Reviews

[Review] ‘Close to the Sun’ is Blinded by its Misguided Focus

Published

5 years ago

May 13, 2019

Close to the Sun is the increasingly common kind of first-person narrative adventure game that seems to have taken the “walking sims aren’t games” talking point at face value, spoiling an intriguing setting with unnecessary and frustrating mechanics. As a result, it’s more clearly a traditional “game.” It’s also, clearly, less “good.”

Developer Storm in a Teacup has crafted a gorgeous setting in the Helios, a massive ocean liner where a fictionalized version of Nikola Tesla has invited the world’s best and brightest to live and work in a commune that’s kind of like Hogwarts for really brilliant Muggle scientists. Assuming the role of journalist Rose Archer, you arrive at the hulking cruise ship in the dead of night, responding to an invitation from your physicist sister, Ada. But, Ada is nowhere to be found and with nary a Nobel Prize hopeful in sight, you set out in search of your physi-sister and answers.

As you explore the Helios you’ll begin to uncover a heady narrative cocktail of atomic physics, time travel, espionage and bloodthirsty monsters — both human and not. You’ll find baby blue schematics for a myriad of inventions. You’ll find newspapers that seem endlessly interested with the goings-on aboard Tesla’s ship. And you’ll find the occasional passport for a noteworthy scientist or two (let’s just say Tesla wasn’t the Helios’ most famous inhabitant). Most frequently you’ll find notes, signs, newspapers and more that remind you that Tesla suspects his rival Thomas Edison’s spies are lurking aboard, infiltrating the ranks.

Unfortunately, though, you’ll run past an awful lot of this. Close to the Sun’s “utopia led by a brilliant visionary goes to shit at sea” story and brass statues (mostly in Tesla’s honor) and mahogany set dressing have earned this game plenty of comparisons to BioShock. But, BioShock was a systems-driven shooter with a richly imagined world, and Close to the Sun doesn’t provide either. Instead of shooting, the game offers a few too many bad chase sequences. These require a good deal of trial and error —expect to watch a violent lunatic stab your character with the regularity of a sewing machine—and, sometimes, perfect precision. During one sequence, I questioned whether I even had the right solution at all because of the glitchy speedrun quickness required to complete the chase.

Of course, no one comes to a first-person narrative experience for the action, but the Close to the Sun isn’t the first game to make the mistake of adding “more game.” Observer, Bloober Team’s intoxicatingly atmospheric cyberpunk thriller, spent its first four hours as a detailed character study in a decrepit tenement building, before getting lost in the weeds with a series of bad stealth and dream sequences. Conarium, from Zoetrope Interactive, followed a similar trajectory, introducing players to a beautifully rendered Arctic base, before bogging the experience down in submarine sequences and endless nonsensical puzzles. Occasionally, the “walking sim but with action” approach works—What Remains of Edith Finch is one of the best indie games of this generation—but more often than not it siphons time and attention away from exploring the intriguing world that draws you in early on.

This is my primary problem with Close to the Sun; not so much that the chase sequences are frustrating– though they are– but rather that Storm in a Teacup included them at the expense of their setting. One of the main problems plaguing the game is a lack of any worldbuilding extending beyond the central characters and main plot. Nearly every piece of paper you’ll find on the Helios somehow relates back to Tesla or Ada Archer. But, this game is about an ocean liner—in other words, a massive floating dormitory—full of the most brilliant people alive, and instead of using the papers strewn throughout the Helios to establish this ecosystem, and Close to the Sun constantly fashions them as road signs directing you back to the freeway of the main plot. As a result, the Helios, which looks bigger than the Titanic, ends up feeling extremely small, and the game takes on the same myopic view of its world as Tesla seems to have of himself.

That may seem, primarily, like a thematic concern; like I don’t think Close to the Sun is living up to the potential of its narrative. And, that’s right, I don’t. But, this laserlike focus on the “important people” pushes the game’s structure to be similarly narrow. While a setting like the Helios invites exploration, –curiosity– the game’s hyperlinear structure means that you’ll rarely have a chance to search beyond the beaten path. While there are collectibles strewn about the game’s environment, these rarely offer any insight into the state of the denizens of the Helios.

First-person narrative games have historically been really good at revealing the inner thoughts of the characters at their core and on the outskirts of their story. They invite you to snoop, sifting through a father’s abandoned novel ideas or a couple’s divorce papers, with the hope of revealing something about the human experience. Edith Finch, the most successful action-oriented walking sim, uses mechanics not as a way to inject action into an otherwise boring experience, but rather as a means to explore these stories and characters more thoroughly. Close to the Sun fails because it makes the player feel more like they’re strapped into an 1897-themed rollercoaster, than like a voyeur lurking where they shouldn’t.

There are other problems, too. Chase sequences were hampered further by some technical difficulties I encountered while playing with a controller. During the first big chase, the mantle button just wouldn’t work, leading to me being dying over and over at the same obstacle. Fortunately, the game offers four different gamepad presets and switching to another setting fixed the problem.

Maybe the most damning thing I can say about Close to the Sun is that the main story it’s so interested in telling—the story that everything else on the Helios funnels you back toward—just isn’t the least bit surprising. All of it borrows pretty heavily from the BioShock playbook, and all of the plot points it trots out have been done better (and far more shockingly) elsewhere. The portrait of Tesla it presents seems conflicted—and I hoped Close to the Sun would attempt to close the distance between the egomania that would prompt a man to build statues of himself and the gentle humanity Tesla shows elsewhere — but the game doesn’t do anything to dig into those contradictions.

That’s the consequence of all those chase sequences. Close to the Sun just doesn’t have the time to dig into anything. It’s got somewhere else to be.

Close to the Sun review code for PC provided by the publisher.

Close to the Sun is out now on PC.

Books

‘Happy Birthday to Me’ Novelization Review – A Horrific Slice of Bloody Birthday Fun

Published

3 days ago

June 28, 2024

Jenn Adams

The slasher first established itself as the dominant art form of 1980s horror by capitalizing on the calendar. Arguably beginning with Black Christmas (1974) and Halloween (1978), the formula began to solidify by setting brutal killing sprees on the dates of beloved holidays. With the subsequent success of Friday the 13th (1980), directors clamored to claim their own occasion and create a defining slasher film with a series of themed kills highlighting seasonal iconography. It was a win-win for both filmmakers and audiences–an annually rewatchable horror film allowing genre fans to eschew saccharine traditions and celebrate in style.

Lee Thompson’s Happy Birthday to Me (1981) features a slightly more nebulous occasion–after all, every day of the year is someone’s birthday. Rejecting the concept’s seasonality, Thompson and screenwriters John C.W. Saxton, Peter Jobin, and Timothy Bond patterned the mysterious killer’s actions around the idea of a grisly birthday party. The film follows Virginia (Melissa Sue Anderson) and her classmates at an elite New England boarding school. Though it never attained the ubiquitous status of the aforementioned classics, Happy Birthday to Me is a cult favorite–a festive whodunnit nearly bursting at the seams with red herrings and creative kills.

Partnering with Stop the Killer, author Armando Muñoz brings back another beloved piece of the slasher’s golden age: the novelization. Before the days of streaming and VOD, these paper retellings allowed us to experience our favorite horror films in the seemingly interminable stretch of time before they hit video stores. Following the success of last year’s Silent Night, Deadly Night, his new novelization Happy Birthday to Me and its accompanying game, is a grisly page-turner perfect for any season. With his trademark sickness, Muñoz indulges in the macabre and amplifies the story with more kills, more sex, and more murderous scandal than any slasher fan could wish for.

Virginia is a popular senior at Crawford Academy and a member of the school’s academic Top Ten. This bizarre club of high-performing nepo-babies treats the tiny town as a playground and indulges in their every whim and expensive desire. One particularly egregious game involves jumping their lavish cars and motorcycles over an opening drawbridge, betting on who can make the most death-defying leap. Virginia abhors this dangerous game and has decided she doesn’t want a celebration for her upcoming 18th birthday. But someone else has other ideas. The aptly named Cake Cutter begins stalking her friends and murdering them one by one in hopes of creating a sinister birthday soirée. As Virginia reckons with her rapidly dwindling friend group, darker memories emerge. A horrific accident and resulting head injury may hold the key to the birthday girl’s strange–and possibly dangerous–behavior.

'Happy Birthday to Me' Remains One of the Best and Weirdest '80s Slashers [Young Blood]

Muñoz faithfully recreates this outlandish story, beginning with a slobbery dog fake-out and Bernadette’s harrowing death at the hands of a gloved stranger. We then meet the rest of the Top Ten at a local bar (inexplicably serving high school students along with belligerent conventioneers), followed by the infamous game of drawbridge chicken that nearly totals an expensive Firebird. Each scene is faithfully recreated with exciting divergences and salacious details thrown in along the way. Muñoz expands upon the bodies, dismemberment, and violence in almost gleeful descriptions of splattering gore.

Thompson’s film culminates in the birthday party from hell, with decaying corpses staged around a gruesome cake, but Muñoz dives head-first into this upsetting tableau. We meet the so-called Cake Cutter after the first kill and follow them as they delight in staging this grisly party scene. Each subsequent murder provides more disgusting details as the secretive killer poses and “feeds” each ruined body with crumbling slices of a rotting cake. This pastry motif pairs well with the companion game from Stop the Killer. The object is to draw hexagonal cards and “bake a cake” by matching the edges to create a blood-spattered formation before drawing all six “kill cards” depicting illustrations of each iconic murders.

One of the more comical elements of the 1981 film is the use of generic music to avoid copyright issues. Virginia relaxes in her bedroom to music akin to what one might hear in a hip elevator and the kids later dance to anonymous approximations of timely pop hits. While no one would begrudge Thompson for spending his budget on special effects, this music has developed its own notoriety. With none of the same concerns, Muñoz seems to indulge in name-dropping. Virginia is a fan of Blondie and covets a red velvet hat worn by Debbie Harry while performing “Heart of Glass.” Weight lifting enthusiast Greg is obsessed with bodybuilding icons and remembers meeting both Franco Columbu and Arnold Schwarzenegger. More central to the plot, Alfred hopes to be the next Tom Savini and spares no expense creating his own gruesome gore effects–a detail that makes the film’s Mission Impossible-esque twist feel more believable.

Muñoz adds additional elements to the story including a peak into the lives of each doomed student. Amelia is mourning the disappearance of her older sister, a devastating detail that adds humanity to this series of ominous disappearances. Etienne is still an underwear-stealing creep, but we learn of a previous flirtation with a woman he thinks is Virginia, offering an explanation for why he feels entitled to come on so strong. We also get to “see” these deaths in their totality, without the need to cut away from the action. Each kill splatters onto the page with over-the-top violence and gleefully gruesome descriptions of dismemberment and mutilation. Muñoz also gives us the deaths of the remaining Top Ten instead of just those who happened to fall under the killer’s knife. No one who interacts with the infamous Cake Cutter is safe, and the story’s print version racks up a significantly larger pile of bodies.

Amidst all the birthday gore, there are a few sour notes and missed opportunities. We learn about the doctor’s predilection for electricity and that he died trying to copulate with one of his own machines, but Muñoz stops short of giving us any of these salacious details. Similarly, he hints at skeletons in Dr. Faraday’s own closet, but shies away from expanding on what they are. With hints of pedophilia, it’s perhaps for the best that we don’t dig too deeply into this strange arrangement, but it does feel like an unusual choice to withhold a potentially horrific backstory. Instead, we get more details about Mrs. Patterson, the school’s nagging headmistress. Unfortunately, this bit of gruesome indulgence veers into distasteful territory. Culminating in an animal death, the addition feels both unnecessary and garish, standing out as unfairly cruel amidst other thrilling tangents and over the top violence.

But Muñoz doesn’t linger on this upsetting detail and hurtles towards the film’s exciting conclusion. The Cake Cutter goes into murderous overdrive and begins racking up victims at an alarming rate. The shocking twist recreates the ending originally envisioned by Saxton, Jobin, and Bond while adding a chilling backstory for the surprising killer. Though still ridiculous, Muñoz amps up the bizarre factor with an anthropomorphized animal and a surprise party filled with birthday balloons, pitchers of gore, and gift-wrapped heads. The bodies squelch and rot as killer and victim tangle with each other in a deadly party game. With its series of over-the-top deaths, grisly mutilation, and a genuinely terrifying killer reveal, Muñoz’s Happy Birthday to Me is a tantalizing pile of literary gifts any horror fan would kill to open.