My hot take on the new exploration game Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture: It is ultra super good-looking.
I picked up The Chinese Room’s latest game (currently only available on PS4) last night on the recommendation of Kotaku critic-at-large Chris Suellentrop, who reviewed it for us and liked it. I’m still early in the game and don’t yet know why, or even if, Everybody Went To The Rapture. But I can say for certain that this game looks very nice.
I’ve been capturing some clips that mostly amount to “me walking up to a thing and then standing still.” You don’t do that much in this game, you mostly just walk around an English country town, explore, and listen to talking balls of light as they shed… er, light on what happened and why no one’s around.
But if the point of a game is to walk around and take in the sights, would that more games could feature sights this lovely.
For all its tranquil arboreal splendor, Rapture also does a good job of depicting weird etheric light bouncing off of everyday foyers:
As for the game itself: I’m digging it so far, but I do particularly enjoy this kind of “Mysterious EVENT leads to empty town/woman is reading cryptic numbers on the radio/what the hell happened here?” kinda deal.
I also like games that capture even a fleeting digital glimpse of nature’s beauty, though in Rapture’s case that beauty is colored by emptiness and an ominous, quiet doom. (I’ll have a more complete notion of the game once I’m finished, of course.)
And to people who might complain that Rapture is just a “walking simulator” with no meaningful interactions, I present the following:
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