I hate gamers so much man. The amount of shit they give any game that doesn't fall under their predetermined idea of "fun" is pathetic. God forbid a developer has different artistic intentions for their game than the average shooter/platformer/rpg/etc.

If you want to say that Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has a disappointing story thats fine, if you want to say the walking speed is too slow thats completely valid, but if you take one look at and say it sucks because its a "walking simulator" then you need to seriously reconsider how you consume art.

Again I'm not saying this game is perfect, or even great, I think it has a good amount of things wrong with it. What I am saying is that it, and games like it, get unfairly criticized by the general public. It just bums me out that so many people have such limited views when it comes to games, and I hope that doesn't hamstring the medium and cause less experimentation in the future.

Few games have made me tear up like this game has. The sickening loneliness and the overwhelming fear of the unknown slowly being unraveled through tendrils of light is expertly done. Its very British rural setting is a fresh gaming experience. For me this was apocalypse in the next village across.

Jessica Curry does a phenomenal job of tying it all together with a soundtrack that references this New Weird setting by using choral music that evokes not only Anglican churches but also choirs more commonly associated with bygone mining communities. It's remarkably well done and strikes the game's overall theme of the celestial and the mechanical.

It's not a perfect 'game', sure, and I wish there was a little more to do in places, but its narrative keeps you guessing right up until the end.

An ambitiously minimalist interactive story from The Chinese Room, the British team behind the previous Dear Esther.
This spiritual successor is indeed very British, not only in its beautifully realised fictional village of Yaughton in Shropshire, England but also in its sci-fi mystery narrative - its atmosphere reminded me of old British sci-fi mystery thrillers such as Village of the Damned and Children of the Stones.
The simple gameplay - follow an ethereal light to reveal memories of different characters in the final days before this mass disappearance - directs most of the gamer's attention to the story, which is where I think it falls a bit flat, and repetetive. In a rather boundless structure, you follow various moments from five different characters, all of whom end up with the same revelation: life is beautiful but must come to an end and maybe we'll all be alright and so on and so forth.
Still, I think there's much to be absorbed from the atmosphere and astonishingly life-like world design.
As with all my favourite games, the most fascinating character is the place, a village that feels real and feels lived in, whilst bearing an ominous quality in its emptiness. Bottom line is, it's Silent Hill: Shattered Memories done right.

Dont get me wrong, the developers of "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture", the chinese room, they sure know how to make an incredibly pretty game full of scenic vistas, cluttered abandonment and haunting locales. Its all stunning. They probably also know how to make a decent tale too but they cant seem to grasp the idea of making their game... well... a game? Everything is just so slow and drawn out to the point where it just takes an age to glimpse even the smallest of plotpoints. Its just not fun.

Dont get me wrong, visual storytelling is fine but there comes a point where you feel their talent may have been better placed in independent filmmaking vs games.

Hauntingly beautiful. The game shows you a snapshot of humanity right at it's end. Everything frozen in time. Cigarettes are still smoking in ashtrays, laundry is still on the line. Signs of life are all around, but everybody's gone.

The game focuses more on the interpersonal connections between all the villagers than the sci-fi end-of-the-world, which is definitely a choice. But I think it was a good one, overall. It feels like you're getting to know all the drama and gossip between the characters. The importance of human connections was a big theme in this game, and also seems to be in most post-apocalyptic media.

As everybody has said, the walking speed is comically slow. Which I thought would be fine, as long as the game is linear enough. But it's not, it's pretty open and there's lots of exploring and accidental backtracking. This just leads to frustration and "ugh i gotta walk all the way back now."

The voice acting was great and sounded realistic, but the characters being depicted by glowing lights that you can't really make out most of the time was pretty lame. It made it harder to keep up with what's really happening, and remembering names for each of the characters. Deliver Us The Moon did the whole "memory's of people from the past" thing a bit better I think.

The game also was maybe a bit too long. I still don't really know who Frank is or why he had a whole chapter dedicated to him.

The final boss of walking simulators.

The voice acting is natural and the game is beautiful. I played this game in one sitting, and it was much longer than I expected. I think it had a lot more impact on me than if I would have played in sections.

There is apparently a "walk faster" button, but it didn't actually do anything everytime I tried to use it.

I just realized that "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" was made by the same people who made "Amnesia : but this time, with pigs".

... which explains a lot.

So this isn't a review of "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture", because that game was mind numbing in that essentially the plot took place before the game starts, absolutely nothing you do has any actual consequence, and even in the end there really aren't any 'answers' of any sort.

Instead this is a review of the grocery list my girlfriend sent me last night, because walking through Aldi was about as interesting and significant in my life.

The list, as copied from a text message:
Mouth wash
Dish soap
Toothbrush
Plastic spoons
Tortillas
Bananas
Grapes
Strawberries
Easy Mac
Milk
Brisk
Fish
Gridlock
Potato puffs
Chicken breasts
Porn tenderloin
Frozen breakfast sandwiches


Not a horrible little list but it does have one standout item. "Porn tenderloin". Autocorrect is just an incredible feature.
Otherwise my girlfriend tends to write lists without much thought or planning. There's chicken breasts listed, but for what purpose? Is there a meal planned? Do we not need any other ingredients to go with that meal? I grabbed green beans and some rice, as well. I'll probably make a honey chicken with green beans and rice for dinner tonight.

That was a better narrative than "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" because I had a choice to make. There was a piece of information that felt like it lacked substance and context, and another piece of information that existed in a semi-humorous manner.
Take notes, The Chinese Room


Also, did you notice? I lied. This actually WAS a review of the game. What a dramatic twist!

Rapture uses a scifi apocalyptic premise to tell personal and intimate stories of the inhabitants of an idylic english town, problem is it goes out of its way to be as vague and mysterious as possible about it. On the surface, it doesn't sound much so the best way I explain the problem by comparing it with a tv show I recently watched called Broadchurch.

The show is a who dun it murder mystery where the dirty secrets of an isolated town are dragged to the broad day light as the investigation goes on. There the mystery is the hook and every detail revealed adds to intrigue. But make no mistake, it is primarily a drama of inhabitants. The show makes you want to know about the characters, and when you do, it's their struggles and pain that you care about over even the mystery.
Now Rapture is similar case, but the hook is vague and kept mysterious. The characters are faceless wisps of light where little dialogues snippets are drip fed to you in potentially (most likely) non linear fashion due to how the exploration is structured. Not only is it hard to keep track of who's who, but the dialogue is of mundane variety. Very little of it adds to overarching mystery, serving more to form a vignete of a group trying to deal with apocalypse that anything concrete. It left me with little reason little reason to care about anyone or what happened to them and that is why I stopped playing.
I can see how some may connect to this form of storytelling as it is a pretty game with great VA and soundtrack. The use of light to guide you and the solitude that comes from the lack of information helps to project your feelings and ideas on to the story. Maybe I could have gotten more out of the story if I finished it but I already played more that I wanted and I don't want to indulge in sunk cost fallacy.

The Chinese Room has some of the most iconic (and criticized) games in the walking sim genre, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture seems like the ultimate representation of their style of game. One thing I can definitely praise is the haunting soundtrack which is extremely atmospheric and adds to the experience immensely. Unfortunately the pace here was just much too slow for me and I found myself struggling to pay attention and see this through to the end. The story is too metaphorical for my tastes and a lot of it went right over my head. It's definitely artistically expressive but not one I'd recommend too highly.

A game of immeasurable power and relevancy. Undoubtedly something that deserves a sincere reevaluation given our contemporary woes and social unrest. With the luscious visual designs borrowing from Romanticist values and a breathtaking score by Jessica Curry, in ways this feels ahead of its time, achieving an overwhelming sense of isolation through the usual tropes of the "walking sim" genre. It's the massive scope that makes all the difference. What's told here is a richly drawn tapestry of a town populated by complicated people reckoning with complex events; the chief being the apocalypse itself. Or at least the end of "their" world as they know it. This game engages with annihilation as it is happening, and the intimate traumas and regrets and buried revelations that are unearthed when civilized society is pushed to the brink of oblivion. It is an expressively funereal and thunderous experience. My only qualms fall on what was probably time/budget restrictions; the interior designs becoming a bit monotonous and the way some of the areas bleed together can be disarming. Needless to say the game is consistently enthralling, finding various methods of connecting dread and beauty together through its aesthetic and voice talents, entwining them in poetic fashion.

An ethereal dance of light and darkness, cosmic by definition. It's rare to see a game take such a brave yet absolute trek into the unknown. Encompassing feels like the correct word.

Wonderful/stunning atmosphere and absolutely beautiful music by Jessica Curry is what makes this game dear to my heart. This is a walking sim and unfortunately the walking is very slow, but the intriguing mystery of the narrative, the visuals, setting, and again the music is what makes me recommend the game to people who enjoy walking sims.

This is more a Jessica Curry appreciation review than anything as it made me go check out the rest of her work whether in Dear Esther, So Let Us Melt, or in the Amnesia series. So shout out to her, she makes beautiful music that inspires me.

Walking simulators are something I really enjoy as they can focus mostly on the story, characters, and atmosphere. Sadly, it's also a big gamble as sometimes the story can be great, but the gameplay is awful or the story is awesome, but the ending sucks and pretty much makes the entire experience not worthwhile. The Chinese Room is notorious for its walking simulators, being almost exactly that, and this game is a spiritual successor to Dear Esther which looked great but was forgettable.

The game puts you in a small rural British town of Shropshire where there doesn't seem to be anyone around. All you know is to follow a ball of light floating around and it guides you around the town to activate cut scenes of the main characters talking about what happened at that moment. You will see the aftermath such as a wrecked car, a turned-over box, bloody rags, etc. There are no actual character models as they are just whisps of light in the shape of people acting things out on screen. This can make the game aggravating to play and pay attention to. A game with literally zero gameplay outside of an action button, and doesn't have any characters on screen better be damn good right?

As you walk around and follow the ball of light you will sometimes hear a numbers station playing on a radio or a telephone ring. These are extra tidbits of stories you can listen to. Each part of the town focuses on a specific character, but sadly I was often lost as to who was what as there were no faces to put to any of the voices. Once you see a cutscene play out your ball of light will stop and wait, sometimes. There were quite a few glitches in the game in which the ball of light would get stuck in the ground, not continue on, or just disappear somewhere never to be found. I had to restart the game to get the ball back on track.

Major cutscenes that actually advance the story are triggered by grabbing a ball of light and moving it left and right until it explodes. This was originally an excuse to use the then-new DualShock 4 touchpad. Here it's just a mouse drag and feels pointless. You know you are done with an area when you get a ball of exploding light that takes a few seconds to trigger. After this cutscene, the area goes dark and you follow a trail of lights on the ground to the next area. This is all there is to the game. It's pretty to look at, even today. The game uses CryEngine so it looks awesome and holds up well, but it's still forgettable. There's nothing memorable about a realistic-looking generic old English rural town.

I did eventually get into the story towards the end. However, the game just ends on a pretentious note and I felt deflated and annoyed. I really hate endings like this. This was four hours I will never get back and I won't take anything away from this game at all. No interesting gameplay, no memorable visuals, and no exciting story. The voice acting is great, but that's about it.

Sadly, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a game I've avoided for a decade and there's a reason for that. I knew that this game would be very forgettable and a waste of time. I enjoyed the idea of this strange apocalyptic infection that's passed around through phone and radio waves, but there's no pay-off in the end. That also doesn't take into account the aggravatingly slow walking pace that most people won't be able to put up with. Even if it was two times faster it would be more tolerable. It feels like you're crawling. That would be fine if there were more visuals to look at but there aren't.

Playing this in 2021, having lived through a year of a pandemic, made this a lot more eerie than I expected and therefore also somewhat heavy-weighing.
The game itself is of utter beauty. The production values are insanely good: the visuals - especially the lighting may it be natural or supernatural it always is a sight to behold. The voice acting - for a game that relies solely on conversations you hear, they really made sure it’s top notch. The soundtrack - it’s Jessica Curry, what more need I say. The atmosphere is superb and I like walking simulators (even though the walking speed is an insult :D), but somehow it didn’t leave the impact it probably was supposed to. I did not care for all of the characters in here and the conclusion left me unsatisfied. Still - I can recommend this game to anyone who is into the genre.

Enjoyment - 9/10
Difficulty - 2/10

A truly one of a kind game. Through its explorative narrative moments, an immense sense of intrigue builds as you bounce from place to place, providing a meditative experience that not many games have achieved. It is also set in a VERY English country town. ENGLAND ITS COMING HOME!
🏆

Damn shame this one ngl, there's a really good 2-3 hour game here but the walking speed being set to fuckin 0.5% and half the PS trophies being "stand still for 5 minutes lol" make the whole game feel like a waste of time.

The story was genuinely interesting and the map is very well crafted, if I was able to move around it at human speed I'd have had a wonderful time exploring, but playing as what I assume was a 200lb camera being pushed around by a small child made it feel more like reading a picture book on a tablet with shitty internet.

It seriously takes almost a full minute to get from the front door of a house down the yard and across the road, bro has a fucking 3 hour commute to his shop half a mile away.
Anyway I'm sure everyone is as bored of walking-speed rants/complaints as they were being let down by what should've been a much better game.

Thanks for reading if you did, sorry for the moan but it's gone 4am now and this game would've been twice as good were it half as slow. Can't wait to speedrun it again tomorrow for the platinum! :D

Hope you all have a lovely December, hopefully I'll have a proper review before it's over but brief thoughts for now: Persona 5 Tactica was great, much better story than expected. Jedi Survivor has been really good so far, Ace Attorney isn't as good as TGAA was but it's a joy and Maya is 😌