![]() Then, as you start to realize what you are playing, the effect wears off, and it becomes an exercise in examining every object in each room until you find the one (usually a note) that triggers an audio recording. The first twenty minutes or so of the game, it feels pretty creepy. Gone Home makes a pretty good first impression. Seriously - I have seen more compelling stories on MTV. It turns into an emo teenage love story with all the appeal of a sixteen year old's Facebook wall. It starts off as what looks like an intriguing haunted house story. The much ballyhooed story is a lame bait-and-switch. The game's exploration and level of interactivity are piss poor, if not nonexistent. It lasts about two hours, which is about an hour and 45 minutes too long. I bought it on sale for 66% off and it wasn't even worth it then. Gone Home is a short experience that is worth nowhere near the $20 price tag that it carries on Steam. I find it unfathomable that anybody over the age of about 15 could find the story in this game to be deep, complex, or endearing. Absolutely, totally baffled by the critical reception that this game has received. It’s games like this that will take the medium out of the artistic ghetto and get people of all ages and sexes in on the conversation.I am baffled. It’s not mind-blowing, but it’s an experience that gamers should be open to. Gone Home is more akin to a realist short-story than the bombastic sci-fi, horror, or action that we expect from games. It speaks volumes about gaming norms that it’s a big deal to create a non-violent game set in the first person perspective. Gone Home is a game defined as much by what it isn’t as what it is. In fact, Gone Home became more enjoyable once I was firmly rooted in the world and no longer waiting for it’s gamey-ness to pop out of nowhere. Nothing especially “exciting” happens, but you’ll become immersed in the game’s world nonetheless. Little touches - like a recordable VHS tape with “ The Dark Crystal ” scrawled across it, SNES games, novels, magazines and cassette tapes that you can listen to in the stereo - create a huge nostalgia trip for anyone who grew up in the ’90s. You’re able to pick up and examine just about anything in the house. Gone Home takes a mundane environment and makes it interesting without resorting to cheap thrills. The whole thing is wrapped up in a couple hours without any zombies, government conspiracies or secret cults in the basement. The subject matter is handled with an understated realism and never becomes melodramatic. Depending on how much you explore, you find that your parents’ paper trails have their own stories to tell. Most of what you find centers around your younger sister’s realization that she’s homosexual and the hardships she faces due to this. It’s all stuff that would be found in a typical house, yet it gives a window into each family member’s life and personal trials. Instead you explore the house, finding a host of texts: diaries, notes from school, letters. You’re never transported into the realm of phantasms or ultra-violence. The environment is indeed oppressive, but Gone Home sets you up to think it’s a typical video game only to drive home the point that it’s not. You’re roaming around a dark house on a rainy night in a video game what else could possibly happen? As I shuffled through drawers, reading old mail to try to figure out what happened to Kaitlin’s family I was even baited with notes about her little sister looking for ghosts. Having not read anything about Gone Home prior to playing, my immediate impressions told me things might get spooky. Instead of a warm welcome, you find your family’s large house empty and disheveled. Set in ’90s suburbia you play as Kaitlin, a 20-something girl who has just returned home from a year abroad. Gone Home defies the expectations of a first-person gaming experience. Yet games largely remain violent power-fantasies. New hardware allows for believable environments, dynamic characters, and persistent online worlds. The only feasible way to make a playable video game was to base it on destruction.įlash forward a few decades. Back then destroying an enemy meant freeing up the memory for another to appear. We play “first-person- shooters,” not “first-person-games.” This expectation of violence can be linked back to memory limitations in the earliest video games. In this way, games are limited by their own definition. There’s a certain discordance struck when an otherwise-relatable protagonist spends the majority of his time committing unspeakably violent acts. Bioshock Infinite may bend your mind with its multiverse plot, but it doesn’t change the fact that the majority of the game’s fun revolves around mass murder. Modern games, no matter how thought-provoking and emotionally complex, are often limited by the tropes of mainstream gaming.
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