It didn’t take lengthy for No Sleep For Kaname Datethe third installment of Spike Chunsoft’s AI: The Somnium Information sequence, to get an audible groan out of me. That was thanks to 2 phrases I’ve grown sick of during the last six years: porno magazine.
These phrases will both imply nothing to you or activate some type of Pavlovian response relying on how acquainted you might be with AI: The Somnium Information. See, the sci-fi sequence stars Kaname Date, a detective whose technique of interrogation includes hopping into folks’s minds and breaking via their psychological locks by way of surreal escape room puzzles. But when there’s one factor that he actually needs you to find out about him, it’s that he loves porno mags. It’s not simply his favourite factor to yap about in any one-liner he can squeeze between exposition; soiled magazines grant him tremendous power, like a perverted Popeye. Enjoying the primary AI: The Dream recordsdata recreation will depart you sick of the working joke after 20 hours. If it doesn’t, then its sequel, Nirvana Initiativedefinitely will.
However No Sleep For Kaname Date raises (or lowers) the bar once more. It showcases a dedication to useless horse desecration not seen since Season 4 of The Sopranos. And it’s via that working joke that I’m lastly in a position to perceive why precisely I preserve coming again to a sequence I’ve sworn off a number of instances. That’s as a result of now I lastly get that AI: The Somnium Information isn’t a tough sci-fi thriller or a brainy detective saga. It’s a sitcom.
Positioned as an interstitial side-adventure set earlier than Nirvana Initiative, No Sleep For Kaname Date is the online game equal of a bottle episode. Moderately than centering round a serial killer investigation, Iris is kidnapped (seemingly by aliens) and compelled to finish a lethal sequence of escape rooms on a reside stream. Kaname Date takes the case, as soon as once more enlisting the assistance of Aiba, his trusty AI sidekick that lives in his pretend eyeball.
Picture: Spike Chunsoft
I’m tempted to say that the chapter jumps the shark, however that will suggest that the sequence ever had its surfboard on the water. The enchantment of AI: The Somnium Information has all the time been its capacity to mix dense sci-fi thriller with unpredictable zaniness, making a page-turner a method or one other. It’s why I’ve performed all three Somnium Information video games to completion even after I wasn’t compelled by their hacky humor. No Sleep For Kaname Date retains that power up, however in a extra compact story (round 10 hours shorter than earlier video games) that ultimately trades in alien goofiness for some unexpectedly grounded character moments.
Massive components of the journey are acquainted. Once I’m not interrogating characters at places recycled from earlier video games or performing some occasional quicktime occasions, I’m Psyncnhing into folks’s minds with Aiba’s assist to get repressed data. That also performs out within the sequence’ signature puzzle sequences, the place I want to choose the precise textual content prompts to unravel surreal issues. Every reply I choose prices time, and I solely have a couple of minutes to work with, although I can use Timies to scale back how lengthy every chosen motion will take. It’s nonetheless a find it irresistible or hate it system that’s in an ungainly center floor between textual content journey and escape room.
Fortunately, there’s a much-needed tweak on the system this time. I often get to regulate Iris and resolve the precise escape rooms she’s trapped in. These sections are far more conventional in nature, tasking me with choosing up objects, decoding ciphers, and testing my spatial reasoning abilities. Proper from the very first sequence, the place Iris should observe down statues and sand vials to flee a UFO, it feels just like the Zero Escape spark the sequence has been lacking. They’re extra lively puzzles in comparison with the “choose the mistaken choice, lose, and check out once more” nature of Psych sequences. No Sleep For Kaname Date seems like a proving floor for a gameplay pivot, and it makes a robust case for it.
However the extra issues change, the extra they very a lot keep the identical. The writing comprises the identical flood of juvenile jokes that has made earlier video games so tough to grind via at instances. Even with a truncated runtime, Date nonetheless finds time to go to the Lemniscate Leisure Workplaces and begins mercilessly flirting with the secretary with comically huge breasts. My situation isn’t even with the jokes themselves; this 12 months’s glorious Promise Mascot Company is simply as lewd, and it’s a hoot. It’s extra simply that I want the sequence would get some new materials. What number of instances do I’ve to listen to Mama discuss her massive “balls?”
Picture: Spike Chunsoft
All of that ought to have turned me off from the sequence by now, but I nonetheless performed via the whole thing of No Sleep For Kaname Date simply as I did with earlier video games. Even after I was swearing it off, I nonetheless felt compelled to see all of it to the tip. Why? What retains me coming again to a sequence that so persistently retains my eyes rolling?
I remembered my father’s personal media habits. Once I was rising up, he was a giant sitcom hound. Each night time throughout dinner, we’d have to look at The King of Queens. I discovered it maddening. Kevin James’ character was such an unredeemable schlub who by no means appeared to develop or change. The present was in a relentless state of established order and I by no means had a way of the place episodes fell on the timeline. It betrayed each rule of fine TV writing, however my father discovered a transparent pleasure in it. “Watch this,” he’d say when James was clearly telegraphing some type of slapstick pratfall. Even when he hadn’t seen the episode, he knew all of the cues and danced together with them, very like the Somnium Information’ Ota, one in all Iris’ many superfans, all the time recites idol catchphrases on command. My father would later take that power to reveals like The Large Bang PrincipleBazinga-ing together with Sheldon.
That’s the place one in all my very own psychological locks opened. “Porno magazine” is “Bazinga.”
Date, and the Somnium Information’ supporting gamers, are sitcom characters. They exist on this sequence to come back out every episode and say their catchphrases. Every time somebody says “porno magazine,” you’ll be able to virtually hear the uproarious laughter of a reside viewers within the distance. And as stale as these working jokes can really feel from an out of doors perspective, a sitcom’s enchantment is its consistency. Viewers like my father aren’t watching to be shocked. They need to be in on the joke, pretending that they’re a part of the author’s room. Even within the darkest days of All people Loves Raymond reruns over gnocchi dinner, I finally got here to understand that enchantment. Kevin James’ predictable buffoonery turned a supply of stability in my teenage years. I can’t say that it ever made me just like the present, however I got here to take pleasure in the truth that I may work out how each episode would go. It felt like fixing a puzzle.
I consider that’s what pushed me via No Sleep For Kaname Datea middling spinoff that also gave me the consolation of low-stakes TV. I may sit right here and fake like I hated it, trashing its one-dimensional characters, grotesque therapy of its feminine characters, and repetitive jokes. However after six years, I’m nonetheless tuning in to look at each new episode. For higher or worse, that is my King of Queens.
