1. LOCALHOST is a game where you wipe hard drives. In a life before my list-based review blog paid the bills, I had been known to do some IT work so you'd figure I'd be really good at a game like this. And you are totally right. I kicked this game's ass.
2. The setup is your boss at your new job sends you a message saying he needs you to wipe four hard drives.The twist is that these aren't just any hard drives but the hard drives for sentient ro-bots.
3. You play by inserting these hard drives into the one ro-bot body that's in your shop. The AIs talk to you and you get a list of responses you can respond w/. Your goal is ostensibly to convince these AI to let you delete them. Unsurprisingly, not all of them are terribly keen on this.
4. The general plot revolves around an AI called Local who may or may not have once resided in the female-type ro-bot body you have in the shop. All the other AIs seem to know Local or maybe even be Local. One of them claims to have been human at one point. You have no absolute way of knowing which of the AIs is telling the truth if any of them are.
5. This whole thing could have been presented w/ only unadorned text, Zork-style, but thankfully it is not.
6. I say thankfully because the music is outstanding. I don't know how many of my fine, fine readers survived the 90s w/ memories intact but if you did you may recall an electronic group called Orbital and a rock band called Radiohead. The music in LOCALHOST evokes these two acts at various places throughout the game and w/o it, it just wouldn't be the same. This is a game that leans heavily on its soundtrack to create mood and player engagement and it's right to do so.
7. Its visuals are effective but not quite as striking. All of the AIs are placed in the same female-type ro-bot body so, of course, they all look the same but they do have different colored eyes and each of them holds the female-type body in a different posture. They don't really do anything aside from sort of sway in the breeze though and I think it'd be nice if they exhibited some sort of body language, esp. since so much of this game seems to be trying to figure out to what degree these AIs are manipulating you.
8. But why on earth should you expect an AI in a ro-bot body to have the same tells as a human being that's lying to you? Why do you make an AI look like a human being female at all? Actually, LOCALHOST deals w/ a lot of these types of questions. You've got these AIs that seem to be able to interact w/ humans on a level indistinguishable from that of humans one of which claims to be copied from an actual human intelligence. What right of it of yours to obliterate these AIs?
9. This might sound a little Ethics of Computing 101 and, frankly, it is but LOCALHOST putting you in the driver's seat makes these issue seem more palpable and ethically fuzzy than they would if they were presented as a film or short story so it brings you back to these old questions w/ a fresh set of eyes.
10. As you progress, some of the AIs will try to convince you to copy them to the network, effectively saving their lives--if they are, indeed alive. It is not said outright but it feels very clear that this is something you are absolutely not allowed to do. You also get the impression that some of the AIs may well be computer viruses that could possibly cause some sort of unknown havoc if they do make it to the network. You can pick and chose who gets wiped and who gets copied to the network but it does not always go how you planned.
11. Repeat playthroughs are necessary to get the results you want. Most of the choices you make have story-related consequences and some of the AIs come across very differently depending on how you've treated them. One playthrough you might wish you could have saved a certain AI and then playing through another time, you might find yourself wondering why you were trying to save them to begin w/.
12. Unfortunately, you can't skip through dialog you've already read in previous playthroughs so if you are a completionist, you're in for a bit of a headache.
13. This is the kind of game that smart people play and enjoy... So I hate it! Or maybe I don't. Maybe I'm impressed w/ how well the developers created a believable world w/ such minimal presentation. Maybe I'm excited how LOCALHOST uses game-play elements to breath new life in to old debates about the nature of artificial intelligence. Maybe I thought that, in addition to all this, this game was just a pleasant way to spend an evening. All these questions and no way to know for sure.
No comments:
Post a Comment