It is always a pleasure when some team produces interesting titles capable of winning our attention, even better if they turn out to be pleasant experiences. It is a prime example of this Close to the Sun, production of Storm in a Teacup that we had the opportunity to review on Resources4Gaming last May, remaining more than satisfied. The PC version on which we could get our hands - and which we invite you to read for a more complete analysis of the experience - in fact presented itself with various arrows ready to be fired, an intriguing adventure capable of entertaining for its entire duration. But now that we are one step away from the exit of production also on Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo consoles, we have had the opportunity to test the work in its entirety in the Playstation 4 version, a welcome return to that ship of horrors that already at the time he knew how to convince us ... but will it have been the same this time too?
Break the circle ...
After receiving a letter from our beloved sister inviting us to meet her on the Helios, a gigantic ship built by Nicola Tesla himself and which has become the cradle of the most brilliant minds in the world, we decide to embark and set out for our only family. The hope is to be able to discover a real new world, an opportunity to closely observe the magic of an empire where science has no limits and where governments have no power. Once we reach our destination, however, the show that will appear before us will be of a very different level, with decaying corpses scattered everywhere as bridges, elevators and entire areas of the massive boat collapse piece by piece.
The narrative incipit that plunges us into the heart of the adventure appears at least simple, in part derivative of those premises that made up the fortune of the first Bioshock, yet everything works and the work flows pleasantly from the beginning to the end between written notes and dialogues of various kinds that help create a good context for everything around us. In this sense, the only regret that we feel like expressing concerns a not exactly exciting duration, which can be summarized in about five hours of play. Playfully speaking, Close to the Sun identifies itself as a distinctly horror experience, albeit not too complex. The work could in fact be divided into two distinct phases, one more exploratory and the other more "adrenaline". In the first case, we will find ourselves having to move between the various areas of the ship to discover new information and advance in the adventure, long phases in which to look around that fortunately do not dampen the pleasure of playing thanks to the many dialogues that we can listen to in the meantime, at the several notes left by the crew members that we will read and the various puzzles that we may encounter from time to time.
In terms of puzzles, the experience is never too difficult but it still manages to diversify the journey we will experience in-game, making it more varied and stimulating. Secondly, there are some situations in which we will find ourselves face to face with some dangerous presence ready to send us to the other world. In this case we will only be able to run as fast as possible trying not to get caught, under penalty of a sudden game-over. These sections are never particularly heavy and fortunately they have not been inserted in such quantities as to bore the player on duty, but at the same time there is no doubt that something more could have been done to enrich everything and thus make the final product more dynamic. Having played on consoles, we obviously had to abandon the sweet security offered by the mouse and keyboard to use the Sony DualShock, with an absolutely positive result, although initially it was necessary to play with the sensitivity of the visual to feel more at ease.
The ship of horrors
From a more purely technical point of view, the work presents itself with an impactful artistic sector that undoubtedly represents the backbone of the entire visual system. The settings are suggestive and well structured - despite an often very simplistic map corridor level design - and while playing, you feel a perennial sense of anxiety and restlessness, as if something was perpetually observing us in the dark, ready to devour us. The transition from PC to console has led to some clear compromises, but basically the final result has been able to prove to be more than appreciable. In its being an independent production, Close to the Sun shows off pleasant plays of light and shadow, a good polygonal count and several appreciable details applied on surfaces and objects of the scenery, with some glimpses to be framed.
At the same time, however, we witnessed some instability of the frame-rate in the most agitated situations and a general pop-up of objects in the distance rather evident, all accompanied by some delay in the loading of the textures and animations not exactly at the top. The audio sector turned out to be of great impact that thanks to a very pleasant soundtrack, a convincing audio sampling made of squeaks, thuds in the distance and puffs of smoke, and a dubbing in other languages of a good level, will accompany the user more than admirably from the introduction to the titles of tail. Small footnote regarding the subtitles, which in some cases anticipated the bars by a good 2/3 seconds.
