What is the rapture? Why do we care about these Shropshire citizens? What can be gleaned by just listening to audible dialogue? Everybody's Gone to the Rapture leaves the answers to these questions in a squeamishly frigid state. This discernible walking simulator sticks wholeheartedly to walking and discovering that it fails to find its bite. There's no shortage of articulate landscapes to admire, Britishness to unearth or eighties iconography to pick out, but you'll be unable to find any credible reason to do any of this beyond the superficial tendencies to find everything to assemble a still-distorted image of what happened to these people. Respectfully, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a lovely, different and considerately composed several hours, yet doesn't fill those hours with memorability, leaving it feeling hollow and perhaps a little dull.
The story in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is unearthed as you walk slowly around the desolate area of Yaughton. Streaming balls of energy zip around, sometimes morphing into traceable individuals interacting with each other in a golden hue and otherwise are provoked using the gyroscopic PS4 sensors, exploding with important exposition pertaining to the main characters Stephen and his wife Katherine. Static radios blurt out eerie number sequences for you to touch so you can listen to Katherine's discoveries and thoughts, ringing telephones in the classic red booths can be engaged with, shedding insight on the spirits of the locals and expanding your realisation of the sense of urgency from the town folk, gathering a gradually peeling narrative, one you'll be more audibly in touch with than anything else.
To give Everybody's Gone to the Rapture its due, it creates a sense of panic and urgency on a communal scale that hoists its storytelling up from the doldrums of being another me-too walking simulator. Meetings hosted in town halls, the irrational behaviours of the church people, and the edginess of family relationships pulls you into the fear of the unknown and struggle to divert the inevitable rapture that'll engulf them all. For such a peaceful rural area, there's a ravaging consumption of unease you'll see rendered throughout, as captivating as it is melancholic.
The story in Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is unearthed as you walk slowly around the desolate area of Yaughton. Streaming balls of energy zip around, sometimes morphing into traceable individuals interacting with each other in a golden hue and otherwise are provoked using the gyroscopic PS4 sensors, exploding with important exposition pertaining to the main characters Stephen and his wife Katherine. Static radios blurt out eerie number sequences for you to touch so you can listen to Katherine's discoveries and thoughts, ringing telephones in the classic red booths can be engaged with, shedding insight on the spirits of the locals and expanding your realisation of the sense of urgency from the town folk, gathering a gradually peeling narrative, one you'll be more audibly in touch with than anything else.
To give Everybody's Gone to the Rapture its due, it creates a sense of panic and urgency on a communal scale that hoists its storytelling up from the doldrums of being another me-too walking simulator. Meetings hosted in town halls, the irrational behaviours of the church people, and the edginess of family relationships pulls you into the fear of the unknown and struggle to divert the inevitable rapture that'll engulf them all. For such a peaceful rural area, there's a ravaging consumption of unease you'll see rendered throughout, as captivating as it is melancholic.
The same attention to detail won't be excavated from the game you play, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a simulacrum of more active and compelling examples of its genre. The irritable pace aside, there's nothing satisfying about the hands-on core. You spend most of your time finding the stories of the subjects of its world, providing zero benefit to you as the player. Arguably the entire point of The Chinese Room's opus is to walk around and allow the story to be compiled bit by bit, but when there's very little input from the player, it becomes exhaustingly tedious.
Comparing the gameplay with the recently released The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on PS4, there is a severe lack of activity or challenge. Ethan Carter had you surveying environments to solve mysteries, and while it didn't much involve the protagonist too deeply in its world, gave enough intrigue and character for it to be a pretty darn good romp. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture however, is bereft of any meaningful engagement from its player to the point you're a mere spectator, which is quite apt as you don't even have a shadow or legs, making you seem like you're assuming the role of a levitating camera, a metaphorically voyeuristic entity peeping in on past events.
Thankfully the iconography and the brunt of its beauty almost rectifies its gameplay shortcomings. The sun sloshed decadence of Shropshire's tranquil streets and grasses remind you of the eighties in a deftly handled way. The two pubs feel homely once you're inside them, and are comforting even in the game's loneliness- must be all the steam lashed cigarettes dipped in the ash tray, or the standing and waiting bottles of wine and empty drinking glasses in the open, adjacent from the erect umbrellas. Other areas such as the caravan and industrial park feel antithetical as there are many caravans and locations where humanity once breathed, but the numbers mask the isolation of one soul moseying about lonesomely. Then there are the little things characterising the world such as the Rubik's Cubes you'll find left alone, and children's drawings in the treehouse, bringing to bear the innocence and nostalgia left over from the time period and how they link to the rapture in mournful ways.
Comparing the gameplay with the recently released The Vanishing of Ethan Carter on PS4, there is a severe lack of activity or challenge. Ethan Carter had you surveying environments to solve mysteries, and while it didn't much involve the protagonist too deeply in its world, gave enough intrigue and character for it to be a pretty darn good romp. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture however, is bereft of any meaningful engagement from its player to the point you're a mere spectator, which is quite apt as you don't even have a shadow or legs, making you seem like you're assuming the role of a levitating camera, a metaphorically voyeuristic entity peeping in on past events.
Thankfully the iconography and the brunt of its beauty almost rectifies its gameplay shortcomings. The sun sloshed decadence of Shropshire's tranquil streets and grasses remind you of the eighties in a deftly handled way. The two pubs feel homely once you're inside them, and are comforting even in the game's loneliness- must be all the steam lashed cigarettes dipped in the ash tray, or the standing and waiting bottles of wine and empty drinking glasses in the open, adjacent from the erect umbrellas. Other areas such as the caravan and industrial park feel antithetical as there are many caravans and locations where humanity once breathed, but the numbers mask the isolation of one soul moseying about lonesomely. Then there are the little things characterising the world such as the Rubik's Cubes you'll find left alone, and children's drawings in the treehouse, bringing to bear the innocence and nostalgia left over from the time period and how they link to the rapture in mournful ways.
The voice acting is stellar and the soundtrack is minimalist and conveyed well. You'll certainly feel like you're inhabiting a place once fettered with rural English folk, a lot of old people with manners and young people's narcissisms. The tunes are subtle but effective in drawing you into its world elegantly.
Recommending Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a difficult and tumultuous task. On the one side you have a world you've played before, one where you're always walking, discovering and doing little else, shielded from portraying a greater presence in the setting you're poking around in. The other side consists of an astonishingly detailed world, brimming with loss, isolation and beauty concocted to distinguish the ambience of the gameworld, with a unique time period and setting bolstering its appeal. For most, attempting to get to the bottom of the story is all it will take to convince you to take it all in, but when there are games out there that have done a superior job of making you feel like your existence mattered, and flexibly satisfying the player with a modicum of challenge, there's no excuse for such a primitively threadbare experience. Take it for what it is then, but be willing to sacrifice purpose for the sake of visual and audible splendidness.
Recommending Everybody's Gone to the Rapture is a difficult and tumultuous task. On the one side you have a world you've played before, one where you're always walking, discovering and doing little else, shielded from portraying a greater presence in the setting you're poking around in. The other side consists of an astonishingly detailed world, brimming with loss, isolation and beauty concocted to distinguish the ambience of the gameworld, with a unique time period and setting bolstering its appeal. For most, attempting to get to the bottom of the story is all it will take to convince you to take it all in, but when there are games out there that have done a superior job of making you feel like your existence mattered, and flexibly satisfying the player with a modicum of challenge, there's no excuse for such a primitively threadbare experience. Take it for what it is then, but be willing to sacrifice purpose for the sake of visual and audible splendidness.
STORY: 7/10
GAMEPLAY: 5/10
PRESENTATION: 8/10
LIFESPAN: 4/10
SCORE: 6/10
Idyllic and unique with its eloquent Shropshire setting, the promise is undercut by yawn-inducing walking-simulator gameplay.