Impressions?

So far, I really like this game but I'm sorta biased. Dear Esther was the first game I played with my then-gf-who-will-be-my-wife-by-the-end-of-this-week, and it was the single game that convinced her games could be more than just saving a damsel from donkey kong. We have both been looking forward to this game for a long time, so in a way we're already ready to take everything this game has to say to us at face value.

Love the visuals, but moreso loving the sound design and the music composition. Not that far in, so I'll come back after I've finished it.

Your guy's thoughts? Is this kinda game popular here?

It's a short story told by a wheezing asthmatic who has to take three minutes breaks after every other line. I like the story being told, but having to unearth that story at a rate slower than molasses being shit out by a constipated snail is dull. Please, for the love of God, someone patch in a faster walk speed.

So far I have played the like 30-35 mins and I love the audio cues that are being used in the environment to get you to find the radio or phone that has a bit of story to it. I like not being made to follow the ball of light and kinda can just go to each house and try to get in, and sometimes you can and the feeling of walking in a house that looks like there were people just there but it being empty and quiet. The only thing that is kinda of annoying is the walking speed, would like it a little faster but I am willing to overlook it to figure out and enjoy the story that this game is trying to tell me.

Also the music is really well done.

it's still not out here and it's really Making Me Sad

Finished it. Helpful tip, because this game doesn't tell you jack shit. When your orb guide breaks and won't lead you around any longer, quit the game, exit the app, and then continue from your last autosave. It fixes it until ten minutes later.

Scratch that. Probably just don't play this in the first place until they patch the walk speed and orb bugs. Or skip it entirely. It is way too far up its own ass.

@sparky_buzzsaw: I don't mean this as a ways to start something, more out of genuine curiosity, but what would you say makes it different than Gone Home in your experience?

This game is boring, really that's the only thing that i can think of while playing this game. I stop thinking about most games the moment I put the controller down, but this is one of the few I stop thinking about while i'm playing it.

I haven't played much, but it seems fine so far. The story stuff I've seen so far has been interesting, and I enjoy the look/sound of everything. Only real complaint so far, as others have said, is the walk speed. It's not insanely slow, but it definitely feels like it should be faster.

I just played about an hour and a half of it. It looks drop dead gorgeous and has a really interesting premise/story so far, but the game has zero respect for you as a player; it constantly encourages you to explore every nook and cranny of the environment to reveal elements of the story, but more often than not yields nothing for your curiosity. This wouldn't be so bad in and of itself, but the forced slow movement speed and inability to jump/climb becomes an issue when every remote path is a dead end and nearly every door and gate is locked, preventing you from cutting through what appear to be shortcuts between locations but aren't. It also doesn't help that the game will lead you toward one of these remote locations with light and sound cues, indicating a story event, but then actually presents nothing on arrival, forcing you to trudge your way back at a turtle's pace.

I don't hate Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, but it certainly appears to hate me.

Apparently you can run in this game by holding R2. This wasn't mentioned in the game purely due to dev oversight. There's an article on Eurogamer about it.

I love the premise of this game but it sounds too much like Dear Ester to warrant a 20 dollar purchase. I couldn't stand Dear Ester, everything just seemed so static and slow. Gone home had a much better pace and your interaction with the world made it fantastic. I may get this on a nice sale though.

@humanity: Size. Gone Home, you only had to explore a relatively small space. This, you're exploring an entire village, plus its outskirts, and often (too often) woodsy nooks and crannies with terrible, pointless paths. Rapture does have one advantage in that everything is narrated - no need to squint at batshit tiny fonts.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Just this article on IGN that a run button does exist.

Big quote from the article

"So together with Santa Monica, we made a late call. We replaced the auto-sprint with an R2 trigger hold, keeping the gentle ramp up to main speed." However, since the replacement was made so close to launch, the controller icon in the options menu was missing the sprint instruction, and it hadn't been localized.

It has now been added, and is being tested before being patched in. "We probably should have announced the run button before launch, but we didn’t. That was a bad call, and we’ve paid for it in the reviews."

@zirilius: Oh for fuckity fuck fuck's sake, I thought zi tried all the buttons at one point or another. Can't believe I finished the game not knowing that. Good to know a bunch of professionals did too.

I enjoyed it. I missed the Camp area though which kind of sucks since I'm a completionist. So if you are playing the game and get to something that looks like a bunker, trust me you'll know, it is the final section of the game and you will be cut off from exploring the rest of the town.

@acidbrandon18: You can backtrack, but thry don't make it obvious. You're looking for fences with big x's of wood - you can hop those into other areas.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Once you hit the bunker you are teleported to the Observatory. You can't open the gate out of the observatory so you're stuck there. Need to start a new game.

@acidbrandon18: Oh right, yeah. I was so glad to be done I never once wanted to backtrack.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Yeah, the walking speed is pretty bad and the R2 "Sprint" doesn't really help much. It makes backtracking pretty painful. I'm still going to try and Platinum it though, because I'm crazy.

"More than just" would imply that games like these do everything that other titles do, and then some. They don't.

They're different; there's no denying that, but every time someone says stuff like this - it's sending the wrong message. And it gets annoying when a review / discussion cannot talk about a product unless it's constantly describing the game by what it isn't.

And as for, "Love the visuals, but moreso loving the sound design and the music composition." None of that tells me anything about the gameplay.

I don't wanna come off as the guy who goes "non-games suck! myeh!". They certainly have player control (hence it's a game), but I simply don't get the appeal of these types of games. And I've never read a single review / forum post that explains it well.

Played a bit this morning and wasn't really into it then it locked up so I just said ef this.

R2 doesn't seem to do anything but I think they've already patched the move speed or I'm just hallucinating.

@sravankb said:

Note: I haven't played this game. I've never played any game like it (that includes Dear Esther, Machine for Pigs, and Gone Home. Very intrigued by Vanishing of Ethan Carter, however; I'm a sucker for detective stories), but as it's been explained to me the appeal isn't so much in the mechanics as it is the mystery. I've noticed that a lot of people that are drawn to these games are inquisitive by nature. They see something and they want to find out why it is, or how it came to be that way. I imagine for these players the act of finding one more piece of the puzzle is enjoyable. The fact that what is essentially a narrative jigsaw puzzle is accompanied by strong visual and sound design is probably a plus. Instead of combing over a box of pieces to see where they all fit together, you're walking around in a virtual world. You're hunting for the next piece, waiting for the a-ha moment where everything clicks into place and you can see the whole picture.

That's my take on it, anyhow.

I thought it wasn't as good as Dear Esther for a few reasons.

The world they built isn't as beautiful as they want you to think it is based on the crawling pace they have you navigate the world with. There are brief moments that look really good but for the most part its just small British style towns that don't have much of a personality.

None of the characters did anything for me. None of them were likable or even relatable. Their problems seem unimportant and the consequences never really pan out in any real way. The lack of physical characters to distinguish who is who is bad enough, and it also comes off as lazy in a game like this. It was almost impossible to follow the story without the subtitles on.

It took me 4 hours to beat the game but most of that time feels due to the absolutely plodding pace the devs have put the character at. After you figure out that the ball of light is just a guide to be followed rather than a piece of set dressing it takes most of the exploration out of the game.

I would give it a 2/5. At the pace it is right now, I don't think it was worth my time.

It's nothing revolutionary. The story is engaging but I feel like it's being used as a dangling carrot dragging me through a walk-fest. It's a passive experience, and would benefit from a quicker pace or more ways to interact with it. Kind of disappointing that The Chinese Room hasn't really evolved past Dear Esther's design.

I played through the first village last night. The game looks good, but why does it need so many locked doors? That might not of been a problem if you didn't move at a snails pace, but even with sprint R2 button press I feel like the game has too many red herrings and dead ends.

I we guess that the devs didn't want their game getting acused of being too short, but certain games don't need to be overly long. Alien Isolation got this wrong last year, Rapture I'm not sure yet. I would of liked an actual normal human adult walking pace and to not have to hold button for 7 seconds before the sprint( more like brisk walk) function starts.

I plan to play more tonight, hopefully, finish it. For some reason I feel like I should play this game at night, even though it's not horror.

I think that some of the moments in this game are pretty nice. The music plays a big part in creating these almost magical moments at certain points in the story.

On the other hand the game consists almost entirely about listening to conversations at certain places and that is all there is when it comes to straight gameplay. I think it is kind of a shame that the developers have created this pretty accurately modelled world but that the players ability to interact with it is so minimal.

The biggest culprit which reduces my enjoyment of the game is the walking speed which is very very slow. You can speed it up a little by holding the R2 button.

I just finished the game. Overall, I thought it was OK. The story unfolds without many surprises and you only need to play a little of it to generally understand the mystery. I agree with everyone who mentioned the slow walking speed - it's unpleasant and makes the game frustrating in circumstances when you find yourself lost and need to get back to the main path quickly. Voice acting and writing were good, but only two of the characters had any real depth. I would recommend it if you have time and patience and enjoy immersive worlds with a decent story.

I don't know about this game. I enjoyed the audiovisual part of it for sure, but it could've been a bit more. The whole setup in the beginning was sparking my interest, but after that it keeps on being vague about what it actually is that made the people disappear. Then it turns to the story of the town folk and their daily lives. I kept waiting for some twist or big reveal in the story, but it never came.
I had a hard time remembering who was who and what the relationship was between some of the characters. I also fail to see how these relationships had anything to do with the event that happened. Did it influence anything at all?

The next part is about the ending, so spoiler blocked:

I've played through the first two people. I guess that's how you'd word it. I've loved both of The Chinese Rooms prior games all the way from the source-mod version of Dear Esther. This is probably the first of their games I haven't fallen in love with head over heels.

I do love the atmosphere. It is very reminiscent of Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and not just because of the whole disappearing motif. The game seems to mix a very Weir-esque amount of religious pathos and new age mysticism, though the latter is decidedly more technology-driven (or, well, sci-fi-imagery-driven I guess) here than it is in Weir's film. People coming to terms with forces beyond the world they've built with Christianity in their heads over the years and all that. It's very lovely to see apparently older people "star" in video games.

The problem I have is that the glowing orbs suck ass. I can see where they were going with it, but as a narrative hook it's so poor. It could work if the orbs moved slower and you didn't spend a lot of time having to scan the environment to find one, or if the orb was more... well, guided. Especially when you approach them the AI on them seems to go absolutely bonkers, bouncing however possible all over your field of view. It's very difficult to follow. If you contrast this to the way their prior games have been built (Dear Esther has an emphasis on constant story, A Machine for Pigs makes you face your fears and then reveal why they exist), following a glowing ball around to see old people talk about their relationships is... it just doesn't have the same drive or urgency to it, you know? It could work if the content was more frequent but as is it doesn't quite click. That wonderful Weir-esque mysticism only comes through during the dialogue or the very occasional burst of music, so you're really left with a lot of empty space that's sort of so empty that it actually becomes quite difficult to immerse yourself into the world, because even if you were to succeed, you just know that this success will be followed by a somewhat sever change in tone that forces you out of whatever moody immersion you've managed to build up.

That being said, I'm excited to see where this story goes.

@vierastalo: I think that the simple reason why these so called walking simulators dont really have people in them is that it is probably pretty expensive and time consuming to include actual 3d models of people into the game. The light gave the developers a chance to include people into the game withouth really having to spend a lot of time on making and animating the actual models.

So I guess that one reason that there is a genre called the walking simulator is that for a lot of indie development teams it is just too expensive to include actual people into the game.

Sat and mostly watched my g/f play through it, I enjoyed it but would rather of had a more conclusive ending.

To add to this - My husband watched me play the first two parts. I took a break because I was super tired, and he asked me a bit later "So, were there any puzzles? Even Gone Home had some puzzles to figure out before you moved on." I thought about it a moment and except for moving your controller a bit, there are no environmental "puzzles" that would require you to search. Gone Home had you searching around for stuff and when you figured something out, you could proceed. It worked, especially in the small size that it was, like Sparky said.

So there's another big difference. It's a bigger game with less to do. Looks very pretty though, and the story bits are interesting. But I thought the story bits in Gone Home were interesting too, just different.

I was thinking of writing an entire blog about this.

The term "walking simulator" gets thrown around a lot and is obviously derogatory. People defend these games by saying they're a breath of fresh air, something different, that not everything has to appeal to everyone - which I agree with. That said I do think in order to be truly classified as a game you do have an obligation to check off a few boxes on a list. What you describe, the lack of meaningful player interaction, is essentially a big one. Rapture didn't need to be a "game" because it doesn't make use of what makes games a unique entertainment medium: player engagement. The whole idea behind games being more than just movies is that the player feels like they're part of the story rather than being a passive observer on the outskirts of it. In Gone Home you are actively exploring the house and learning about the inhabitants bit by bit through actions very unique to video games. The act of picking personal items up and examining them at your own leisure creates an intimate bond between player and game world. In Rapture you are essentially walking through a static environment until you cue ambient dialog. It's like if someone took comic book stills and played them on the big screen in a movie theatre with accompanying music. Sure it enhances the experience somewhat, but it's not really necessary or the ideal way to consume that content. It just seems like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is an interesting story that never needed to be shoehorned into video game format and it doesn't even make any real use of it. Just because you have a good story doesn't mean you'll have a good video game, and it doesn't mean your story needs to be a video game.

@humanity: I don't get this at all. For me, this very much did need to be an "experience" enjoyed through the PS4. True, it is by no means a game, but it is something that could only be appreciated in its fullest through engaging with it through a controller.

I find the community on GB really open minded in general and open to lots of different experiences, so it's left me a little deflated that Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has received such a negative, luke-warm reception on here. I get it that it might not be everybody's cup of tea, but the fact that so few people on here seem to have gained any enjoyment from it whatsoever is strange to me. Me and my girlfriend worked our way through it last week and we both absolutely loved it. I was genuinely moved by the experience.

@kmfrob: But why did it "need" to be an experience on a PS4. What did controlling the character give you that you would otherwise not have gotten if this was an animated short the followed the same linear path but didn't require you to hold up on the thumbstick?

What I really dislike is that whenever anyone is critical of these sort of games you instantly hear how you should be more "open minded" as if not appreciating this sort of format automatically makes you some sort of philistine. I think it is because people are open minded that they gave the game a shot and are able to be critical about their experience with it. Simply walking from location to location in a video game is an objectively lackluster experience. Your enjoyment of the story will go a great way in buffering that but ultimately if the story doesn't grab you then the "game" has nothing else to fall back on.

@humanity: I needed the controller because I needed to take it in at exactly the pace that I wanted to take it in. The game was far from linear and gave you complete freedom to move through its boundaries taking any path you wish (I rarely followed the path the orb laid out for me). If it was completely linear then I could appreciate that sentiment a little more, but the point is that the game very much is not linear.

I apologise if my comment made it sound as though I was calling people who didn't like it closed-minded because I certainly do not think that. It just surprises me that it has been so badly thought of on these boards.

But maybe we just have to stop calling it a game... It is an experience that is best enjoyed with a controller, but it is about as far removed from a game like say Rocket League as it's possible to get,

My friend and I just sat and played the whole damn thing and I'm tired and he's bitchy, But to be fair we are normally both of those things most of the time. It cost like 12 bucks though and it's production values are just out of this world. The voice acting is frankly incredible and the music is stupidly well produced. The stories of the various villagers are actually pretty fun to follow and engaging too. The hard part is the sci-fi. I'm not sure that satisfied me. But you just have to accept it I suppose. Wish it had been a tad more tactile. Where is my zoom button to read all these signs!

@humanity: The interactivity is crucial for me - I like to inhabit detailed spaces in games and examine them at my own pace and perspective. Even if there's no explicit narrative tied to a scene, a well-realised setting can trigger a memory or feeling and that's what transforms these games for me. My experience was anything but lackluster; it was unsettling and melancholy.

And that says nothing of the sound design, voice acting and general presentation, which I think are all tremendous. Jessica Curry is doing some of the best soundtrack work in games today, if you ask me.

I just finished it. 2/5. It looks great, despite performance issues, and there are some really great moments for the characters. But a lot of the character moments were contrived, the main story fell flat, a lot of the character motivations were inconsistent, even with running the movement speed was too slow for the size of the world, the world itself wasn't that fun to explore and ultimately there isn't really anything to glean from the story (at least to me).

All that's a huge bummer because I loved the way Dear Esther told its story and its focus on regret, sobriety (and lack thereof) and grief was really powerful. With EGTTR I just left feeling empty and dull.

@gutterkisser: I think there's a greater discussion to be had here over what people consider the bare minimum of interactivity. There's a lot of people who claim that EGTTR is far too passive an experience, but I just want to ask them why they think adding an arbitrary "interact" function would make it a better one. Why would some obtuse puzzle that would be incredibly jarring in real life help bring out its better side? Like you, I found it great as it was. Contrary to what others thought I enjoyed exploring the world given to me. I thought it was charming, full of beautiful vistas and teeming with hints at many other untold stories.

Again I'm not trying to denigrate people here for not enjoying the experience, just trying to show that there are some who actually genuinely did get a lot out of EGTTR.

@kmfrob: It's just that the world feels so static, it would be nice if you could knock over a chair or a book so it doesn't feel like everything is 'glued' in place. Lots of buildings you could not enter did not even have furniture in it. Almost every house had a shed in the garden, but they're almost always completely empty when you peered through the window.
It came to the point where I could recognise a building I could enter by the 2nd floor having any lamps hanging from the ceiling.

It's also not very consistantly decorated when some rooms have lightswitches and some don't (while do having a ceiling light).

@dussck: Sure, I understand that frustration, but the team had a budget and needed to prioritise. I tried every door and was occasionally left disappointed that I couldn't enter a particular house, but that was only because I wanted more of the story.

As for the lightswitch issue. Well I personally never noticed it, but I guess that could have been a thing.

@kmfrob: @gutterkisser Ultimately it probably boils down to a deeply personal point of view. Like I said, if the story draws you in from the get-go then you'll be able to excuse a lot. There are some deeply flawed games that I enjoy quite a bit despite their poor story or poor gameplay. I guess the only difference is that the titles I'm thinking of are games in the classic meaning of the word. Mafia 1 or Bionic Commando for instance are two sides of the same coin where the former has a brilliant story and the latter has brilliant gameplay. There is a deeper conversation here but I think asking whether Rapture should be considered a game is the same level discourse as the immortal "are games art?" conundrum - personally I think the answer to both is that it's not important. Whats important is the end result being an enjoyable product that will resonate with a lot of people. By this thread alone, and the overall reaction on the internet, it's obvious that the opinion is pretty evenly split on this particular product. To me that means they chose a very particular direction and committed to it 100% resulting in some people really resonating well with it while others were indifferent at best. Is that good game design? Eh, probably not, but it's admirable from an artistic perspective that they made exactly what they wanted to make focus testing be damned. It's just not a very sustainable business plan in the long run.

I had at one point in the game (close to the end) one of the light spheres bugging out on me. It got stuck between a house and a bush, so I had to find the last parts of the story on my own. I also 'continued' after completing the game and after loading to 100% it crashed.

The world just doesnt seem as fleshed out as it could be. The world is detailed and realistic enough to make you expect there to be hidden notes and backstory pieces, yet it lacks them - and yes, the walking is too slow. Gone Home had all kinds of semi-related or extra information that was entirely there to enhance the setting, something I really enjoyed with that game. Rapture seems to drive you more towards the story going on - interacting with the memories of characters and so on. I like more exploration and less "follow the yellow ball" I guess. I did like the story in this game, though. Felt interesting and less cliched than most.

And is it a game? Are games art? Eye of the beholder here. We call things art because a group of us agree to do so, theres no objective criteria for being art. We call movies art, even when their original purpose was to entertain and earn money for investors, much like games.

Her Story did a much better version of the same fundamental gameplay, piecing together snippets of a story.