Close To The Sun

very interesting story. i like the gameplay style

I got this game for free from Prime... Luckily. The game graphics are definitely stunning, and the enviroment looks great. It has that kind of Bioshock look, steampunky, etc... Overall, the framerate is ok. And that is the end of the positives of this game. I only got through half of it, because I was getting bored. Where to start: as many other 'walking simulator' the protagonist walk too slow! You will have the 'run' button pressed all the time. And it is still too slow. So, 80% of the game you are pressing W+SHIFT as hard as you could, in a futile attampt to make the protagonist faster. Interactivity is also extremely low. You can only read a few papers/letters/sheets here and there. Nothing else. So, in the end, exploration has zero rewards. Even if you go the extra mile to find the keycard to the optional room, you get a short thing to read, and that is it. So, almost immediately, you start to ignore everything that is not on the main path. Not that there is much anyway... The game is also super linear. Which, is not a bad thing by itself, but in this case, there is nothing else to do, except walking and opening door. You need to follow the story, if you try to divert, nope, blocked. An example is the room blocked by electricity: you follow the cable, and you get to a service door, but has no interaction icon. In the end, you need to first do another thing (=go stand in another place to trigger the progress of the story), then, when you go back, you can use the thing to turn off the electricity. Also, sometimes it is quite dumb how the passage is blocked: a fallen chair? A chair that I can't move? On some rubble you can jump over, on another one that looks the same no? Overall, the result is insufficient (for me). It would have been better if they used the engine to make a movie: at least I didn't have to push anything and I could enjoy the story.

I really wanted to like this. I had high hopes for it. And when I started, I thought YES! The graphics are good (enough), the tone and the atmosphere are great, and I really wanted to know what was going on. But then... nothing. They could have gone for action (System Shock, BioShock, Dead Space), they could have gone for puzzles (Myst), they even could have gone for stealth (Alien Isolation), but instead they went for... nothing. Maybe the second half of the game is better, but I just got bored. It's not a game, but what is it? I don't know. What a shame. It could have been great, but unfortunately, it isn't.

It's a bit Bioshock inspired to be sure, but the architecture is grand and expansive and the story is good. I enjoyed another Tesla Tale... We owe our modern world to Nicola Tesla.. There would be no computers, no cell phones, no host of other products, poor to no electrical supply and no AC motors and so on and so on and so on.. Several locations in the game are definitely photo worthy.. very nice. TIA and Namaste.

At least for me the game has a interesting and unfortunately unfinished history. The visuals are great.