impressive considering this is a short game) and the progress of their
relationship from there is just as convincing. The writing in her route also
does a good job at driving home the feeling of loss on both her and John’s end
for their crewmates, which, along with the romance plot, help in giving this
route’s story some heart that doesn’t feel out of place, an even bigger rarity
for this genre. It also has two endings I found satisfying in their own way
(plus a bad ending that’s basically what you’d expect of this genre): a normal
ending that ends on an ambiguous note reminiscent of your typical horror movie
and a happier ending that still ends on open note similar to Alien and Aliens.
Rail’s
route is a decent route overall; it does have its strong points like doing a good
job establishing her relationship with John and it has a satisfying but open
conclusion. Its final strength is sadly also its greatest weakness: Liz.
Basically in this route she’s just as, if not in some ways more, awesome of a
character, especially at the near end of the story (wish I could give
specifics, but I don’t want to spoil this route). In comparison, Rail doesn’t
really do much, though I will say to the writer’s credit they didn’t make her
come off as a dead weight type of character, it’s just that Liz contributes a
lot more to the plot of this route than Rail does which is a problem considering
this is supposed to be her route and also be the route that results in what’s
considered the canon ending. It also doesn’t help that Liz’s extensive plot
involvement means significantly less interaction between Rail and John over the
course of the route compared to Liz or even Aoi and such limited interaction
between the route’s two romantic leads means that while the pairing is well
established at the start there isn’t very much interaction between the two to
support it.
Aoi’s
route is a route I really wish I could praise because if not for one big
problem this route might have tied with or beaten Rail’s route in my ranking.
To begin with starting the route has John make an interesting alteration to the
start of the game’s story post prologue, which really helps in grabbing your
attention so as to see what other directions the story can go now. This route
also has some good character moments from some good interactions between Aoi
and John to a scene that shows even John is capable of making mistakes with
dire consequences, but portrayed in a way that’s understandable and doesn’t
make him look like a complete idiot. There’s also a pretty good final battle with
the main alien that may not be as awesome as the one in Liz’s route but still a
good fight scene to read through, especially considering Aoi contributes to the fight to the best of her abilities which gives her a brief moment of awesomeness. So what undermines all these good story
elements? The endings. There are three possible conclusions to this route and
all three of them are generic to this genre. The worst offender would be one
particular ending that would have been a good tragic conclusion, but that gets
screwed up by an unnecessary epilogue/ero scene. Considering how much Aoi gets
screwed over throughout this entire game I almost wonder if the writer simply
hated the character.
Aside
from the aforementioned flaws of Aoi and Rail’s routes, the remaining weakness
Injuu Kangoku has concerning its story is the game’s shortness. Basically while
this game is good, there is definite potential for it to have been better, but
that would have required a longer game. For example the side characters all get
taken out by the alien in about the same way and same point in the story
regardless of the route you choose. Another example would be there’s not really
enough time given to establish an atmosphere of dread at being trapped of a
space ship with an alien creature that has more of an advantage in that setting
than the crew like in Alien and the paranoia of who could be infected by the
alien is only given the minimal amount of attention storywise. These
shortcomings are understandable though considering this is the first game by a
doujinshi circle so there would obviously be budget constraints that would
prevent them. To have more scenes with the side characters would mean paying
more for the voice acting and probably even on the art front. Then of course
there’s time constraints so all in all I wouldn’t consider this too big a flaw,
and who knows? Maybe we’ll get a fandisk with routes for the unwinnable side
heroines (and maybe a better Aoi route).
In the
system area at certain points in the story you can switch character views,
which does offer a couple interesting character perspectives and can lead to
different scenes in a couple cases. Don’t expect this to be like with the
Kansen games though as for the most part it’s just used to unlock ero scenes.
The only problem IK has system wise is that it’s skip function has a weird
problem of stopping to let the sound effects play which gets a bit irritating
when you’re skipping over scenes you’ve read and want to see the new ones.
In the
area of presentation I’d say Injuu Kangoku does pretty well for the most part. The
voice acting and music are both good, and speaking of which the menu’s little
tune should sound familiar. The artwork’s pretty good for most of the
characters and some of the monster designs are pretty nice. There are some
hiccups though in that area as the male red shirt characters obviously didn’t
receive quite as much attention in the art department (I’ll even admit the few
times you see John from another character’s POV his portrait looks a little
stiff) and there are some alien designs that I’m pretty sure are
unintentionally funny. Best example would be in a couple ero scene CG where one
of the aliens is obviously designed to look similar to a xenomorph. Let’s just
say adding a certain…”attachment” to the xenomorph design that would put The
Penetrator from the Saints Row games to shame is probably going to bring about
laughter more than anything else.
As for
the ero scenes, they’re alright. I’ll admit I like the happier ero scenes more
than the darker ones only because the latter kind of gets repetitive. Speaking
of which, to any who want to try this for the good endings only I should point
out even if you go that path you’re still going to have to wade through a good
number of unavoidable tentacle ero scenes with the unwinnable side heroines.
Character Profiles (note: I’m only going over the three main
heroines, if you want to see the rest of the characters go here):
Captain of the Settler and a close friend of John’s. Over
the course of their time working together Rail has come to rely greatly on
John’s support.
One of the Settler’s exterior technicians. Liz has known
John since they were children and the two often share drinks and conversation
together when off duty.
One of the Settler’s communication officers. Aoi is a good
friend of Liz’s and gets on well with John the few times they’re able to talk.
In Conclusion:
Injuu
Kangoku is a very good debut title for EROQUIS! and an example of the rare few
tentacle eroge that has a story and a good one. While it does borrow quite a
bit from Alien, Aliens, and The Thing, I’d hesitate to call this game a ripoff
of those movies and be more inclined to consider it a clone similar to Roger
Corman’s Forbidden World or Galaxy of Terror (believe it or not I actually like
both of those), but with a better written plot. Kind of funny that this game is
in many ways closer to John Carpenter’s The Thing than its prequel movie and most
of the
comics Linkara’s been reviewing and a better Aliens game than the
infamous Aliens: Colonial Marines (though that probably isn’t a very
difficult accomplishment).
Final Score: 6/10 Above Average
Author Recommendation: For Fans Only!
Did you manage to get all scene?
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