There are times curiosity and a cool theme gets the best of you. This would be one of those times for me. When I saw the first trailer, I saw the potential for something interesting to be hiding behind the artwork it showed off, which wasn’t that bad, if done in what looked like crayons. And with it being a free game, there was no reason I should not add it to my list of games. And now for Halloween, the random selection brought it to the forefront. How could I refuse?
Story: Opening up with a gameshow host who will be your narrating voice though most of your adventure, a lot of the story that follows is very up for interpretation. What is not so is that you are about to be executed by hanging… until the rope breaks and rather then snap your neck, you fall to a room below where you can escape and bar the door behind you.
With nowhere to go but forward, you march downward into what looks like an abandoned subway…
…and with your “guide” you will find your way through a landscape to find what is really going on. Now before you call this a cop-out, this game features 8 endings depending on what you do in the game itself, and it’s entirely possible your answer as to what is really going on can vary based on the ending you get. As such, I really do not have a lot of choice but to be vague with you now.
However, the paths to reach these points are well designed, as I had to find a guide after I finished playing to see where most of the branches for this are. And what is here is pretty warped between the gameshow façade and a lot of the notes you will find fairly uncomfortable to read. So overall, for a game designed to be psychological horror, it does a pretty good job.
7/10
Graphics: Unlike the plot, there is VERY little to like about the look of the game. Close Your Eyes is a top-down title with a very grid-like layout and a look that seems to be designed out of a child’s drawings/crayon scribbles, making the maps look absolutely atrocious. You will be able to tell what the various items are, but it generally looks like you are playing through a generic child’s drawings.
But even still sticking with the crayola aesthetic, the cut-scenes look a lot better. Instead of the generic child drawing, these appear to be done with some actual talent, adding character to the image and those within them. These scenes appear a lot and can be a treat to see, contrasting what is otherwise a very ugly game.
5/10
Sound: The name of the game here is minimalist. Most of the game has absolutely no background music, but I believe this to be by design, for the when one of the few background notes take the stage, you notice heightening the mood of the moment and most often the tension with it. Not that the only uses of music are necessarily horrifying. There are times when it’s used around one very specifc character, for example, to sweeten and endear you to them. Pass of fail, the contrast is striking and leaves its mark (which mark is more up to you).
And when we get right down to it, the silence also enhances the sound effects as well. They are not the most common things to hear in this game, but they are done VERY well, letting you feel the “abandoned house of horrors” vibe very well. What this game fails almost completely at in the visuals, it drives home in this area brilliantly.
9/10
Gameplay: Close Your Eyes is a very simple game to play, and in fact could easily be played on an NES controller. (The developer is even nice enough to show you how to adjust the controls, should you wish to do so and have the right adapters.) You will move around a 2D overview world with a button to interact with whatever is in front of you when you press it. With this exceptionally simple control scheme, you will traverse many mundane, creepy, and or sometimes otherworldly environments and either going the direction you think you should be going or attempting to complete one of the handful of puzzles the game will offer you. For my own play through, these varied from the mundane to the truly sick and twisted.
But none of it was ever really hard. If anything the sheer lack of challenge was a bit disappointing, as outside of a few specific parts, there is really no risk of failure or death (even though a simple game-over screen was certainly possible to get in the game).
Aside from this will be the cut-scenes, which will have you answering a few prompts on the way that may or may not effect which ending you get. The game based on my lookup after finishing playing, seems to be more a tree of events then measuring your actions by a set of scores, so if the choice make a difference, it just cut away a number of possible outcomes rather then just being an influence.
But then why would you need a second button, you might ask. Well, that seems to be specifically for the saving mechanic. When you walk over the icon for saves, you do not hit anything to open the screen, but it does so automatically. Hit the normal button on a slot and you saved. Hit the other button to cancel saving. If it were not for this function, you could legitimately play this game on a one-button joystick.
5/10
Bugs: While the game did not have any real bugs that I could see, it definitely had some tech issues that I simply can not ignore, especially for a game this simplistic.
- Frame Rates: Those minimum requirements are not a joke. True the PC I played this on was near the minimum speed for the game, but it is a quad-core processor where as the minimum is an old single-core one. As such, the game will only use one, so in more intensive areas, I saw some massive framedrops in areas with more intensive effects. It was only a few locations, but it could not be ignored.
- Resolutions did not work quite right: I can not say this game was made well for modern wide-screens. It supports three resolutions, and not one of them was particularly good for use on a 1080 screen. You have one that is fairly small and worked well enouhg, but wastes a lot of space on the screen, one that is so big it falls behind the taskbar of your windows screen, and a full screen that stretches hideously (even more so then the game is by default).
Overall: I do not believe I could tell you with a straight face that this was a good game, but it certainly is an interesting one. You will have a few light puzzles and an interesting premises that will last long enough for a single play through, but it won’t leave you with enough to want to come back. Frankly, I’m glad it was a free game, as it is worth a play through for pure curiosity, but I wouldn’t have been happy if I payed for this.
Score:
5/10
System Requirements:
- Intel Pentium 4 running at 2.0 Ghz
- 512 MB RAM
- Anything that can display at 1024x768 resolution
- 600 MB hard drive
- Windows XP/Vista/7
System Specs:
- AMD Athalon 5350 APU Running at 2.05 Ghz
- 7.5 GB RAM
- Radeon R3 (512 MB)
- Windows 10
Source: Steam
No comments:
Post a Comment