Event[0] (2016)

I really liked the idea of the ship's computer AI recognising my text input.
Although, excluding some cool moments, most times I felt like dealing with a stupid customer service support bot and running errands.
But this time I couldn't say "just connect me to a human support operator, please"

Still, it's really cool how the endings and some dialogues change, depending on you being nice or rude/neutral to the AI.

At the beginning of Event[0], you land on a derelict ship and investigate what happened to its occupants. The only other character in the game is the ship's AI, named Kaizen, who you can communicate with by typing into the terminals scattered around the ship.

I love dialog-heavy games. Mass Effect and Life is Strange are my two favourite series of all time. But they're limited to a dialog wheel; you choose one line from a few options, and that's what the character says. In Event[0], you can type literally whatever you want to Kaizen, and it will respond.

It's a huge challenge to undertake, and made me really excited to play this game, but unfortunately it doesn't work great.

Story spoiler: At one point, you need to get into a bedroom, but the door is locked and can only be opened by a retina scan matching the bedroom's owner, Anele. At the beginning of the game, when you first arrive on the ship, Kaizen asks for your identity and you have to name yourself. The idea I had was to reset my identity and tell Kaizen my name was Anele, so that my retina scan would identify me as "Anele" and the door would unlock.

So I tried typing "reset my name to Anele" to Kaizen, and its response was "What? You want to go outside? Why would you do that?". So I typed "set name Anele" five times in a row, and Kaizen's responses continued to not match my input at all, until it revealed the obviously-pre-scripted plan. "Ohh, you want to bypass the bedroom door by doing a space walk to enter the bedroom through the cracked window on the outside. That's very clever, let me unlock the airlock for you." The game was short, and figuring out how to bypass the door was one of only a few interesting puzzle moments in the game, so having it ruined by a poor AI that just spells out the solution to you felt terrible.

Because Kaizen is a malfunctioning AI, mistakes in the communication are not as impactful as it would otherwise have. If a human NPC had replied "I don't understand you" five times in a row, it would break the immersion. But because Kaizen is a malfunctioning AI, it makes sense within the story for the dialog parser to fail sometimes. It still doesn't feel great though, and I would've been happier if it had worked better.

It's an innovative, interesting idea though and I'm glad a game like this exists that tried to tackle it. The way the story unravels, as you explore the ship and slowly piece together what happened to the occupants, is done well. If you're a seasoned gamer, to the point where any game different than the norm with a unique mechanic is very appealing to you, then give Event[0] a try - it's only a few hours long, so it's not a huge commitment to get through. Otherwise, you can safely skip this one.

Enjoyed this. Beat it 3 times (first time 2.5-3 hours, second and third probably 45-60mins). It's a little rough around the edges at moments, with the AI not being as perfect as a game like this might benefit from (no disrespect to the devs, that kind of AI isn't really available to common folk yet). And a couple of the puzzles aren't so great. There's also something that rubbed me the wrong way, with how the game tries to punish you for how you treat the AI in the game. The problem, though, is that Kaizen, the AI, has a bit of an attitude problem. He's obtuse, occasionally threatening, and not particularly likable. I didn't even particularly "abuse" him, but I wasn't lovey-dovey. I didn't act like we were friends. And I got punished for it. If a real person treated me this way I would act the same. It's funny, there's some instances that make me think it's due to the devs being non-native English speakers. I believe the game is made by a French team. The way that Kaizen speaks is exactly like how I have heard SOME non-native English speakers talk before. For example, they sometimes lack the nuance of delivering humor and can sound cold, or mean. There's a moment where you can trigger Kaizen to say "You need to stop asking so many questions." Now, as a native English speaker, you would know that that exact phrase is a threat. It might not look so on paper to a non-native speaker, but it is. However, it is not a threat exactly, and it makes Kaizen look like an asshole. I triggered this line very early in the game and felt "Oh shit this AI is a psycho." That might not have been the intention. I don't know.

Look, it's a good game. I loved it, so those gripes are just some word vomit. If you like first person puzzle and exploration absolutely play this.

Why are you so cute and so frustrating at the same time. Haha.

This game was wonderful the first play through. Interacting with Kaizen, figuring out the story, all in all an epic gallop through an interesting storied spacecraft.

Upon beating the game and looking at the achievements, seeing there were multiple endings, going back through the game showed some of it's frustrations. Kaizen is not an AI with a complex neural net capable of processing the infinite intricacies of human language. I think this is okay, as this game was not created by a team of a thousand computer scientists. That doesn't mean however, that interacting with Kaizen a second (and third) time around didn't become a little tedious.

But really, how do you fault a game that was good fun all around the first time through just because replay-ability isn't super high.

Hint: you don't. Highly recommend a play through of Event[0].

8.5 (or maybe 9, I don't know, leave me alone)/10

I'm gonna make this short and sweet: Event[0] is kind of a walking simulator, though when I think of that genre I think more of exploring expansive areas and in that respect, this is a lot more linear. This has an intriguing story and some logical/environmental puzzles to solve -- the highlight of the game is typing to your computer and talking to it. Seriously, it seems like a small thing but it's crucial to the enjoyment of the game and is by far one of the cooler aspects of it. I don't know if this is true or not, since I only have my playthrough of it, but someone said that the computer adapts to how you treat it--such as how much you talk to it--and then talks to you differently. I cannot confirm this, but if it is true, then that's a small thing that makes every experience unique... and shows that this isn't a game you should just watch on YouTube. Fantastic stuff for the short period of time that it is aro und.