I think I knew I was gonna like “AI,” the moment the main character saw himself in his disembodied robot eye and started hitting on himself.
“AI: The Somnium Files,” is a game from Kotaro Uchikoshi’s following the completion of his cult classic “Zero Escape,” series. It follows detective Kaname Date and his AI partner Aiba, who resides in his fake eye. The two are assigned to solve a homicide in which the victim’s left eye was removed, and find that it bears an uncanny resemblance to a serial murder case from six years ago.
Their investigation brings them into contact with Iris Sagan, a young streamer who seems to be the killer’s next target. However, there is only so much information they are able to glean through normal interrogation, and Date must make use of a device that allows him to dive into the dreams of various witnesses to find information they are either unwilling or unable to share.
Much like Uchikoshi’s previous work, the plot is a sci-fi thriller visual novel with enough bizarre plot threads to weave a mile-wide blanket. The story reads like a combination of David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” and Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” but with the tone of Edgar Wright’s “Baby Driver.”
While there isn’t much in the way of gameplay, the game delivers on all other fronts, offering a well-written narrative of deception, family, and really terrible puns. Despite ostensibly being a very dark story, the quality of the comedy on display easily makes it one of the funniest games I’ve had the pleasure of playing. In particular, the characters’ reactions to environmental details had me examining every object I could find if only for the possibility of hearing another joke. “AI,” knows just how to space these conversations out to hilarious effect.
A lot of this great comedy comes from the main duo’s dynamic. Date’s laid-back attitude is contrasted with Aiba’s dry observations of his many, many flaws, and his tendency to make the kind of groan-worthy puns and dad jokes that are endearing rather than embarrassing.
The game sometimes runs the risk of tonal whiplash considering the dark nature of its story, but Date has just enough of a genuine side to him that his emotional moments almost never feel forced when the tone gets serious. This is compounded by the plot’s ability to convincingly make every character seem like a suspect while still having the conclusion ultimately make sense.
Though the game occasionally gets very over the top, the characters feel just human enough that it never becomes an overwhelming issue. And the performances from Greg Chun and Erika Harlacher as Date and Aiba are a major part of this, being perhaps the best of their careers.
In terms of gameplay, most of “AI,” consists of rather standard point-and-click interactions, with a diverging plot and multiple endings depending on how Date handles his investigation. The branches come when Date must dive into the dreams of the witnesses, wherein he and Aiba have six minutes to bypass their various mental locks and find out what they know about the case.
The dream sections unfold as a set of puzzles for the player to solve, but unlike Uchikoshi’s “Zero Escape,” series, the puzzles here act off of each subject’s emotional logic rather than a set of defined rules. This helps to explain each character’s personal story alongside Date’s investigation.
While on the whole these dream sections are a welcome diversion from the normal investigations Date conducts, they aren’t perfect. The puzzles aren’t too difficult, but managing the time in them can sometimes be a bit annoying. It’s not enough to sink the experience, but some levels take the time management part of the puzzles to the extreme.
Although three of the game’s five story routes can be finished in any order, two can be accessed long before they can be completed, both of which include plot details that might make other sections of the game seem redundant. To this end, it is recommended to play them in a specific order, that being purple, red, yellow, green, and pink, indicated by their color on the in-game flowchart.
“AI: The Somnium Files,” is one of the best experiences I’ve had with a game in recent memory. Even if the puzzles are a bit easy, or the tone can get a bit too silly, or the ending has a bit too much exposition, the resulting game is still too charming to give anything but a glowing recommendation.
Rating: A
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