Developer: The Chinese Room / SCE Santa Monica Studio
PS4 Review
I saw people raving about this game so I jumped at my first chance at trying it, it's not your typical game and but the amount of work that went into the graphics and artwork shows. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a non-linear game, it allows you to freely roam around and explore your surroundings which is something that I always look for in a game, I'm not a huge fan of games that restrict where I can go. The game is set in England, in a small village where strange things have been going on, as the player you're trying to find where everyone is disappearing to and why I didn't want to spoil this game for myself so when I first started to play I didn't look up where to go or how to play I just explored and ended getting bored very quickly and stopped playing for ages until one day I decided I needed to finish it and get it out of my backlog and when I finally did I concentrated properly on where I was supposed to go.
The reason I got so lost is that the little wisps of light that you're meant to follow kept disappearing for ages for me and I got fed up trying to find them again, the second playthrough I tried to stay near in order to find out where I next needed to go to find a memory of someone who had gone missing in the village, whilst looking for these wisps and memories you will hear someone repeating numbers over and over again, this voice is either coming from a radio or a tv nearby, you could choose to turn them off if you wanted.
I really didn't like how slow paced the game was but it's clear it's to help take in the story which eventually makes more sense once you near the end of the game, there are 6 different acts which you play through in the game they each are to do with 6 different residents of the village in each very different from one another, a mother, two scientists, someone's ex-fiance, an uncle and a pastor. As I Mentioned before you will see memories of people and these are the main people you see memories for and how terrified they are of what is happening, to be honest, I would be just as terrified if everyone around me was getting ill and disappearing, the illness in the game is a huge indicator of who will disappear next.
What I took from this was that the whole concept of the game is to move on to each memory until you come to the final one, this memory would be your last and you would be taken to the rapture too, some people say they feel it's religious driven due to a rapture taking place and others keep confusing the game for a Bioshock game which I find a little funny, just because a game has the word rapture in it doesn't mean it has anything to do with another game (big facepalm). The thing that stood out for me in the game would have to be the beautiful music that fits perfectly with each act and made the game feel that bit more personal because of the haunting atmosphere it gave off.
The voice acting was brilliant, imagine having to record your voice for a game but only be seen by little wisps of light? The emotion put into each scene shows in the actor's voices and this is what made me want to finish the game in the end, I wanted to find out why all these people suffered and where an earth their bodies disappeared too. In a way, it's sad because this once active little village is now silent and the people who made the village what it was have been ripped away and now all that is left is emptiness and silence.
This game was far from what I thought it would be, the word rapture makes it sound like the whole world is crumbling and on fire but instead it's emptiness and loneliness that you're met by, as far as the visuals go the game is beautiful, as the sun shines through the trees it gives a sense of realism and I really like that they put that much effort into the game even if it's very slow paced and takes a while to get to the point, maybe if there was more to the story I would have enjoyed it more.
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