Chaos;Head (カオスヘッド ,Kaosu Heddo), is a Japanese visual novel developed by 5pb. and Nitroplus with gore, psychology, and science fiction elements that was released on April 25, 2008 for the PC. A port of the game, named Chaos;Head Noah (カオスヘッドノア ,Kaosu Heddo Noa), for the Xbox 360 console was released on February 26, 2009. The game is described by the development team as a "Delusional Science NVL" (妄想科学NVL ,Mōsō Kagaku NVL). The game's premise revolves around a high school student named Takumi Nishijō who unknowingly walks into the scene of a gruesome murder on his way home. More mysterious events starts happening afterwards as more gruesome murders occur in the area. Takumi struggles to cope with reality and the delusions he experiences as he tries to avoid getting caught by the perpetrator behind the chain of murders.
The game's story has been adapted into a manga that started serialization on May 21, 2008 in ASCII Media Works' shōnen manga magazine Dengeki Daioh. A second manga adaptation that focuses on Sena Aoi and Kozue Orihara began serialization in Media Factory's seinen manga magazine Monthly Comic Alive on August 28, 2008. It has been decided for this adaptation to be a side story to the original visual novel. A third adaptation will begin serializing in Jive's shōnen manga magazine Comic Rush magazine on September 26, 2008. The anime adaptation of Chaos;Head was announced in the September 2008 issue of Comic Alive. The anime began airing in October 2008 and is produced by Madhouse.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay of Chaos;Head, like other visual novels, requires little player interaction as the game is primarily made up of text dialogues. The player only needs to read and click through the text to advance through the game. The text that is displayed on the screen depicts conversations between different characters or their thoughts.
Chaos;Head presents choices to the player through a unique "delusional trigger" (妄想トリガー ,mōsō torigā) system. This system presents the player with three choices relating to Takumi's psychological state. Two cardiac cycles will be displayed on the screen. A green, stable one will be on the top left hand corner and a red, unstable one will be on the top right hand corner. The third choice is not visible to the player as it requires no player interaction. The player may choose to click on the green or red cardiac cycle, or to simply proceed through the game without selecting either of them. The player is not required to make a choice immediately as the two cardiac cycles will remain on the screen until a predetermined number of lines has been passed since they appeared.
Selecting the cardiac cycles will often decide what kind of delusions Takumi will experience. The stable choice often shows a happy or humorous scene whereas the unstable choice will show very negative scenes possibly with gore and violence added. Yes and no questions also show up at times although they are much less frequent than the delusional triggers.
PLOT
Setting and Themes
Chaos;Head primarily takes place in Shibuya, Tokyo. Many of Shibuya's physical locales like its busy pedestrian scramble and the Loft building appear in the game although their names have been altered slightly. Some notable Internet websites like Wikipedia, 2channel, YouTube, Google, and Yahoo! also show up in the game with modified names as We-Key Pedophiria, @-channel, MewTube, Deluoode, and Taboo!.
As the title implies, psychological themes relating to one's psyche and mind plays a large role in Chaos;Head. Delusions and the method of projecting one's own delusions onto the physical world, or onto someone else's visual system, is a key driver behind the story. Other scientific themes such as the concepts of matter, antimatter, and the Dirac sea are also brought up.[/align]
Story
Chaos;Head's story is set in 2008 in Shibuya and is centered around Takumi Nishijō, a high school student at the private Suimei Academy, and the strange events that have recently occurred in the Shibuya area. The two main events being referenced by the media and the public at large are referred as the "New Generation" (ニュージェネレーション) events. The first event, called the "Group Dive" (集団ダイブ), occurred on September 7 when five high school students jumped to their deaths off of a high tower. The second event, called the "Pregnant Man" (妊娠男 ,Ninshin Otoko), occurred on September 19 when a male university student was found dead with a thirty-two week old fetus incised within his abdomen.
The story begins on September 28 with Takumi talking to an online friend called Grim (グリム ,Gurimu). Grim is trying to bring Takumi up to speed about the recent New Generation events since Takumi is not interested in local or international news. A person named Shōgun (将軍) joins the chat room midway through Grim and Takumi's conversation, but he does not respond despite being greeted by both Grim and Takumi. Grim sends Takumi a poorly drawn image of a person getting stabbed with several stakes, jokingly claiming that it's an image of the murder before leaving the chat room.
After Grim leaves the chat room, Shōgun finally starts to talk. He sends Takumi a barrage of several realistic image links, with the stakes pinned as in Shōgun's, depicting a murder. The next day, as Takumi was heading home after spending the afternoon at an internet cafe, he comes across the same scene that he witnessed yesterday in Shōgun's pictures. He sees a male body nailed to the wall as well as a pink-haired girl dressed in a Suimei Academy uniform, covered in blood. Takumi runs away screaming as soon as he comes to his senses over the situation at hand. The story progresses from here with Takumi trying to avoid getting involved with Shōgun and other New Generation events as he is slowly caught in a grander scheme's wheels of motion.
The pink-haired girl, Rimi Sakihata, appeared before him as Takumi's classmate. Even though he doesn't remember her, the rest of the school does. Takumi is then approached by Yua Kusunoki, who at first seemed as a friend, but actually wanted to confirm if Takumi was the New Generation criminal, which she later accidentally reveals, scaring Takumi away. Gathering from Yua's comments, Takumi thinks he has precognition abilities and his search for related information leads him to a concert of the rock group "Phantasm." Its main singer, FES, whose true name is Ayase Kishimoto, reveals that the songs' lyrics predicted the New Gene incidents and also reveals to have a odd-shaped sword.
While trying to get away from Rimi and Yua, Takumi meets Sena Aoi in the streets of Shibuya, who seems to have the same sword as Ayase. She reveals that the weapon (invisible to anybody except Takumi and the wielders of this sword) is called a Di-Sword. Some time later, a new transfer student arrives at Takumi's school, Kozue Orihara. She seems to not talk and be very childish. Ayase advices Takumi to find his sword to be "saved." During this time, another New Gen incident occurs and an earthquake occurs of about 5.8 richter-scale strength whose epicentre is Shibuya.
Meanwhile, Takumi meets Sena and Ayase once again. When meeting Sena, she explains how people's perceptions can be converted to electromagnetic waves and energy that can be used to transmit what the human body perceives, having the ability to channel to other people. In other words, to transmit somebody's thoughts into other people. When meeting Ayase, she confirms this theory, adding that the manifestation of these thoughts to other people through waves and particles, are delusions, and Di-Swords are materialized interferences with the Sea of Dirac.
DEVELOPMENT
Chaos;Head is a collaborative production between 5pb. and Nitroplus with additional assistance from Red Flagship. The original concept art and scenario came from two 5pb. staff members, Yukihiro Matsuo and Naotaka Hayashi respectively. The character designer was Mutsumi Sasaki and Choco handled the product's design. 5zizz studio contributed the music to the game and Nitroplus handled the development and production of the game. Chaos;Head was temporarily named as Gigalomaniacs (ギガロマニアックス ,Gigaromaniakkusu) when it was first announced. The decision to port the game to the Xbox 360 was decided around June of 2008. Ayumi Tsuji, the voice for Kozue Orihara, noted that Orihara's new route that was introduced in Chaos;Head Noah was likely the cause behind the game receiving an 18+ Z rating from CERO.
Release History
Chaos;Head had two demo releases prior to its final product release. The first version of the demo was released on March 21, 2008 which included the first chapter of the game. The second version of the demo was released on April 11, 2008. This second version included the first chapter of the game like the first version as well as a separate "Chapter 1 Reflection Meeting" (第1章反省会 ,Dai Isshō Hanseikai) which included all of the main characters trying to determine who the main heroine of the game was. The full game was released on April 25, 2008. Pre-orders of the game came with two bonuses. The first was a patch that added a "Lingerie Conversion System" that swapped the lead female characters' models with models that only wore undergarments and the second was a telephone card. A consumer console port, named Chaos;Head Noah, to be published by 5pb.Games for the Xbox 360 was released on February 26, 2009. The port contains new routes for the heroines' of the game as well as new CG graphics. The CGs are rendered at a resolution of 1280x720, improving on the PC version's scaling of 800x600.
ISO Size: 1.4GB
Language: JAP (ENG if you use the TL Patch)
Type: Visual Novel
Developer: Nitroplus & 5pb
Official Site: http://www.nitroplus.co.jp/pc/lineup/into_15/
Release Date: 25 / 04 / 2008
First a sidenote. You must either have applocale or japanese language support installed, or this WILL NOT WORK PERIOD! Google is your friend if you need to know how to install applocale or japanese language support.
1. Go to chaoshead folder and burn the iso or just use some program to mount the image. Make sure you always keep this image for as long as you plan to play this game. Don't delete it after installation* (you can if you burnt it to a disc).
2. Install Chaos;Head. It will ask for an ID number, use the id from the text file found in this torrent. Afterwards, in the chaoshead folder, you should also see a .exe file, take this file and replace the .exe in the installed game directory. This will patch your game so it can run!
3. Next, go find the [AA2009]_[TLWiki]_Chaos_Head_English_Translation_RC1 folder and copy all the file inside this folder in the Chaos;Head directory (Usually C:\Program Files\Nitroplus\CHAOS;HEAD\ if you have Win Vista). Do not unrar any of the rar files that come from the [AA2009]_[TLWiki]_Chaos_Head_English_Translation_RC1 folder.
4. Go to your installed directory, and run the 'Glorious Installation.bat' file. This file will insert the translated scripts into your game and unrar the last rar file for you. It will say "I don't trust you, what license is this under?" You can certainly try guessing what license it's under, but you'll find that it won't install. The answer to this question is located in the readme.txt file, it should install then. Make sure you follow all on screen steps.
5. Play your game! If it won't start after entering the start button in the game, you didn't follow instructions and it's most likely because you don't have the game running under applocale or the japanese language support installed, even though the game is translated to english, IT STILL NEEDS IT.
*Reason why I ask you don't delete the game image is because the english patch that is included is release candidate 1, which means the final patch might require you to reinstall the game. If you do this, make sure you backup your save file. The final patch might fix any possible leftover bugs.
