Sorry We’re Closed PC review — Holding itself back

A game can have a terrific presentation, a strong story, and good level design and still not be all that it could be. It’s rare to see a good game shoot itself in the foot over seemingly minor things, but Sorry We’re Closed really finds a way. Despite that, this is still a game that I found myself fairly invested in, but some seemingly small changes would make it so much better. It almost seems like there was a deliberate attempt to strive for a certain kind of uniqueness, but some of it absolutely comes at the cost of frustration. Still, I can’t deny that the game does quite a lot right.

The story is front-and-centre in Sorry We’re Closed, arguably the main draw. Michelle is a clerk at a convenience store that finds herself greeted in the night by a demon called The Duchess. This demon is trying to find a reason to exist and believes that finding someone to love them is the answer, so it curses Michelle, sending her on a quest to dispel the curse. There are several endings, all requiring that Michelle work alongside other characters. The dialogue is all excellent, the characters are interesting and well-formed, and the art style is fantastic.

I attempted to get one of the game’s endings, which required three steps. I fulfilled two of these and failed one of them for reasons that the game didn’t make clear. It asked me to deliver a demon’s broken heart. Splitting up the only couple where one of the members was a demon didn’t achieve this, but the game didn’t communicate this well. All I did was go to talk to a character and they randomly let me know that the quest line was failed and that I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Instead I ended up with the game’s default ending.

Sorry We’re Closed takes about five-to-six hours to beat (not counting retries, plus there are sections where you can die in one hit.) It’s broken up into three days where Michelle will explore the tiny section of her town, in addition to The Duchess’ hotel and go into the game’s survival horror levels. There are five of these and they offer fairly typical bite-sized versions of what you’d expect from the genre. Michelle finds a pistol and a shotgun, along with more than enough ammo to take down every single foe that comes your way. She can heal by finding a sink or drinking bottles of water found in the levels. These are limited, however, and can’t be stacked like some games allow, nor are there item boxes.

You’ll also find artefacts that can be sold to an NPC to get currency for upgrades. These include damage, clip size, additional water bottle capacity, and more. One part I disliked is that, if you miss an artefact, it can be difficult to backtrack, plus you can’t return to the game’s levels. I missed an artefact in one level because I accidentally saved myself into a corner after choosing the wrong fork in the road.

There are also two side quests where you deliver food items to characters. However, you can botch one of these very early on by giving away one item to the wrong character before you even meet the second one. That annoyed me greatly.

Speaking of annoying me greatly, Sorry We’re Closed‘s combat tries to mix in Resident Evil 4 and Killer 7-esque game mechanics alongside a variable camera. The camera angles are fixed, sometimes panning, and sometimes top down. This is all well and good, save for the fact that you can only aim and use weapons from a first-person perspective. In reference to the other mentioned games, Michelle can’t move while aiming. You pretty much need to use her third eye to have enemy hearts show up on their bodies. Shooting all of these will kill or knock enemies out.

You can only use her third eye within a short range around her, so combat typically means stopping in place, aiming, waiting for enemies to enter your third eye range, activating it which temporarily stuns them, and then shooting their weak points. It’s a novel idea and it looks really cool, but I kind of hated doing it. Sorry We’re Closed loves to throw enemies at you in groups, so doing all of this in conjunction was often a pain. This goes double for the sequences where you have to survive while fending off waves (one of which is an escort section.) The camera makes this so much worse and the top-down sections can be insufferable due to this. And that’s without mentioning the enemies that make it so you randomly can’t use your third eye. It’s so incredibly aggravating at times.

In one, you’re walking in a maze where you’re being chased by a horde of enemies. You can’t really stop and look around in first person or you’ll get hit, so you won’t be able to see where you’re going. The devs thought this was the perfect time to put enemies on the ceiling that can drop down on top of you while wandering here. This section was horrible. When you aim in first person, there’s also a noticeable delay before you’re actually able to aim, too. The game would be so much better if it just let you move in first person. Moving with the third eye active stops you from being able to run, so there’s already something that would slow you down while shooting enemies. I wish the devs hadn’t implemented this.

The game absolutely loves these top-down sections too. There are multiple where you’re running from something while dodging obstacles. I really hated all of these. Again, with just being able to move in first person, all the obnoxiousness would have been avoided. It’s baffling that the devs insisted on aspects that made their game worse when such a clear, simple solution for improvement existed. I honestly do want to see the game’s other endings, but I don’t want to play through all of the parts I hated again, so I’m just going to watch them on YouTube.

Weirdly, there’s no new game plus that lets you keep your upgrades. This is made stranger by the fact that you can find artefacts in the last level, but you seemingly can’t sell them. Due to the story and presentation, I do think Sorry We’re Closed is worth playing. But it’s a pain when it simply doesn’t need to be, and I didn’t even mind the boss battles where you can only do real damage by using the super shot that charges up with regular ones. I really hope the devs add the ability to move in first person, as I think that would fix a lot of the game’s problems, even though I’m sure that’ll never happen.

Check out our previous review:

Slitterhead PC review – Give ’em blood, gallons of the stuff |