A.I.L.A Review

Moments into A.I.L.A, the player is put through a harrowing escape nightmare. A monstrous madman chops through your hand with an axe, flesh no match for the sharp instrument. A shard of glass is wedged out of your foot, spurting blood. And, once you finally escape through a sewage line into daylight, a bomb goes off in the distant city that looked to be a place of refuge.

And then A.I.L.A transitions to an entirely new scene. A darkened wood where the player now wields an axe. A pixelated health bar and inventory wheel appear. You now saunter along, a drastic change from the pace moments ago. Are you now the hunter?

But the screen brightens. Text appears. You have a package. The real world fades in.

A.I.L.A uses narrative deception and subversion to fuel player expectation throughout its 8-10 hour journey. For its first several hours, I wasn’t entirely sure where developer Pulsatrix Studios was taking me but remained anticipatory for what new horrors could come.

At its core, A.I.L.A is a game about a game about a game. As Samuel, players take on the role of a man playtesting an advanced A.I. technology. Named, obviously, A.I.L.A, this “game” is a complex program run from a futuristic looking CPU and a VR headset. Using a virtual young girl as its guide, Samuel dons the VR headset to help A.I.L.A work out any potential issues and improve its programming for more intense and realistic experiences.

Set in a believable near-future, A.I.L.A is a full-fledged psychological horror game meant to keep players guessing at what twist or scare lies beyond a shadowy path or creaky door. The game is primarily split between two parts: Samuel’s home and the virtual worlds created by A.I.L.A. The prologue does an admirable job at disorienting players, not providing them with solid ground on where the narrative is going. Was Samuel really just playing a game at first? Does that experience actually tie into the narrative?

Being a player deeply experienced with horror games and an avid fan of bloody, fucked-up movies, A.I.L.A‘s signposting is relatively visible from the start. And, admittedly, I think part of the problem is that the developers at Pulsatrix Studios are probably similar in taste to me.

Whether a filmmaker, a novelist, a screenplay writer, or a video game developer, balance must be struck on how to drip-feed the audience information. At what point does foreshadowing open up a Pandora’s box of questions? How does the creator instill the idea of something being amiss but not have the player doubt the proceedings or attempt to constantly peel back meaning?

Pulsatrix and, by extension, A.I.L.A, come from a scrappy, sincere place. Admittedly, I’ve seen the presentation and bones of A.I.L.A in other similar horror games. The genre is ripe with studios working to make a name for themselves. It certainly isn’t the biggest challenge in the world to load a game with jump scares and hope that a rabid Twitch and YouTube audience will feed off the hoots and hollers of their favorite content creator. I’ve played abhorrently boring games with cheap scares that beg to be seen as deep, using twisted monsters as a reflection of the protagonist’s past guilt and trauma. They are a dime a dozen.

But mid-tier horror games also can show a lot of heart and promise. When playing through A.I.L.A I saw the obvious hallmarks of Pulsatrix developers peppering their photographs, names, and likely pets throughout levels. Players can look at books around Samuel’s home and see nods to other horror games like Resident Evil, SOMA, and Outlast.

A.I.L.A is obviously crafted from a place of knowledge and appreciation on what scares and unsettles players. Pulsatrix has played these games and is hoping to create one themselves.

So they decided to craft six games inside of one.

The primary “game” players experience is the “real” one where Samuel isn’t donning the A.I.L.A headset. Players can wander Samuel’s space and pick up items and listen to the news and feed his cat. In terms of realism, the domicile seems a bit opulent. Samuel has multiple screens in every room and walkable space, multiple living rooms, and an outdoor patio. It’s a big area and one that is almost superfluous to the narrative–a sentiment that can be applied to other parts of the game as well.

Samuel constantly has a drone delivery service bringing him packages and we come to understand him as a tinkerer of robotics and likely a natural tester of electronics and games. Why else would he have tech littering his space? And as A.I.L.A progresses, a few clever things are done with this space to not only question its safety for Samuel but its place on the physical plane.

The rest of A.I.L.A is segmented off into experiences the AI concierge has crafted for Samuel. Its job is to make as realistic of an experience as possible for the user–think Abstergo from Assassin’s Creed. The company behind A.I.L.A has its hand in many pies and the game is merely a potential avenue for funding.

Here we have the first intriguing tent pole of A.I.L.A: why should we be scared? Isn’t this all just a game?

Though Pulsatrix were perhaps a bit too lenient with jump scares, I think the first handful are used to lull the player into a false sense of caution, constantly mistrusting when the game is going to make a loud noise or have a lightbulb explode at the proper time. But the first game that Samuel dives into is a contained horror escape room. Consisting of two large rooms and a hallway, players are meant to guide Samuel through a locked door.

The mechanism for progression is a remote control that players wield and point at a TV. When changing the channel, Samuel is teleported to the same area but in a different state. Maybe this time it’s flooded. Maybe the next time there’s a corpse on a table that needs to have keys extracted from the roof of its mouth with pliers. This fascinating technique of puzzle solving is the highlight of A.I.L.A. There’s a feeling of being stuck between realities and Pulsatrix uses camera work to have things disappear in and out of the space very effectively.

When players manage the solution, Samuel has a conversation with A.I.L.A discussing what he just played. During the course of the game, players can make decisions through dialog and will be given choices on how to act in certain scenarios. A.I.L.A purports to use this “karma” system to change the story and also affect the ending of the game. It’s an okay implementation of morality in a horror game but eventually takes a backseat as A.I.L.A stops voicing the player’s choices and working to figure out what they mean.

And then the sequence continues. A.I.L.A claims that she is working to make the experience more realistic, diving in to Samuel’s search history, becoming integrated into his smart home features. What’s wrong? She’s only trying to gather the necessary parameters for a more exciting game!

The strength of these opening hours of A.I.L.A made me excited for what was to come. Doubly so when the technology crafted a different style of game, this time the story of a detective searching for a woman. It led him to investigating a meteor falling from the sky, picking up a pregnant woman from the side of the road, and being attacked by creatures in an abandoned farmhouse. Gone was the escape room scenario with puzzle-solving mechanics. Now players are in full Resident Evil territory, combining items to pry open windows and locked doors, mixing herbs to heal, and shooting guns.

Such a hard right turn would be disorienting if it wasn’t for the fact that the player should be somewhat mentally prepared for change. This is an experimental technology running different simulations to be as realistic as possible.

And what came next?

Well… another survival horror motif. This time in a medieval setting where a witch had cursed the land. And next? A ghost ship where the souls of the guilty seemed anchored in limbo. The next? The fourth survival horror scenario but this time in an infested forest where secrets are buried.

Outside of the broad setting of these four segments, A.I.L.A remains almost unchanged. Pistols and shotguns are replaced with swords and crossbows or muskets. Enemies slowly lurch toward the player as they explore massive areas to piece together progression puzzles. All the while, A.I.L.A the program scratches at the fourth wall, threatening the player not to look too far past what it’s explicitly saying.

The problem with A.I.L.A is that it simply becomes too repetitive too fast. This is exacerbated by the massive scope of the game. Much like Samuel’s room, the four other scenarios players engage with are far too linear and far too big for their own good. Had the first experience involving a creepy house probably infested with aliens been around an hour or two, that would have been okay. But each section stretches on the same amount if not longer.

A.I.L.A is certainly ambitious and for a studio such as Pulsatrix that is likely on the smaller side, there’s a lot to admire. But ambition can get the better of you when the content seems spread too thin. Each “game” that Samuel plays not so subtly has an overarching theme meant to evoke questions in the player’s mind about what is real, what isn’t, and what deep secrets they will uncover while progressing.

The issue with A.I.L.A is that it shows its hand far too many times, especially for players prone to reading between the lines.

Before Samuel boots up A.I.L.A, players can explore his apartment. Outside the door of his (primary?) workspace, there is a door to the right that players can attempt to open. In doing so, the camera looks down at Samuel’s hand as he shakily reaches for the doorknob but pulls away before he opens the door. “Okay, whose body does he have in there?” I thought. On the news and legible on newspapers is the story of an “Eyes Killer”. “Okay, Samuel is scooping out people’s eyes and A.I.L.A is going to make him relive the horrors he’s inflicted on others,” I thought.

Though A.I.L.A doesn’t go for that most obvious thing, I applaud Pulsatrix for laying the groundwork of doubt throughout. Interesting quandaries arise that perceptive players will notice. Samuel was an alcoholic but the health items he uses in the games are flasks. The mirror in his bathroom is broken, indicating there’s a reason we can’t see Samuel’s face reflected back.

Yet the problem is that the work to get to the meat of the story is dulled by repetition. After playing the game’s second scenario, I thought Samuel and the player would be transported to another style of horror. But nope, it’s more of the same with different coats of paint. I thought playing a survival horror game in a horror game was a great touch of awareness and one meant to poke at the tropes of other games in the same vein. But then the sentiment is hammered home three more times.

Why is A.I.L.A only creating horror games for Samuel? If that’s the only thing it’s programmed to do, it must be evil right? What would have absolutely floored me was if A.I.L.A suddenly became an action game or a bright and colorful romp. That tonal shift would have thrilled me with possibility, subverting all expectations because I assumed it would be a constant thread of scares.

By rooting itself firmly in these parameters, A.I.L.A removes itself from taking too many risks. And unfortunately, this means the majority of the game suffers from the same flaws. Combat and shooting simply don’t feel that great. Firing a gun lacks a satisfying weight, as does swinging a melee weapon. And A.I.L.A is packed with combat. Worse yet, the numerous boss fights in the game are terribly basic, shoving players into a circular arena where they strafe around a monster or humanoid taking shots until they run out of ammo. Seriously, almost every boss fight is like this.

While A.I.L.A can be creepy and moody, its visuals and presentation just don’t excite me. Enemies feel like they are ripped from the school of Resident Evil 7 and the spaces are so big that eventually they all run together. Having such massive, extended levels that are too mechanically similar gives the player ample opportunity to grow exhausted between each new revelation. Multiple times the true nature behind A.I.L.A is questioned as is what is happening to Samuel.

But again, if this is all just a game created by artificial intelligence, what’s the point?

My disappointment with A.I.L.A stems from the fact that when I wasn’t fighting enemies, I was having a decent time. Pulsatrix does lean into horror tropes and how to throw in genre subversions. But it’s all trapped in a dull first-person shooter with light puzzle mechanics. I wonder how the narrative would have fared if its length was trimmed down possibly by half and there simply was no combat or the combat was reduced to one section of the game.

In its ambition to take players on a journey through different settings while using the questions of reality and sanity as handholds, the game becomes distracted. A.I.L.A works best when it’s about blurring the lines between the world of the game and the real world. Shooting aliens and slashing at wood creatures is the least interesting stuff. Why is A.I.L.A creating these images for Samuel? Even if we think we know the answer, a quicker pace leads to results faster, preventing players from gestating on questions for too long.

A.I.L.A presents a number of intriguing concepts for the player to chew on and initially establishes its ability to circumvent expectations and genre tropes. But as the game continues, positive gains are lost in the swamp of repetitive mechanics. Springing from psychological to survival horror to something wholly unique would have been a welcome surprise but instead, A.I.L.A stumbles right as it begins to gain momentum. Though the overarching story has its moments, players will have to wade through the doldrums to get there.