Killer7, a videogame by Grasshopper Manufacturer, released twenty years ago on June 9, 2005. The gameplay is straightforward: you control 7 different assassins each with unique abilities and shoot enemies. The movement and controls are unconventional however as you are cordoned into specific lanes to navigate each level. Using A to move forward, B to 180° pivot, you are guided down set corridors and use occasional directional arrows to navigate each level. Enemy appearances are signaled by a maniacal laugh and you can then use your assassin powers to kill the ever ubiquitous creatures known as Heaven Smiles. You can only run down the confines of these designated corridors even when a level's setting is a wide open space. This design language continues from earlier Grasshopper Manufacture games but this time you have a gun.
Earlier Grasshopper Manufacture games like The Silver Case also used corridors to move you down levels in the same way but from dialogue to dialogue with an occasional puzzle - no player inputted violence. The Silver Case is a horrifying game about tracking down a serial killer in a society so inured to death that many characters you meet are gleefully ready to meet the game's villain. Videogames revel in death, but The Silver Case just lets you watch the bloodbath, your interface with the game pointless as you rotely move down endless corridors. A different game in the loosely thematic “Kill the Past” series that spans from Moonlight Syndrome to Travis Strike Again is The 25th Ward which adds turn based battles that end in a gush of gore. The 25th Ward whirrs around multiple plot lines, so overstuffed with riveting scenes of societal ills and maximally overblown to the point of incoherence. One memorable recurring scene involves a person hiding out near an otherwise unused vending machine, smilingly beckoning the player to try a new flavor of soft drink then giving you information about the criminal underworld. Killer7 continues this tradition, hundreds of generic enemies wandering down the very same corridors you traverse and shooting their weak points for an endless rush of blood. Killer7 is Resident Evil 4 meets House of the Dead. Killer7 is also like a Takashi Miike movie, hyperviolent, geopolitical, nonsensical, and hyper stylized.
Sorry We're Closed is a horror game released in 2024 by à la mode games. No longer restricted to hallways while retaining the style and bravado of Killer 7, you are now free to wander around corridors with curated cinematography via a fixed camera in 3rd person. Instead of overt violence and a covert war between nations, we get quiet dying town horror and biblical love made queer. The protagonist of Sorry We’re Closed, Michelle, recovering from a breakup, in one lens goes on a nightmare induced killing spree, channeling heartbreak into crescendoing tightly knit dungeons that culminate in Linkin Park meets Clipping scored boss battles. In a different lens Michelle is forced by circumstances beyond her control to fight for her predicated destiny. Like Grasshopper Manufacture games, violence is preordained, forced to the forefront of society’s collective psyche. In Sorry We’re Closed, angels and demons have slowly encroached on the world causing disappearances, meddling into people’s personal lives, and partial cosmological relationships.
Sorry We’re Closed opens in a small London borough, the soundtrack echoing with dog barks between record scratches and Nujabes style funk beats. In classic hub world styling, you run between characters who will punctuate the beginning and end of the prologue and three days that make up the game. Michelle wears thrift shop chic adorned in a pink robe and a tshirt emblazoned with “fish fight.” A cool record store owner is chatting unknowingly with a demon online hoping to prove the existence of demons, while down the block a demon and diner owner carry out a messy relationship Michelle has the choice to affect. Once you are delivered to your first level, actions are satisfyingly crunchy like the crush of an axe against a barrel or crate or the reload of your pistol “The Hellhound” punctuated by an elevator ding and the satisfied growl of a dog. Like Killer7 and many games of the tank control era, shooting involves planting yourself and taking aim, having to swap between third and first person to clumsily run away from enemies if they get too close.
When the game starts, Michelle is longing for her ex who is now famous on the day’s hottest TV show. Amongst the cast of characters is The Operator who tells Michelle she can get back with her ex in exchange for obtaining a few scattered items around the game. The Operator also promises you revenge against The Duchess. Michelle has every reason to be upset at The Duchess, who kicked off Michelle’s adventure by granting her a third eye to see into heaven and hell. The Duchess has her own goals as she is desperate for love and continues to kidnap humans in a futile attempt to finally find a suitor.
At the end of your second day of the game, Michelle comes upon a dinner scene set in a large banquet hall in The Duchess’ realm of hell. Someone on stage quickly, desperately tells The Duchess she loves her and The Duchess, seeing the facade behind the performance, asks her court jester to murder her via spinning blades. Michelle after witnessing this stays defiant to it all, having already proven her strength in the demon world by getting two of three necessary charms to confront The Duchess. The Duchess asks Michelle how she sees them and the player gets to choose between love or rejection. Neither is satisfactory enough for The Duchess.
If you follow through with The Operator’s request and complete her ending, The Operator literally steps into Michelle’s body turning her speechless. This ending is also the most difficult and time consuming route in the game because there is more to collect. The extra effort you have to put in to get back with Michelle’s ex causing her the most pain and you the most time.
Sorry We’re Closed relationships determine the paths and outcomes of the game. As The Duchess hopes to court someone and Michelle longs for her ex the lengths of what we do for love keep bubbling up through the surface. Love and what people, angels, and demons do for it. Whether we change for love or love changes us. Whether love is worth it, worth fighting for even when heartbreak is inevitably right around the corner. The Duchess sees no difference between love and desire, torture and longing. She is the cause and incentive for Michelle to continue on and through her hellish adventure and hopefully also discover what she really wants in life.
I'm eliding Silent Hill 2 whose influence is felt so strongly in horror games that it's almost obligatory to bring up. Silent Hill 2’s namesake town is a place for fears to become manifest, the game guiding you between this nightmare realm and back out to the relatively more normal (but still dead and foggy) town. But Sorry We’re Closed neatly folds the decision over to you with the power to switch between reality and otherworld on a whim via the snap of a finger. This snap of the finger stuns enemies and exposes their weak points causing enemies’ hearts to be exposed so you can one by one break each heart as if a moving target gallery at a fair. Like Silent Hill 2, levels are specific locales long dead and barren but for puzzles and enemies. Both games retain the industrial grime of abandoned facilities: hospital, aquarium, crypt, nursing home.
Silent Hill 2 is also about killing hundreds of monsters, and like any game worth its salt, the enemies are used to tell us more about the world and characters. Killer 7’s enemies are faceless caricatures representing the end of the individual in an age of global dominance where shadowy figures play political games at the behest of nations for fun. Sorry We’re Closed has rat men, blobs, pterodactyl like bats representing the best of London. In Silent Hill 2 your main enemies are mannequin-like nurses that lurch at you, plainly representing the guilt and sexual associations that James feels about the last moments of his relationship. James, Silent Hill 2’s protagonist, murdered his wife while she was at a care facility for cancer treatment in what is one of gaming’s greatest narrative maneuvers. What makes it powerful is the hindsight that layers over the rest of the game. Silent Hill is a town where each person comes to see their own nightmare become manifest. Just like Sorry We’re Closed a former lover weighs heavily over the proceedings, giving narrative weight to decisions but also the drive to continue facing the horrors. Desire and longing as two faces of the same coin. To continue down a bleak alley, a dark factory, into the unknown and hope for something better in the end. The choice is up to you.
