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Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4)

Status: Finished playing
I started playing this game on Monday 1 January, 2018  //  I stopped playing this game on: Wednesday 3 January, 2018
Current opinion of this game
No comment, yet.

January 3, 2018 01:12:36 PM
I played this over the course of two evenings and I enjoyed it for probably all the wrong reasons. Well, maybe not the reasons you're supposed to enjoy it. Here goes...

a. I've been to England enough times that I really appreciated how REAL the game's environments are. I have family that live in a small village in the countryside that is similar to the game - thus walking around the game's environment felt really nice. Like taking a walk in a real place...just, empty of people.

b. The audio work is incredible. Not just the music, but the sound. One of my most enjoyable game moments, as I was playing late at night, was happily and consciously falling asleep while listening to the sounds of the countryside - the birds especially. It felt like taking a nap in a field, but I was on a couch and in the middle of winter.

c. The weather and lighting changes and effects are just beautiful. If I taught any art classes I would use this game as a masterclass for how lighting changes mood, tone, etc. in a game environment. And not just in the obvious "oh it's dark so now it's spooky" ways - but the more subtle ones like "oh, it's nice and warm now vs it's a bit chilly and maybe a storms coming" JUST from lighting!

d. There's these balls of light that do a great job of guiding you along in what is, broadly speaking, a pretty open world! I rarely felt gated, mostly I felt like I could really wander around and follow the light if and when I felt like it. The transitions between stories were particularly good at getting you to another area in a way that felt interesting and engaging (it goes dark, there are fireflies/light particles that light up indicating the general direction to head in, it's dark enough that you don't really recognize where you are -so it feels like a new place!)

e. Jeez, the character walks SO slow...it really started to grate on me towards the end. There's a "maintain momentum" that I don't really understand how it works but it felt like I moved faster SOMETIMES....


 
kudos for original design to Rodrigo Barria