Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (PS4) Review

Everybody’s gone to Rapture… but sadly not everyone will like it.

As the essence of videogames grow and storytelling takes on more mature subject matters and issues, we see an abundance of games that are learning to pull on people’s hearts strings. Add Everybodys gone to Rapture to that list. It’s heavy handed in dialog, exposition, and exploration. If you’re expecting anything else you’ll be sorely disappointed.

The players begins the game, in this peaceful looking town. Immediately it’s apparent that not everything is as it seems. Weird radio signals citing numbers, TVs that display fuzz and skewed images, and the starkest contrast, not a living person walking around. Players see cars with blinkers on, cigarettes with smoke still coming from them, and toys just lying in yards as if the kids were only just there playing with them moments before. What happened in this town and the chaos that ensued is the biggest and strongest element going for the game outside of its visuals.

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MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: PS4
Price I’d Pay: $5.00
Multiplayer: NA
How long to beat: 3-6 hours

The game is played from a first person perspective and everything comes to life with its vibrant colors and well done design. Everything looks as expected from a small village or city. The sun beams down over the city, sometimes the time of day changes casting a somber dusk glow. While it’s amazing that the game conveys such strong sense of character in its city via its visual aspects, it’s a good thing because everything else is fairly static. There is an odd sense of creepiness and uncomfortably that comes with exploring a town, just walking into someone’s house and exploring their homes. The player feels like an intruder at times, encroaching upon someone else’s life and it’s an odd feeling.

Gameplay is as simple as that though. Players explore the town and surrounding area, following these mysterious balls of lights, and see events transpire via memories of light and then listen in on past events of the town as one tries to piece together the clues. Was it a flu? Was it religious intervention? Or more? That’s left up to the player to discover, but it’s not exactly clear cut either. Otherwise this is all the gameplay that transpires the entire duration of play, which is anywhere from three to six hours. Players take on the role of an observer of things that have passed, observing, and little more.

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Everyone’s gone to Rapture is a monumental disappointment to me. I’ve enjoyed other games that go for a strong narrative exposition and minor gameplay but here it’s just too little, too late. The world design is beautiful, the OST is absolutely amazing, and the voice work leads way to some heavy emotional scenes.

When a game goes above and beyond to deliver an exceptionally well thought out and designed world, it’s breathtaking and amazing, but when the actually gameplay is so dull, so methodical, so repetitious with no variation whatsoever, it’s puts an extremely strong blunder on what could have been an amazing play through. Instead you’re simply moving forward, hoping to initiate a new dialog scene for what feels like the 100th time and your left with only a half amazing experience, a success and a fail.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.

Good
  • Beautiful graphics
  • Fantastic OST
  • Great Voice work
Bad
  • Repetition
  • Slow walking/running
  • Goes on longer than it should
  • No replay value whatsoever
  • Poor framerate at times
  • Terrible save system
5
Mediocre
Written by
Justin is a long time passionate fan of games, not gaming drama. He loves anything horror related, archaeology inspired adventures, RPG goodness, Dr Pepper, and of course his family. When it comes to crunch time, he is a beast, yet rabies free we promise.