Everybody's Gone To The Rapture
Posted: November 28th, 2016, 19:07
Everybody's Gone To The Rapture - PC, also PS4
What is it?
It is a game where you walk around a recently-deserted English village, which is sort of haunted by glowing outlines of the people that once lived there, reenacting key moments surrounding the event. It's an incredibly well-realised setting with amazing attention to detail. Of course real brand names are missing, but every other detail is spot-on at creating a truly believable exterior, close enough to the real thing to make it feel genuinely creepy by the absence of any people.
How does it work?
You don't get to do much other than walk, poke open a few doors, listen to voice recordings and "activate" some nodes of light which trigger story events, mostly acted-out by the glowy ghosts. The activation is a little fiddly at first, on a controller you hold the left trigger then hold the right stick in the right place, sort of like holding an aerial in the right place to get the best picture. There's an 'easy tune' option if you struggle with it, the end-of-chapter ones require a longer hold.
What about the story?
Apart from the mystery of why everyone has disappeared, you get to hear a few key moments from the villagers lives as you loosely follow a particular spirit around for each of the five chapters. Given the title of the game it won't surprise you to learn that everyone is dead and that what you are hearing are the events that led up to their final moments and how they reconciled with that. It starts a bit soap-opera but becomes quite touching in parts, while the main mystery does the reverse, unravelling itself fairly quickly and becoming a little wooly towards the end.
What's broken?
The walking is really fucking slow. There is a run button (hold down right trigger) but it only builds over time and gets reset by bumping into things or story elements. The interior of the houses isn't as good as the outside - they look more like show homes than lived-in ones.
So?
If you're in a mood for a change of pace, then this may well fit the bill. The almost-but-not-quite Shropshire village is certainly one for the virtual tourists, and it is refreshing to see and hear such an unusual setting in a game. The views are pretty good, too, and it covers a decently-large area - in the shots below, the first picture was taken from where the small white cross to the right of the tree in the green field with the path in the distance is in the second picture.
What is it?
It is a game where you walk around a recently-deserted English village, which is sort of haunted by glowing outlines of the people that once lived there, reenacting key moments surrounding the event. It's an incredibly well-realised setting with amazing attention to detail. Of course real brand names are missing, but every other detail is spot-on at creating a truly believable exterior, close enough to the real thing to make it feel genuinely creepy by the absence of any people.
How does it work?
You don't get to do much other than walk, poke open a few doors, listen to voice recordings and "activate" some nodes of light which trigger story events, mostly acted-out by the glowy ghosts. The activation is a little fiddly at first, on a controller you hold the left trigger then hold the right stick in the right place, sort of like holding an aerial in the right place to get the best picture. There's an 'easy tune' option if you struggle with it, the end-of-chapter ones require a longer hold.
What about the story?
Apart from the mystery of why everyone has disappeared, you get to hear a few key moments from the villagers lives as you loosely follow a particular spirit around for each of the five chapters. Given the title of the game it won't surprise you to learn that everyone is dead and that what you are hearing are the events that led up to their final moments and how they reconciled with that. It starts a bit soap-opera but becomes quite touching in parts, while the main mystery does the reverse, unravelling itself fairly quickly and becoming a little wooly towards the end.
What's broken?
The walking is really fucking slow. There is a run button (hold down right trigger) but it only builds over time and gets reset by bumping into things or story elements. The interior of the houses isn't as good as the outside - they look more like show homes than lived-in ones.
So?
If you're in a mood for a change of pace, then this may well fit the bill. The almost-but-not-quite Shropshire village is certainly one for the virtual tourists, and it is refreshing to see and hear such an unusual setting in a game. The views are pretty good, too, and it covers a decently-large area - in the shots below, the first picture was taken from where the small white cross to the right of the tree in the green field with the path in the distance is in the second picture.