Closure vs. Where is My Heart?

      I want to write a brief comparison of the gameplay in Closure to that of Where is My Heart? If you don't know about the games' mechanics, this post will make no sense. Go read my reviews, or better yet, just go play them first! I think they are both excellent games, and although their story themes are quite different, the way they play is similar and complimentary. Both heavily involve perspective and reality.

     In Where is My Heart?, the level layout exists. You perceive it through the panels given to you in any given level. The arrangement of the panels does not affect the layout. You perception does not affect reality. You are kind of battling your own mind just to understand the layout of the levels.

     In Closure, the level has a layout, but it is manipulated by your perception. Only what you can see is reality. The layout of the level bends to your perception of it. Reality changes to match what you are seeing.

If Where is My Heart? Followed Closure's rules, you could rearrange the panels to change the layout of the level. If Closure followed Where is My Heart's? rules, you could walk around in the dark and run into objects you couldn't see, and the light would just be manipulated to help you see the level. Both would be totally different games if they switched rules like this. It would be very interesting to see. I'd would love it if the creators of both of these games got together and messed with the rules of each others' games, or made a new game (or games) exploring these ideas even further.

     I was going to throw in comparisons to Quantum Conundrum and The Unfinished Swan too, but I think keeping it to just these two favorites of mine makes it a more streamlined and interesting post. I just thought it was really neat how these two games both deal with perception and reality in regards to their gameplay. I played them relatively close together, and when I realized that they were almost opposites gameplay-wise it made me appreciate both of these great games even more.  

Closure Spoiler Post Contains Spoilers!

 WARNING: The following post contains a massive amount of spoilers for Closure, an amazing game whose excellent story can't be more highly recommended. You will probably enjoy the game a lot less if you read this explanation of what I think is going on in the game. This post is intended to provoke thought about the game's story and give my interpretation to people who have already completed it. Please read at your own discretion. Don't ruin it for yourself, it so worth experiencing first hand!

     In the first level, the factory worker falls while adjusting a light. He has an accident at work and lands in a shaft. He travels through the factory, but he may, in fact, already be dead from his fall at this point. My first impression was that he was working tirelessly and monotonously in the factory throughout the different levels. But once I got deeper into the game and its themes, and read some other peoples' opinions online, I started to think he was dead the whole time after his fall. He travels through the factory and relives his tedious life of working (note the clocks everywhere). Reminds me of a co-worker of mine who dropped dead almost immediately after retiring. We spend so much of our time in life at work... RIP Robin. His body is then taken out by helicopter. I guess you could also think that maybe he's still alive and being medevaced, but I think if he's dead it's a better explanation of why you travel through the factory, and why you end up right back where you started. Also, note the appearance of the spirits you will see throughout the game in the furnace flames at the top of the factory in the last level. They are observers of death, and they feed off it.

     In the game's second part, you play as a young woman who has just been in a horrific car crash. She has been critically injured in the crash, and her spirit wanders through the woods to the hospital where her body is on life support. You see her body in distress on the microscopic level, her heart being shocked in an attempt to re-start it, and finally, her lying on what will be her death bed, a heart monitor barely registering life beside her. This was the most affecting part of the game for me. That last level where you see her cells and heart, and then her lying in the hospital bed was shocking and disturbing. My favorite part of the game. I know I saw the female spirit watching somewhere in these levels. Can't remember exactly where...

     Thirdly, we have the section where you play as the little girl, following her cat into the night and the bizarre carnival. The lights in her house flick on as the adults realize their little girl is missing, but she is already far out into the night. If Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes is to be believed, evil night carnivals are symbolic of growing up and the nightmares adults face. The end of childhood. The beloved pet is always just out of sight, disappearing the second it is glimpsed. After seeing much of the freakish circus, the little girl finally catches up with her cat, only to see it vanish for good before her eyes as a hideous spider-demon-like clown looks on in the background. Her story has a bit of a good ending. She returns safe and sound to her bed. But she's had her first experience with death and loss in the death of her pet. Just a foretaste of the many deaths we all experience throughout our life times. Also, someone has used the toilet since she left.

     Finally, the spider demon faces a handful of levels as himself. Who is he, and what is he doing? There aren't any clear answers to this. We know from official descriptions that he is called the spider-demon, although the game never tells us this. The trophies give us some hints. The trophy for completing the tutorial is “The River.” He has crossed the river Styx, into the realm of the dead. Completing the game earns you the trophy “Welcome to Purgatory.” My interpretation is that he is in purgatory, trying to get out. The moths he gathers in order to access the final level and ending are symbolic of death and the dead, if the short film Bunny with the anthropomorphic bunny with a dead spouse is to be believed. The spirits that have been watching throughout the game watch as the spider-demon completes the most complex final levels, more active and animated as he draws nearer to completing his enigmatic goal. Finally, he reaches them, and offers them the three experiences with death he has gathered from the human world, a worker's accident, a young girl's terrible car crash (possibly a suicide? This just randomly popped into my head), and a young girl's first experience with death, the loss of her pet cat. Having done this, he sheds his body, and his moth spirit, along with the other moth spirits he has collected. He ascends higher and higher, past the bodies of spider demons who have tried to leave purgatory before him, until he finally literally reaches what everyone is seeking in their experiences with death: Closure.

     I've heard some people say that he may be helping the three people to closure with their experiences with death. That is certainly a possibility, and the more I think about it, it makes a lot of sense. My gut impression is that he isn't up to anything so friendly. The music in the scenes where he takes on the other characters' personas is so full of horror and malice, it really shocked me the first time I saw it. And the way the pillars crush the masks of the people as he offers them to the spirits in the end is pretty rough, not like he's gently leading them to closure or anything like that. These two things make me think he is using and abusing these people for his own journey to closure. I could be wrong though, and I love that there are multiple explanations and theories that make sense. I don't quite get any meaning out of the tombstones with roman numerals on them, other than the association of stone markers with death. Just another clue as to what is going on, I guess.

      In case your curious, this guy on GameFAQs has tried every combination of putting the masks on the different pillars, and got the same ending each time. Here is his post: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/643242-closure/63100720

     My thoughts and interpretations of what is one of the very best stories in gaming. Please let me know on twitter and the comments if you agree or disagree, I'd love to talk more about this game!

Closure Review (PS3)

      From the moment you start Closure up until the final puzzle is solved, you won't see any color at all. Objects are white, and the background is black. Yet it is one of the best looking 2d games I've ever played. The 2d animation of the characters, while simple, is superb. The animation of the backgrounds and moving objects, of which there are many, is exquisite. The art design is perhaps the best of any game I've ever played. Everything is menacing, and there is always something bizarre, unnerving, or downright creepy lurking in the background of the game's dark levels. I can't tell you how many times I've found something creepy hidden in a forgotten corner of a level, or how many times I swear I saw something in the background as a flash of light briefly illuminates some section of the stage.

     Light and dark define Closure, both in terms of its visual design and gameplay. It's themes and visuals are so perfectly integrated with its gameplay elements that this story and theme could only be done this well through an interactive medium.

     In Closure, you play as a very creepy spider-like creature with a hole for a face. This creature will be taking on three personas and completing a set of levels as each persona. One set of levels has you playing as a worker inside a factory. The next has you playing as a young woman lost out in the woods. And in the last, you take on the form of a little girl who wanders out of her house in the middle of the night straight into a nightmarish carnival. If it's sounding creepy, be assured, Closure is the creepiest, scariest game I have ever played. It's narrative is intense, riveting, and genuinely upsetting.

     This narrative is played out without words or dialogue. Almost everything is told through the visuals and the music. The intense soundtrack colors almost every stage and every action with a feeling of dread, confusion, and mystery. The music in the factory levels is a constant pounding, just like the movement of the machinery all around you and the constant presence of the workers' time-clocks. This factory music is especially intense and unnerving. I just had this tight feeling in my chest the whole time I was in there. Being lost in the woods is accompanied by a mysterious march, long choral chants, and the ambient sounds of the creatures just out of sight in the woods and the fall of the rain. And the nightmarish carnival levels, I'm sure you can imagine what they might sound like. This music slows down and distorts in a wonderful way if you go underwater, which you do frequently. The music on the screen where the spider creature dons the mask of one of the characters and then transforms into them before heading into a level is also very intense and disturbing. The blaring dark horns on this screen were telling me that whatever this spider creature was doing inside these peoples lives, it was not happy or benevolent.

     The basic controls are cross to jump, square to grab an object or put it down, and triangle to go through a door. There are a few other controls that pop up in certain scenarios as you interact with different objects.

There are 24 stages for each of the three scenarios, and the goal in each level is the same: get to the exit door to leave the level and move on to the next. The puzzle gameplay all works around the game's main mechanic: the manipulation of light. In Closure, almost everything is in the dark. The level has a layout, but reality shifts along with the light. Objects only exist if they are illuminated. This includes walls and the floor, boxes and keys; everything. You can't walk forward unless the floor is illuminated. You can jump right through a wall or fall right through the floor if it is in the dark. Keys and boxes that you need to move on might be permanently lost if you remove a light source and they fall through the floor and into oblivion.

     There are several sources of light you can manipulate to help get you where you are going. There are mysterious orbs with a pulsating light source inside that you can pick up and carry. There are lamps that you can pivot to point in different directions. There are fixed sources of light that always light up certain areas of a level or spring to life as you get close to them.

     There are also a few devices that interact with the light orbs. There are posts that activate moving lifts when you put a light orb into them. They grab the orb and carry it along a set path. Other posts will light up certain areas of the level if you put an orb in them to power them. There are a few other variations on this concept of posts that power different effects in the environment. There are also quite a few great puzzles involving making sure certain plants in the level have light on them. These plants then transmit light to the exit door, allowing you to go through it. Other great puzzles include the use of mirrors, large sheets of glass, transporting keys across the level, hitting switches with rolling barrels and falling blocks, and the fact that light orbs float in water.

     I'll give a few basic examples without giving too much away, as this mechanic has many surprises in store for you that you should experience for yourself. One level features a door that needs to have three plants transmit light to it to open it. You have two light orbs and a movable lamp available to you. You have to position the two light orbs so that their light reaches two plants on the ground and also illuminates enough of the forest floor for you to jump between illuminated sections. You must also position the lamp so that it points to a plant on up in the trees. There is also a tree in the way, so you have to make sure that just enough of the tree is illuminated so that you can jump up on top of its middle section and then over. If too much of the trunk is lit up, the tree will still be in your way and you won't be able to pass. Once you have everything lined up, you then have to go through the level, making sure to jump over the handful of holes that are now in the forest floor where no light touches.

     Another example is a level where the door needs two light orbs put in posts next to it in order to be used. You have two light orbs, but one is at the far end of the level. The middle of the level is covered in spikes that destroy orbs if you set them down. Since you are unable to carry both orbs at once, you have to use other light sources to light up your path in order to progress and get both orbs to the door. Those are just two of the most basic types of puzzle. The complexity ramps up very steadily until in the later levels of each scenario, you will have to think through every move in order to get all your light sources lined up the way you need to. Experimentation is necessary to see how your plans and ideas might work out. Once you figure out how everything will line up to create a path, you also need to platform correctly, and often within tight windows of opportunity as light sources move around. The platforming element is solid. It's challenging enough that you might mess up the execution of the platforming side of the levels a few times on your playthrough of the game, but the controls and feel of the jumping and moving is great, so it never feels overly frustrating. It's a joy to figure out each level's complex interaction of light sources. You have to work with what is given to you, experiment and plan, then execute what you want to do. Light up what you want lit up, and make sure what you need to be dark is dark. The more complex these levels get, the more satisfying they are to complete. Some of the solutions are truly mind-bending, showing just how deep this mechanic of manipulating light and reality goes. Completing some of the more complex puzzles really feels like having an epiphany, just like other games with mind-bending mechanics like Ikaruga, Where is My Heart?, and Quantum Conundrum. Other solutions make you feel like you've broken the system and figured something out you weren't supposed to, a great illusion that the best games of this type can sometimes pull off.

     I've said this in my last two reviews (Quantum Conundrum and Where is My Heart?), and it is the hallmark of a great puzzle-platformer game. In Closure, you are never stuck long enough to be frustrated, but never unstuck long enough to be bored or disengaged. It strikes a perfect balance of confounding you without frustrating you. The answer is always there, and puzzling it out is an addictive rush. On several occasions it had me saying, “Just one more try...” until it was suddenly much later than I wanted to stay up.

     I've been vague about the game's story and where it goes on purpose. This is one of the best stories in gaming, and I'm not going to spoil it. Each of the three scenarios (and the overarching story of the spider creature) go some amazing places that shocked and surprised me. Not a word is spoken, but I felt so much while playing this game. It speaks to you through it's powerful imagery and perfectly fitting music. Some of its story elements made me feel the same way a Bioshock or Metal Gear game would. You may have questions about what was going on when you're done, as the game purposefully doesn't explain everything to you. Some parts can be figured out. Others are left open to interpretation. I think I'm going to do a Closure spoiler post giving my interpretation of the game's events. As you've probably gathered, most of Closure is very dark theme wise. It isn't overly explicit or disgusting or anything like that, but very disturbing none the less. It's subject matter may hit close to home for some people. Well really, for everyone, as it deals with a pretty universal part of the human experience (which you may be able to guess if you read about the game here and elsewhere to much, but I won't outright say what it is).

     Getting to the game's final sections and true ending require you to go back through the levels and find moths that are hidden in some of the levels. They are often in out of the way areas that require a whole new solution to get to. It's fun to find them, and oh so worth it to see the final parts of the game's really great ending.

     Closure is the first game reviewed on Robotic Attack Squadron that is getting a perfect score (although Where is My Heart? came within a hair's breadth last week). That means, in my opinion, it is one of the best games ever made. It's the kind of masterpiece that comes along very rarely in gaming where you liked everything about it and you'd have to think long and hard if asked what it's flaws are. It takes it's rightful place as one of my favorite games of all time. No other game tells such a fascinating story with such a strong theme using only its imagery and sound like Closure does. Add to that it's wonderfully original and fully realized gameplay that matches its amazing theme perfectly, and we have our first reviewed Great Game, Tier 1.