#103: Close to the Sun

Close to the Sun

Storm in a Teacup
Initial release: May 2, 2019
Platform: PC, Playstation 4, XBox One, Switch

Images c/o Steam

I've made no secret that I generally dislike the subgenre of horror where you're left totally defenseless and must scurry, like a rat, to avoid the gaze of threats. I think part of this is Amnesia's fault; I hated the original game a lot (not nearly as much as I hated the third one, though!) and it soured me on the model. But there's been a few games since that I've actually somewhat enjoyed; SOMA is a good example from the same developers. Well, a while back I gave Storm in a Teacup's Close to the Sun a try and I thought it was alright.

Now, granted, Close to the Sun takes more after Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (which I didn't hate) than The Dark Descent, which is fine by me, but it’s far better looking than either. The developers claim no influence from Bioshock; frankly I call bullshit, and anyway God forbid a game be inspired by Bioshock. Aside from the obvious aesthetic similarities (though some of it’s anachronistic) is the alt-history setting and sharp sci-fi themes.

It’s 1897 in an alternate world where Nikola Tesla was actually financially successful and famous, and he’s built a massive ship to do science on. This ship, the Helios, is not only at the cutting edge of ship technology, but it’s also home to a vast array of scientists who are at the forefront of their fields, all while operating in international waters to avoid pesky regulations. (Starting to sound familiar?) All is not well on Helios, however. Contact was lost recently; in the meantime, journalist Rose Archer gets a letter from her sister Ada, who’s stationed aboard the ship, asking her for her aid. When Rose arrives onboard, she finds the ship in disarray and the crew slaughtered.

Make no mistake, though, this is most emphatically not Bioshock, or really any other System Shock successor (like Prey, or Alien: Isolation.) You're still completely unarmed; there’s almost nothing to shoot anyway, and the rare encounters you do have involve running away. These encounters are entirely scripted, and you’ll know when they happen — because they’re also quite frustrating. You’ll often have to make wild guesses as to where to go, and getting caught by level architecture can result in a brutal, painful — and unskippably long — death. The good news is that these encounters are few and far between, leaving your primary danger to be environmental ones — fire, arcs of electricity, that sort of thing. 

Most of the game will be wandering around the ship and occasionally navigating hazards and reading papers. The storyline — some guff about using time to generate electricity, and that going badly — is somewhat simpler than Bioshock Infinite, but less ham-fisted. Where it falls flat is down to its unwillingness to tie up loose ends, and leaving things on a sequel hook. Making all this more annoying is the uneven voice acting: Rose’s voice actor isn’t always as emotive as the script would seem to demand; the others are pretty good, however, especially Aubrey, the chatty German scientist who helps you out on the radio. 

The world design can be a bit frustrating. We’re given an enormous ship to explore, but the actual explorable areas don’t offer terribly much beyond the occasional readable. Many doors are closed, as if we’re expected to poke around in specified areas and specified areas only. That’s not to say it isn’t gorgeously realized, with an attention to detail that rivals that of Prey, or the last few Deus Ex games. They’ve gone full speed with the aesthetic, borrowing bits of art deco and art nouveau and blending it with a late Victorian sensibility. But in the end, while it's very pretty, it's still just one more entry in the "I have no hands and I must wank" genre. And you would think for the original asking price of $30, there'd be a proper ending.

-june❤