Right off the bat: I will say that I knocked a whole two stars off because of technical reasons. Unless you go into NVIDIA Control Panel in the Program Settings tab, select this game, and set Low Latency to Ultra, this game runs TERRIBLY. I am using an i7-8700k and 3070ti build with 64gb of ram and was getting frame drops down to 15-22fps. Really immersion-breaking. Some other critiques: walking speed is way too slow at some points, "sprint" button does virtually nothing, and the direction I was supposed to go wasn't always clear, even though I knew I needed to follow the glowing light. I ended up missing the end of one of the character's story arcs because I ended up getting lost, and then at a later point, I thought I was following the light and took a wrong turn and ended up getting lost in a previous area for about 30 mins where nothing happened. So yeah, there's a few things they could have done a lot better technically.
Artistically though, phenomenal work! The voice acting is among some of the best I've seen in a while, kudos to all the actors involved because they killed it! Music was also incredible, definitely going to be listening to a good chunk of these songs on repeat. And the overall map was absolutely gorgeous, full marks there. Loved the vibe of this small rural british town, made me wanna go and live there. And when it rains during the later parts of the game was chef's kiss. So good.
This is an interesting one because I would absolutely LOVE to play it one or two more times to try and pick up on things I missed, but the walk speed and light guidance thing was confusing enough that I'm not sure if I wanna deal with it again just yet. I'll probably come back to it in a month or two.

I really enjoyed the graphics and style of the game; for me games where you discover along the time the lore of it by yourself is a really cool way to approach a game! I liked the way it was set up, and the concept I enjoyed too, but for my complaints, I have a few. I didn’t enjoy the snail walking pace, I feel like there should’ve been an option to speed up. I understand wanting people to take their time to enjoy the game, but eventually it becomes boring and excruciating to be going that slow the entire game. Besides that, the mapping of the game is a bit confusing and it felt like I went in circles a couple of times. I think it would’ve been beneficial to have added a map widget to refer to instead of just sort of guessing your way through , hoping to find another map table somewhere. Last but not least, I understand the concept, that people sort of just vanished but I think some clips of people just actually in their human forms would’ve brought a lot more interest into the game. Even at the end if they had shown even just one overlapping imagery of the people who lived in the town, just for an informational visual, I think that would’ve greatly improved the storytelling. But besides all my complaints, regardless I enjoyed the game.

I have never played a game quite like this. It truly is a fascinating way to tell a story and the setting is so lovingly crafted that it lingers in your memory each time you put it down. Clearly the creators have spent a bit of time listening to BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Archers’.

Did I grasp the complexities of the narrative in their entirety? Certainly not. Yet I would replay this game again to better my understanding. That is not something you can say often in the world of videogames.

I have no earthly idea how it benefits the tale to have you unable to walk/run at a normal pace for a videogame. It isn’t a massive problem but on the couple of occasions I found myself lost, having to backtrack for minutes on end left me somewhat frustrated.

Simulátory chůze to nemají lehké. Z principu jsou vylidněné, pomalé a musí stavět na vypjaté atmosféře "co se tady stalo", imerzi a příběhu, který je zpravidla vyprávěn nepřímo skrze různé deníky, dopisy, audiozáznamy apod. Stojí a padají na tom, zda si onu fasádu tenze udrží, zda se iluze Potěmkinovy vesnice nerozsype a zda děj chytne za srdce či je natolik tajemný, že touha po poznání to utáhne. To vše je důvod, proč většinou jde o kratší intenzivní zážitky. Protože čím delší a rozsáhlejší to je, tím větší je riziko, že se jeden z těch stavebních kamenů rozpadne a celé se to sesune k zemi. A pokud to nastane, tak to není čím zachránit, protože jiné herní/interaktivní prvky se v tomto žánru z logiky věci nenosí. Je asi jasné, že to skutečně není žánr pro všechny.

Tento titul má tu smůlu, že byť dělá vše správně, tak ho prokouknete v podstatě záhy. Čímž se především druhá polovina chtě nechtě stává pouhým plahočením se za něčím, co již dávno víte. Ano, to plahočení se po anglickém venkově osmdesátých let je v nádherně realizovaném prostředí, které působí reálně a uvěřitelně a byla by bývala radost ho prozkoumávat a poznávat. Ano, to plahočení doprovází jeden z nejikoničtějších videoherních soundtracků vůbec. Ano, je to citlivě odvyprávěno a umně se balancuje na tenké hraně emocí, spirituálna, sci-fi a prostých mezilidských vztahů. Jenže je to podryto tím, že jakmile prokouknete "o co jde a k čemu to směřuje" (což není problém odhalit v úvodní lokaci), tak se rozpadne ona pro žánr tolik stěžejní atmosféra, pocit tajemna a postupného odhalování. Rázem nemáte pocit ponoření a imerze, ale držení šipky/páčky a neustálého přání, proč, i když jde o simulátor chůze, je ta chůze tak proklatě pomalá.

Pokud máte tento svébytný žánr rádi, tak není důvod se tomu vyhýbat. Jde o solidního zástupce, který však nic nového nepřináší a ničím nevyčnívá. Tedy až na fenomenální soundtrack, který je ve výsledku lepší (a dlouhodobější) investicí než samotná hra.

Rapture uses a scifi apocalyptic premise to tell personal and intimate stories of the inhabitants of an idylic english town, problem is it goes out of its way to be as vague and mysterious as possible about it. On the surface, it doesn't sound much so the best way I explain the problem by comparing it with a tv show I recently watched called Broadchurch.

The show is a who dun it murder mystery where the dirty secrets of an isolated town are dragged to the broad day light as the investigation goes on. There the mystery is the hook and every detail revealed adds to intrigue. But make no mistake, it is primarily a drama of inhabitants. The show makes you want to know about the characters, and when you do, it's their struggles and pain that you care about over even the mystery.
Now Rapture is similar case, but the hook is vague and kept mysterious. The characters are faceless wisps of light where little dialogues snippets are drip fed to you in potentially (most likely) non linear fashion due to how the exploration is structured. Not only is it hard to keep track of who's who, but the dialogue is of mundane variety. Very little of it adds to overarching mystery, serving more to form a vignete of a group trying to deal with apocalypse that anything concrete. It left me with little reason little reason to care about anyone or what happened to them and that is why I stopped playing.
I can see how some may connect to this form of storytelling as it is a pretty game with great VA and soundtrack. The use of light to guide you and the solitude that comes from the lack of information helps to project your feelings and ideas on to the story. Maybe I could have gotten more out of the story if I finished it but I already played more that I wanted and I don't want to indulge in sunk cost fallacy.

I won this game through SteamGifts.

"We have each other.
We lived apart from them; we understand now.
Our failure to touch, to belong.
But it doesn’t matter anymore.
Everybody is gone, and we will join them."

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture combines elements of a walking simulator to a classic science fiction story with added drama of a small town in an English countryside. You walk through the empty village of Yaughton, learning the story bit by bit through telephones, radios and small specks of light that produce memories of the people that lived there.

The game comes from the same developers as Dear Esther, which piqued my interest right away. Dear Esther was a great walking simulator, and I feel like this game didn't disappoint in the slightest. The story is intriguing and the way everything unravels as you move forward is almost always unique to the person playing, as the order you can do things in is entirely up to you. There is different side storylines you can follow that wrap around the main story perfectly and as you go further into the area you learn more and more. I was quite disappointed however, that the walking speed was quite slow, and the "sprint" button, didn't really help.

The graphics of the game are absolutely stunning! I just couldn't keep my eyes off of everything, there were so many beautiful little details to look at and all of the scenery was wonderful. Sadly there is some optimization issues which caused a lot of stuttering and dropping of frames, but there were a few fixes in the community guides on steam. The game is definitely a screenshotter's dream and well worth checking out in that regard.

The soundtrack was something I absolutely adored and it often moved me to tears for how well they implemented the soundtrack with the story and the memory points you were watching. It's a beautiful combination of sounds, emotions and harmonic music.

Now, something that I did not like, was the achievements...many have claimed to have troubles with the achievements popping up, I had no problems in that regard, but the content of the achievements itself were quite annoying. If there were a way to walk faster, then perhaps it would have been more enjoyable, but the slow pace and the fact that you can't complete the game 100% in a single playthrough, made me annoyed. I did it however, and I feel like it was worth it in the end.

It's a game that you will enjoy if you are a fan of slow paced walking simulators with beautiful scenery and intriguing story elements. If you are not a fan of that, I don't think this game is for you. For me, it was exactly what I thought it would be, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I 100% recommend this game to anyone who is planning on getting it.

It looks great for 2015 but it’s boring as shit, I learnt absolutely nothing new from beginning to end, the narrative is just a convoluted mess with zero structure and not much sense to it either made a lot worse given the fact hardly any of the characters are likeable. Gameplay is just a bad as far as walking simulators go, the yellow orb thing is a pain in the ass that changes it’s direction constantly, sometimes it won’t even move so you’re sitting around for like a minute waiting for something to happen before the orb itself wakes up from falling asleep to this snoozefest of a game.

Enjoyment - 9/10
Difficulty - 2/10

A truly one of a kind game. Through its explorative narrative moments, an immense sense of intrigue builds as you bounce from place to place, providing a meditative experience that not many games have achieved. It is also set in a VERY English country town. ENGLAND ITS COMING HOME!
🏆

Premise and gameplay
What a way to spend an evening! In typical walking sim fashion, this one can be completed in one sitting. I took my time and spent about 5 hours from beginning to end, which is actually quite lengthy for a walking sim. A lot of this is thanks to the extremely slow movement speed, but I think it fits both the mood and the story. After all, this is not a high octane action game by any stretch of the imagination, but rather a narrative experience for a relaxing evening.

Without spoiling any of the story, you're playing an unknown person or entity, leisurely walking around a quaint, but deserted, English village and watching the ghostly figures of the residents relive their last day alive. The reason for everybody's disappearance is a mystery, and it's up to you, the player, to piece together the clues based on what you hear and see around you. You may well reach the end and find yourself utterly confused, but that's to be expected of a TCR game. The story needs to be considered and analyzed before you can make sense of it from start to finish, which I'm still in the process of doing.
By the end of the game, you know a bit about everyone in the village. You follow a handful of people more closely than others and get a close look at their relationships with the people around them, which made me feel like they were real people. As a result, I felt more intimately connected to them and cared about their stories.
In case you're scarred by The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and are apprehensive about possible scares in this game, I can assure you there are none. No horror.

There is actually quite a lot of content here, but you have to find a lot of it on your own. You're guided through the village and its surroundings by a floating orb of light, but you won't see all of the story by simply following it along. You have to go off the beaten path and explore on your own. Check out houses, sheds, cars and you'll occasionally find another plot point. These are just as important as those on the guided tour, so don't be afraid to stray. The way you experience the story isn't designed to be linear anyway.
Actually, the orb somehow got stuck in the hedge outside the pub in the last chapter of the game, so I had to explore without a guide. I thought that was just as well, because I would have to check everything to find all the plot pieces anyway. Still, it's handy in case you've missed something major, as it will lead you to it.

Presentation
This is definitely among the most beautiful games I've ever played. All aspects of the presentation are spot-on and I've never before seen the English countryside so accurately represented in interactive digital form. It's one of my favorite settings and EGTTR absolutely nailed it. The attention to detail in the environments is just staggering. From the gardens and exterior of the houses, to the road markings and signs, to the clutter of garages and lived-in interiors, it all feels extremely realistic. Everything is placed with a purpose and there's quite a bit of story to be gleaned from observing the environment with a keen eye.
Effect-wise the game also delivers. Made in CryEngine, it boasts a lot of eye candy that it uses to full effect. The atmospheric and lighting effects really sells the countryside vibe and the detailed and (quite) high resolution textures look great. Yaughton feels like a real place.

The voice acting is superb. The actors cover a range of british dialects and the interactions between characters in conversations are very believable. I'd say this is probably the strongest point of the game, fitting enough for a voice focused narratively driven game, as I was completely sold on these characters thanks to the great emotional range and general acting talent of the voice actors.
Sound design is great. The wind in the trees, the chirping birds, the player character's footsteps, the rumbling light orb. It's just great.
The soundtrack deserves special mention. It is absolutely fantastic. It's melancholy, beautiful and haunting. It mostly takes a back seat and sets the mood, but swells up during important moments. The pieces draws on a variety of styles, but the choral arrangements are probably the most powerful for me.

By the end, these elements all come together to create an uneasy mood that had me on edge for the entire last chapter of the game. The mood was very well crafted. Mission accomplished.

Controls
The controls are as simple as they come. Playing with a controller, you use the analog sticks to move and look around, A or X/Cross to interact, LT or L2 to activate manual story segments and RT or R2 to "make haste." You can't run or jump, but RT/R2 makes you gradually walk slightly faster, which is nice for the longer stretches of road.
You can invert the Y-axis, but be aware that this also inverts Y for mouse control as well.

Value for money
This is a recurring topic when discussing walking simulators. Due that lack of "game" in these titles, the price point is under a lot more scrutiny than other games. I got it at -50 % for $10, which I found to be a fair asking price for the amount of care that had gone into the creation of the world, its sound design and the story, but anything more than that is too much for the amount of content it offers.
Get it on sale.

Summary
All in all, this is an excellent walking simulator. If you like walking simulators and are looking for a relaxing and intriguing experience, look no further.
It might not be everone's cup of tea, but that's totally fine. Just be aware of what you're buying and don't complain afterwards if you feel understimulated. This is a purebred walking sim, after all.

Damn shame this one ngl, there's a really good 2-3 hour game here but the walking speed being set to fuckin 0.5% and half the PS trophies being "stand still for 5 minutes lol" make the whole game feel like a waste of time.

The story was genuinely interesting and the map is very well crafted, if I was able to move around it at human speed I'd have had a wonderful time exploring, but playing as what I assume was a 200lb camera being pushed around by a small child made it feel more like reading a picture book on a tablet with shitty internet.

It seriously takes almost a full minute to get from the front door of a house down the yard and across the road, bro has a fucking 3 hour commute to his shop half a mile away.
Anyway I'm sure everyone is as bored of walking-speed rants/complaints as they were being let down by what should've been a much better game.

Thanks for reading if you did, sorry for the moan but it's gone 4am now and this game would've been twice as good were it half as slow. Can't wait to speedrun it again tomorrow for the platinum! :D

Hope you all have a lovely December, hopefully I'll have a proper review before it's over but brief thoughts for now: Persona 5 Tactica was great, much better story than expected. Jedi Survivor has been really good so far, Ace Attorney isn't as good as TGAA was but it's a joy and Maya is 😌

Walking simulators are something I really enjoy as they can focus mostly on the story, characters, and atmosphere. Sadly, it's also a big gamble as sometimes the story can be great, but the gameplay is awful or the story is awesome, but the ending sucks and pretty much makes the entire experience not worthwhile. The Chinese Room is notorious for its walking simulators, being almost exactly that, and this game is a spiritual successor to Dear Esther which looked great but was forgettable.

The game puts you in a small rural British town of Shropshire where there doesn't seem to be anyone around. All you know is to follow a ball of light floating around and it guides you around the town to activate cut scenes of the main characters talking about what happened at that moment. You will see the aftermath such as a wrecked car, a turned-over box, bloody rags, etc. There are no actual character models as they are just whisps of light in the shape of people acting things out on screen. This can make the game aggravating to play and pay attention to. A game with literally zero gameplay outside of an action button, and doesn't have any characters on screen better be damn good right?

As you walk around and follow the ball of light you will sometimes hear a numbers station playing on a radio or a telephone ring. These are extra tidbits of stories you can listen to. Each part of the town focuses on a specific character, but sadly I was often lost as to who was what as there were no faces to put to any of the voices. Once you see a cutscene play out your ball of light will stop and wait, sometimes. There were quite a few glitches in the game in which the ball of light would get stuck in the ground, not continue on, or just disappear somewhere never to be found. I had to restart the game to get the ball back on track.

Major cutscenes that actually advance the story are triggered by grabbing a ball of light and moving it left and right until it explodes. This was originally an excuse to use the then-new DualShock 4 touchpad. Here it's just a mouse drag and feels pointless. You know you are done with an area when you get a ball of exploding light that takes a few seconds to trigger. After this cutscene, the area goes dark and you follow a trail of lights on the ground to the next area. This is all there is to the game. It's pretty to look at, even today. The game uses CryEngine so it looks awesome and holds up well, but it's still forgettable. There's nothing memorable about a realistic-looking generic old English rural town.

I did eventually get into the story towards the end. However, the game just ends on a pretentious note and I felt deflated and annoyed. I really hate endings like this. This was four hours I will never get back and I won't take anything away from this game at all. No interesting gameplay, no memorable visuals, and no exciting story. The voice acting is great, but that's about it.

Sadly, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a game I've avoided for a decade and there's a reason for that. I knew that this game would be very forgettable and a waste of time. I enjoyed the idea of this strange apocalyptic infection that's passed around through phone and radio waves, but there's no pay-off in the end. That also doesn't take into account the aggravatingly slow walking pace that most people won't be able to put up with. Even if it was two times faster it would be more tolerable. It feels like you're crawling. That would be fine if there were more visuals to look at but there aren't.

I just realized that "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" was made by the same people who made "Amnesia : but this time, with pigs".

... which explains a lot.

So this isn't a review of "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture", because that game was mind numbing in that essentially the plot took place before the game starts, absolutely nothing you do has any actual consequence, and even in the end there really aren't any 'answers' of any sort.

Instead this is a review of the grocery list my girlfriend sent me last night, because walking through Aldi was about as interesting and significant in my life.

The list, as copied from a text message:
Mouth wash
Dish soap
Toothbrush
Plastic spoons
Tortillas
Bananas
Grapes
Strawberries
Easy Mac
Milk
Brisk
Fish
Gridlock
Potato puffs
Chicken breasts
Porn tenderloin
Frozen breakfast sandwiches


Not a horrible little list but it does have one standout item. "Porn tenderloin". Autocorrect is just an incredible feature.
Otherwise my girlfriend tends to write lists without much thought or planning. There's chicken breasts listed, but for what purpose? Is there a meal planned? Do we not need any other ingredients to go with that meal? I grabbed green beans and some rice, as well. I'll probably make a honey chicken with green beans and rice for dinner tonight.

That was a better narrative than "Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" because I had a choice to make. There was a piece of information that felt like it lacked substance and context, and another piece of information that existed in a semi-humorous manner.
Take notes, The Chinese Room


Also, did you notice? I lied. This actually WAS a review of the game. What a dramatic twist!