Chaos;Head Noah

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in Chaos;Head Noah/Chaos; Child Double Pack, along with Chaos; Child.)

Chaos;Head is a Visual Novel released in 2008 on PC in Japan and subsequently ported to numerous other platforms, but only seeing release outside of Japan. It would finally release in the West in 2022 on PC and Nintendo Switch in an enhanced “Noah” version with reworked story paths.

Chaos;Head is the first game in the Science Adventure series, AKA “SciADV”, probably best known for the subsequent game in the series, Steins;Gate. For those who are familiar with Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head is set in the same world as that game, and takes place in Tokyo’s Shibuya district about a year prior to the events of that game, focusing on a different cast of characters with a different central plot premise.

This game puts players in the role of Takumi, a high school student who is an extreme recluse. Takumi would be perfectly happy to just stay in his cargo container home all day playing videogames, but soon he finds his life tangled up with a case involving a gruesome series of murders happening in the area. At the same time, Takumi is forced to contend with “delusions” that his life may not be as it appears, and these delusions turn out to be even more significant than they initially seem to be.

I won’t get into the convoluted plot, and the game does itself a massive disservice by not explaining its “delusion” mechanic properly, which lets players choose what type of delusion Takumi will have at specific points in the game’s 30 hour-long story (give or take, depending on your reading speed) where a circular graphic appears on the screen. The importance of this is never mentioned, nor is there an indication you even can make different selections here. And given that this is how players go through the game’s branching story and discover the multiple endings, this omission is a huge oversight.

However, this wasn’t the biggest problem I had with Chaos;Head. The big problem here, and what is sure to put off most players, is that Takumi is an absolutely terrible, unlikeable protagonist. His extremely reclusive and antisocial nature makes him hard to identify with, but there’s also the insulting way he thinks of everyone he meets in person – he derisively calls them “3D people” and much prefers the “2D people” he speaks with online and fantasizes about in his anime and among his collection of figurines. He’s nasty to his caring, concerned sister, and objectifies and stereotypes every female character he interacts with, often picturing them in degrading sexual fantasies (potentially including his sister, eiw), even if he can’t bring himself to say what he really thinks out loud.

Oh, that’s another problem – this game does a terrible job making it clear whether Takumi is speaking something or just thinking something, and you have to try to glean this from whether you can hear his voiced lines and whether a character he’s with responds to what was just said. It’s frustrating that the game doesn’t do a better job giving some sort of consistent visual indicator to differentiate his thoughts from his spoken words.

I suppose on that note I should say that the voice acting is quite good here, and the game’s 2D anime-style characters and 2D backgrounds are… fine. There are also some occasional 3D elements, such as when Takumi plays one of his online games, though this is mostly a minor part of the presentation. As for music, you’ll mainly find the only music here is mostly diegetic and generally forgettable. In its place, most of the time you have environmental sounds. This works, but it makes things pretty quiet for much of the game.

In the end, I could see potential in Chaos;Head. The “delusion” mechanic is an interesting approach to choice in the genre, and if done well I could see having a protagonist who’s a recluse that’s forced out of his comfort zone and needs to learn to interact with real people potentially becoming a compelling story. Unfortunately, this game completely drops the ball on even letting players know about the delusion mechanic, and Takumi is so completely and irredeemably unlikeable that his despicable thoughts through the story just made me continue to hate him more and more. You have tons of better options for Visual Novel games on Nintendo Switch, so definitely don’t bother with this one unless you’re a massive fan of the Science Adventure series and demand to explore the entire thing.

tl;dr – Chaos;Head is a Visual Novel that is the first game in the Science Adventure series, focusing on reclusive shut-in Takumi who becomes wrapped up in case involving a series of gruesome murders. There’s a clever “delusion” mechanic here that the game completely fails to explain or even properly indicate to players is there, but what really loses me here is how absolutely unlikeable Takumi is as a protagonist. Unless you’re a die-hard fan of the Science Adventure series, skip this.

Grade: D

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