Closure preview: Try, try again
Logic-based games are only compelling the first time you play them. At least, that's what Closure reboot developer Eyebrow Interactive thinks, and if you're only going to enjoy the game the first time through, they figure they'll make that trip as long and arduous as humanly possible.
It's an interesting (and completely apt) theory. Solutions are only satisfying the first time you divine them, that feeling of overwhelming bewilderment is only bewildering the first time you encounter it -- unless you have some kind of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind memory-wiping machine, your second run through of your favorite puzzle game probably won't be as poignant as your first.
The premise of Closure is simple enough to comprehend, but unceasingly difficult to remember once it's put into practice: Things in the game world only exist when you can see them. If walls aren't illuminated by a light source, they can be passed through without a hitch. Of course, the same thing goes for the floor, which will lead to your untimely, plummeting death if you darken the land you're standing on.
I'd suggest playing the original, Flash-based closure to get a good understanding of that core concept, but so much has changed in the new version for that context to be relevant. Everything runs much smoother, with lovingly hand-drawn animations for each of the various incarnations your character undertakes during the game's tenebrous campaign. That may sound like a small change, but that polish is indispensable once some of the more challenging, obfuscated platforming segments come along.
There's all manner of new puzzle elements for you to wrap your mind around, each of which are stacked on top of one another at just the right pace to make you forget about the last lesson you learned. One level threw a ton of mechanics at me -- rotatable spotlights, effusive boxes and pods which must be simultaneously lit to unlock the exit -- that I repeatedly forgot the central tenets of the game.
Which is to say: I fell to my death. Like, a lot.
None of those failures were unfair, of course. Every time I restarted a level, I knew what I'd blown the last time through, meaning my successes were simply a result of the dozens of non-successes which preceded them. To possess that iterative problem-solving formula while managing to not send the player into ragequitting fits of frustration is a tricky needle to thread, but Closure seems like it can pull it off.
Just don't expect to blow through it once it hits the PSN next Spring -- not that you should want to blow through it, since apparently, the first time's the charm.
