Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture excels at building a dense world, evocative tone, and rich cast of characters. Its five hours are filled with some really great exploration, discovery, and memorable moments. Piecing together its web of heartbreak, loss, and ultimate revelation provides a great experience. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture rewarded my patience with a fulfilling journey.

The studio behind Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs have achieved audiovisual and narrative excellence with their latest adventure.

As the game continues to pull these wonderful tricks of staging, the world of things that The Chinese Room has created settles into a more comfortable balance with the game's other elements, giving ground when needed to the human - and the inhuman - drama that's unfolding. Counter to my own expectations, this is not a particularly complex story to follow, but it is told with a wonderful assurance and a disciplined eye.

A leisurely stroll through a beautiful apocalypse. Rapture is stirring and heartfelt, but may be too slow and hands-off for some.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture contains astounding humanity beneath its flaws

An exceptional story, told via one of the most vivid game worlds around.

Eavesdropping on the echoes of the village's former residents is worthwhile, but the overarching mystery leaves a pretentious aftertaste

Rapture's biggest weakness is bigger still, because those who are put off more thorough exploration will get less out of it than others. Some players will reach the end without knowing half the story. But maybe that's okay. You get as much as you put in, after all, and the variety in experiences will give people something to talk about.

"Everybody's Gone to the Rapture" is an ambitious game that is fundamentally about the acceptance of death. It shows how video games can tap into the ordinary without unwieldy mechanics (I'm looking at you "Heavy Rain"). Though It doesn't offer the intellectual workout of another first-person perspective, story-first game such as "The Old City: Leviathan" it is the best scored, most accessible argument for how video games can prosper as narrative sandboxes.

The best way I can think to sum up this feeling is to say I enjoyed Everybody's Gone To The Rapture far more on PS4 and that was because after the first chapter I lay on the sofa watching and listening and luxuriating while my companion dealt with the controls.