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Gone Home
When Kaitlin Greenbriar arrives on the doorstep of her family's new home the last thing she expects is the place to be deserted and a hastily scrawled note from her sister on the door telling her not to investigate her absence. Kaitlin has been travelling abroad so the sprawling Oregon mansion to which she arrives is not only seemingly deserted but completely unfamiliar to her as well. With the clocking ticking past 1am and a storm raging outside, Kaitlin enters the house and starts to uncover its secrets.
Gone Home is described as an "interactive exploration simulator" which is basically a nice way of saying that you wander around rooting through other people's belongings without fear of getting attacked or arrested. I quite enjoyed "Dear Esther" so I was eager to see what Gone Home had to offer. The game is set in the mid 90s so the nostalgia factor is quite big or at least it was for me. Seeing Kurt Cobain staring back from the cover of a magazine, discovering Street Fighter 2 moves scribbled on a piece of paper and checking out the VHS tape collection in the game brought back a flood of memories. The game also played havoc with my expectations. The sprawling mansion with its flickering lights and eerie atmosphere made it seem like a ghost or zombie could pop up at any second to interrupt my rummaging. The only thing I found haunting the place however was the very real struggles of the absent occupants. Kaitlin's father is a published author that has been reduced to writing reviews for an AV magazine while her mother works as a nature conservationist and might be having an affair. Then there is her younger sister Sam who is very much the star of the game. By reading the private notes and messages that has been carelessly left lying around you slowly start to piece together a story that will draw you into the life of this teenager. From her struggles to fit in at a new school to her blossoming friendship with a girl named Lonnie, every room reveals a new piece in the puzzle. You also get to hear voiced journal entries from Sam that is directed at her sister Kate and the voice acting for these are superb. The actress really managed to inject a lot of passion and emotion into these entries and you will want to see the tale through to its conclusion. I actually approached the final moments of the game with a sense of dread but that is all I will say about that. From a gameplay perspective the game is rather mundane as all you do is open drawers and cupboards while wandering around switching on lights. Objects can be picked up and examined but very few yield any useful information. In this game a banana you find in the fridge is just that, an ordinary banana. The real revelations come from the notes that are handwritten and scanned in for a very authentic look. Sam's story is told quite clearly but the other tales in the house are equally fascinating. While the house is enormous with plenty of rooms and quite a few secrets, progress is fairly linear and there are no real puzzles. Just when you think you have seen everything a new note might point you towards a secret area or a key might unlock a door to a new room but overall the experience is over in less than three hours. The creepy atmosphere that the game exudes might leave some players disappointed as it constantly feels like there is a build-up to something dramatic happening. I don't want to spoil anything but suffice to say the focus of the game is purely on exploration and not much more. The game runs on the Unity engine and visuals are pretty decent with an admirable amount of detail on the everyday objects that you can examine. The audio is good with an atmospheric thunderstorm raging in the background and mixed taps featuring the likes of Heavens to Betsy or Bratmobile that can be found. Ultimately Gone Home is game that is going to divide opinions and face the usually accusations of "is it even a game" considering its focus. It provides some interesting narrative threads and while I enjoyed the experience I can't say that it moved me as much as it did other people. I can appreciate what has been done and the way it cleverly subverts common genre tropes but I think that there is going to be quite a few players that might feel that they have been misled. The bottom line is if you expect chills and thrills this is not the game for you but if you want to experience a very human drama and peek into the lives of ordinary people facing their inner demons then you will appreciate what The Fullbright Company has accomplished.
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System Requirements
TAGS: Gone Home, Kaitlin, Samantha, Lonnie,
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