Everybody's Gone to the Rapture Reviews
My experience with Everybody's Gone to the Rapture was one of delight and wonder punctuated by many unfortunately long stretches of interface frustration.
The best way I can think to sum up this feeling is to say I enjoyed Everybody's Gone To The Rapture far more on PS4 and that was because after the first chapter I lay on the sofa watching and listening and luxuriating while my companion dealt with the controls.
Even without any engaging mechanics (mostly walking around listening and interacting), Everybody's Gone to the Rapture's world is incredibly engrossing.
Rapture's biggest weakness is bigger still, because those who are put off more thorough exploration will get less out of it than others. Some players will reach the end without knowing half the story. But maybe that's okay. You get as much as you put in, after all, and the variety in experiences will give people something to talk about.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is an extraordinary piece of work, with things to say about pacing, writing, world-building and the communication of emotion that feel profoundly valuable to the industry. Along with its peers in this curiously expanding genre of being-in-the-world simulators, it will undoubtedly feed more furious debate about what games should be and what playing them should involve, but its great achievement, for me at least, was to render any such question spectacularly irrelevant during the time that its experience lasted.
Everybody's gone to Rapture… but sadly not everyone will like it.
Rapture's audio design is top notch. The sound design is truly one of the reason's why the game creates such an amazing and believable atmosphere.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a masterwork – a gorgeous and subtle experience, which treats you as an adult, without ever indulging in pretence. It cares about its characters enough to give them interesting and meaningful things to say, while also playing host to some truly breathtaking art direction and music.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture spins a good yarn, but it does nearly all the spinning, leaving little for the player. Its impact falls flat after trudging slowly across a world with little of substance for players to find, explore, or interpret.
When the games of this fall start rolling out, we're going to have plenty of opportunities to shoot, stab, and blow up everything we can get our crosshairs on. For now, exploring a sunlit village in Shropshire, England feels like a good, short diversion.
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.
While it has its problems, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a memorable, emotional ride through post-apocalyptic England, rife with mystery, intrigue, and a sense of the unknown.
[I]f you're the patient sort who likes to slowly explore every nook, or who craves a gaming experience that's less exciting and more thoughtful, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture might be the light in the dark you've been looking for.
[I]f you're looking for an interesting method of storytelling full of drama, then you will want to check out Everybody's Gone To The Rapture. This is a video game as a piece of literature. Some may call it art, but I like to think gaming has evolved beyond such a contemporary definition. The Chinese Room had a story to tell, and they have done so in such a unique fashion that I eagerly await their next adventure.
Like The Chinese Room's previous work, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture will no doubt prove an acquired taste, but the game is bolstered by strong, character-driven writing and a desire to experiment with boundaries no other developer, indie or established, is willing to engage.
An engaging story, gorgeous environment and well-written characters can't distract from the fact that Everybody's Gone To The Rapture's gameplay is buggy and lethargic.
Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has an original and engaging story to tell over its roughly 5 hours of play time. If you enjoy narrative-driven games it could be worth a look, but it's not a huge step forward for the genre.
Stunning production values and superb graphics and music collide in a fascinating work of interactive science fiction. Some many be put off by the lack of real interactivity and the slow pace of the gameplay, but more will find the story as interesting and resonant as the way it's told. Is it a game? Who cares? It's a stunning experience, whatever you want to call it.
As with Dear Esther before it, it offers up an admirable and atmospheric experience that simply isn't all that much fun to play.
This is a world that has seen an unfathomable change and walking through this empty world that still has elements of life lingering around is a unique experience that I doubt you will get anywhere else this year.