It’s been longer than I’d intended, since my last post, but life has gotten crazy as the joys of homeownership have reared their ugly heads, one after another. First, the process of refinishing my deck took weeks due to inclement weather, then there was a problem with my fireplace randomly turning itself on, and then I discovered a leak in the ceiling, after the most recent bout of rain. Just one bloody thing after another, seeming to never end. Which brings us to today’s word.
lemniscate, noun – a curve in the shape of a figure-eight, or infinity symbol
Learned from: AI: The Somnium Files (Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, PC)
Developed by Spike Chunsoft
Published by Spike Chunsoft (2019)
I don’t know when the months of August through October became the new holiday season for games, but holy crap, is there a lot of good stuff coming out in that span, this year! From big name blockbusters like Borderlands 3, to stylish takes on old formulas like Code Vein, to surprising niche titles like AI: The Somnium Files, there’s something for everyone, and much of it is pretty solid.
AI is a cyberpunk murder/mystery visual novel, in a subgenre that has a surprising number of entries, when you stop and consider it. (Observer, Read Only Memories, VA-11 HALL-A, Detroit: Become Human, etc.) And aside from maybe Read Only Memories, AI is the quirkiest one I’ve played so far. Think, mixing all of those other games with a dash of Deadly Premonition, and that’s kind of the atmosphere this one has going for it, and I’m really digging it so far. Anyway, you play as Date, an investigator for a secret branch of the police force, and the game starts you looking into a case that’s suspiciously similar to something that happened to Date himself, six years ago. The plot has you cooperating with your A.I. partner (who’s also your prosthetic left eye), to dive into people’s memories, to try and work through their mental locks that are hiding information on the case that they might not even realize they know. Things get pretty surreal, and kinda goofy at times, but it’s great.
One of the characters you run into in your investigation is an idol singer named Iris, who works for a company called Lemniscate, and manages to get herself tangled up in the case. I haven’t gotten far enough in the game to know for sure yet, but I’d wager that name wasn’t chosen at random, and that it has some deeper significance to the case–just like Iris herself very well might. But I’m juggling several different games right now, so it might be awhile before I find out for sure. What I can say with certainty though, is that if you like visual novels, narratives that are a bit off-kilter, the cyberpunk genre, or mysteries (or puns–your A.I. partner is an “A.I.-Ball” for example), you should probably check this one out. It’s been entirely overshadowed by bigger titles coming out around the same time, and it deserves more recognition.
Iris is the one on the right. Sweet, innocent, totally-not-conniving Iris…
Brain Rot 