Playstation 4 #3: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

Developer: Chinese Room Ltd.

Publisher: Sony

Release Date:  8-11-2015

The name and title screen really don't have any relation to the game itself

 Never have I played a game more cowardly than Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. It tries to be a profound look at human nature, but the developers were too afraid to commit to anything real that would give the game true meaning. The game starts after the story’s end, takes all the people out of the picture, and gets rid of practically all gameplay elements. What this creates is a game almost impossible to connect to. There’s just so much nothing in this game. The fact that this game garnered so many positive reviews really show how desperate people in the gamer community are to elevate their hobby into the realm of art. People are so desperate for this type of validation that they will latch on to anything that even has a hint of deeper meaning. However, just because something is sad and ambiguous doesn’t make in meaningful. Sometimes a sad, boring game is just a sad, boring game. If the developers had any courage, they could’ve used similar themes and put them into an engaging game. Instead, they take the most basic themes of alienation and loss and decide to do nothing with them. Or rather, they make the player do nothing with them.

Hey, look it's some paint cans

 So the game goes like this. The world has ended and everybody is seemingly dead. It’s your job playing as a being of pure plot device to find out what happened. Spoiler alert: they did not go to the rapture. You do this by walking very slowly through the most boring-looking small town in all of England. It’s the kind of town where everybody has the same tv, microwave, radio, and garage full of paint cans. I know this because I looked in all those houses. It’s important to the game to walk through as many houses as possible. And yet, they are all basically the same. It’s another case of the developers being to afraid to actually give their game personality. Why should they make anything unique or interesting? I’ve seen plenty of garages in my life, and none of them looked much the same. Yet in this fictional setting where your only task is to slowly wander through houses everything is completely devoid of personality. If you want us to connect with the people in your story you have to make them seem like actual people. The graphics are used to make everything looks as real as possible, but it felt more artificial than even the most cartoony game. They work so hard to make it all look real and then spoil the illusion by replicating the same objects over and over again. Now I know practically every game reuses sprites and images more than once. The big different here is that there’s nothing but empty fields and bland houses to look at. It’s not just background sprites. It’s the whole game.

 

My least favorite part, though, is just how impersonal this game is. You collect clues by following a swoosh of light all over the map. You could really do nothing else in the game except follow the swoosh but exploring everywhere will give you even more details. When you get to certain spots you will hear the characters talking without ever being able to see them. Not only is this a lazy way to get out of having to animate any actual people but it makes connecting with the characters difficult. They never seem like more than flashes of light in an empty universe.

 

 

I felt pretty empty at the end of this one. It’s a game where you do nothing, connect to nobody, and come out of the experience with no further insights. All you do is follow the bouncing spirit and look at paint cans. My favorite part of the whole game was finally stumbling across the paint store. That’s not a good look. So once again we have a game that’s going to go below Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. At least that game was only thirty minutes and had a little action. I hope I stop getting games worse than Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots because I am sure getting tired of typing out that name. So Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture just barely makes it into my top 100, and I am very excited that I now have a top 100. It’s been a lot of purple and red lately on the ol’ list so hopefully I will play a good game again soon. I just never know how things are going to turn out when I follow my whims. Perhaps I just don’t have very good whims these days. Oh well.

Playstation 4 Quality Percentage: 0/3

(images are from mobygames.com)