Everybody's Gone to the Rapture Reviews
Nice as it can be to look around the world of Everbody's Gone To The Rapture, its story is dead, empty, and filled with redundant notions of player engagement.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture feels trapped by its medium, forced into one of a handful of approved genres because that's what is expected of videogames. The Chinese Room knows how to create vibrant worlds, and fills Rapture's with a number of believable characters. If they trusted fully in these characters and their lives, or the audience's willingness to be fascinated by them without a sci-fi hook, Rapture would have been stronger for it. Anybody interested in games as a storytelling medium should play it, even if its light is reined back in right on the verge of transcendence.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture's take on interactive fiction is admirable, even in its struggle to manage personal discovery alongside narrative composition. I love its calamitous tranquility, I identify with the plights of its characters, and I'm enamored with its confident storytelling, but its reluctance to disclose its disposition adversely affects its capability. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is at the front of the line, although I can't help but wonder if it could have started its own path.
An unforgettable experience, Rapture deserves to be played by anyone with a fondness for stories.
A landmark for writing, held back by minimalism
Everybody's Gone To The Rapture really tried to be something more powerful than a video game. It tried to be art. However, instead of becoming a Mona Lisa, it felt as though the paint was still awaiting its first brush stroke. It never quite got there, but if it ever achieved that first stroke, it was bound to be brilliant.
It's not a perfect game – There are some cheesy, overly melodramatic scenes that border on Soap Opera-esque levels of ridiculousness and the resolution will most certainly be unsatisfying for some – But it's almost a perfect experience.
What Everybody's Gone to the Rapture accomplishes with the well-worn post-apocalyptic genre is remarkable.
Games are at their best when they subvert expectations, or challenge longstanding norms. While Everybody's Gone to the Rapture mostly accomplishes this by questioning traditional videogame storylines, it stumbles, and falls back on the very thing it's critiquing. That, however, doesn't detract from the overall worth of the human experiences that underpin it.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a wonderfully poignant, moving sci-fi journey. A fully realized world, excellent writing, superb voice acting, beautiful music, and a compelling, intriguing mystery are more than worth a few technical difficulties and some subpar mechanics. If you have any interest in narrative driven adventure games, you're sure to find a new favorite here.
It's not hard to see why this won a number of BAFTA awards… it is one of those examples that comes about from time to time of gaming being art. A true visual novel that draws you in and leaves you wanting more. Fantastic voice acting and musical score really just provide icing on the cake here. Very worthwhile!
It's a shame that Everybody's Gone to the Rapture falls for the trap of slowing players down to force engagement because it does the exact opposite. There's plenty to latch onto here, but the slow movement speed and technical problems distract from the otherwise moving story.
Walking simulator as a term started as a dismissive joke, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is the punchline, a shaggy dog effort determined to mock the idea that games need players. It's not meta. It's not clever. It's banal and tedious and if your narrative focused do-nothing game wouldn't work as a halfway interesting short story, then it won't be better just because you force people to walk slowly around a wholly un-interactive game space while you drip-feed them unconnected plot points.
If you think walking slowly around an empty village sounds like a load of bollocks, this probably isn't the game for you. It's more of an immersive narrative than an action-packed piece of entertainment, and if the PS4 wasn't already struggling with frame rates in this version, I'd say it's ideal for virtual reality.
Then, after an increasingly desperate three-hour session of sparkle-seeking, Rapture crashed, and I gave up, unwilling to keep pretending that I cared. The screen froze on an image of a road emblazoned with the word "SLOW," like it was mocking the torturous pace of my progress. If only Rapture had such a puckish streak, its sluggish march might have been more bearable. Instead, I found myself wishing that I could go to the rapture, too.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is an incredibly engaging piece of fiction. Its investigation into humanity and relationships far exceeds its desire to wow you with action. It is a slow game, a contemplative game, and it's one of my favorites this year.
If you enjoy games with impressively rendered visuals, an excellent score, and a story that is both compelling and moving then Everybody's Gone to the Rapture will provide you with a bountiful return on your investment.
The Chinese Room has managed to create one of the most insightful, meaningful, and emotional games that we've seen in some time, perhaps forever, and bravo to Sony for taking a real punt with something so completely arthouse.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has a subtlety and nuance that is extremely refreshing. Calling this a "game" is doing it a great disservice. It is an experience. Thusly, this might not be everyone's cup of tea. However, those that chose to invest their valuable time in this 5 hour gem will be rewarded with one of the most compelling experiences in recent memory. The truth is out there, just waiting to be discovered. Don't miss out.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a triumph.