The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. I've been looking at and waiting for that game since it was first announced, almost two years ago. No real news spawned the net, nothing on the story but a glimpse of the very premise of the game itself: a detective with paranormal abilities receives a letter from a boy, E. C., asking for Paul's (Prospero, the detective) help. Feeling the boy's in grave danger, Prospero starts his journey at Red Creek Valley. After that introduction, I gotta say that TVoEC is one of the best FPExperience (FPE/X) ever. Gone Home is tremendous; Dear Esther is surreal.. each one in a very good way.. but TVoEC is both. The Astronauts have made what no-one else have tried and that is recreating the real-world in a game: using Photogrammetry, a recent "photosynth-technique", they applied to 3d models scanned and processed images taken from real-world places. Everything. Grass, trees, roads, rocks, facials, buildings' textures.. and the result is an organic, living world. You literally walk through the places and almost feel like being there for real. There's something so natural to everything.. the amount of details is impressive also; with all settings maxed out, you could take a screenshot and send it to someone telling it that that is a place you visited last summer.. and it will surely ask you: where's that? I'd like to go there too. All of that is built upon a ten years old engine, that is UE3, of course. Artistically, the game is unique in that no fantasy/sci-fi overused theme are exposed but an ultra-realistic, almost surreal in some segments, one. The audio compartment is above the standard. Not much for quality, rather for the integration with the world itself: no excessive sound effects, just as nature would sound like; the music is phenomenal, I mean, it really captures the essence of the game and gives even more ambience. Gameplay-wise, you have the whole place(s) to explore, without following any particular order; some sections require you to gather clues to solve murders; others are a bit more puzzling but not excessively, at all. No weapons to be used nor monsters to fight. If FPE/X (Gone Home, Dear Esther) are your type and you don't mind a journey/experience (also) of the mind with gorgeous visuals, captivating story with mystery and solving cases, than The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is for you. Overall: Graphic: 9 Art: 9 Sound: 7 Music: 9 Gameplay: 8 Replay value: 7 Uniqueness: 9 Partial: 8.3

I like the music and the graphics of the game -- the first being both decent and compelling, the latter just really, really beautiful. There are, however, a few things that make me only reate this game 3 stars. First of those is the duration. I am really getting sick of all those games being finished after less then 7 hours (it were a little more than 5 here, and I really dove into the environment...), basically the game ends where it should start. Second, savegames: Only at specific points when certain parts of a "mystery" have been solved? Really? Come on, when I need to quit playing I want to be able to quit playing! This is a no go. Finally: The game does not have a complex AI system, no enemies, no combatting. Just puzzles. And from a game that is reduced to that level I am very disappointed in the level of story deepness, evolving events. No character development (there are not really many characters...). All in all: Too flat and too short. Seems to be common those days esp. for the flood of indy games flushing the market.

Could have been a great game. But if you miss the TINIEST thing, the end won't work. The story just continues and you will not know what you have missed until the end - in my case even not then. I had no idea what I could have missed. Had to look up the solutions in the web and even that didn't help. I had to watch the end scene on youtube which was frustrating as hell. The formerly awesome athmosphere got killed successfully by the missing clues.

(From steam copy of game) As a tech demo, it's gorgeous. As a video game, it won't grab you as much. It took me 4 hours to do everything you can do in the game, and that wasn't a great number of things. There are a few kinds of puzzles but they are all pretty simple, the main one being reconstructions of past events. You move around looking for clues in an area, then once you've found them all you have to figure out what order each clue "happened" in. It's a very interesting premise for detective-style gameplay but really, it never goes beyond that. No, "narrative" is not an excuse. It's become such a buzzword now that anyone will use it as an excuse for a game not having gameplay or a good hook. Just like "experience". How about this one? "Talentless". To clarify, this DOES have gameplay, I just wish they'd developed the ideas further. Maybe in a sequel?

I really loved playing adventure games in high school and was really looking forward to the game. I liked the story, the mystical elements but, my gosh trying to save the game is so difficult. In order to save, you need to solve all the puzzles in the scene. The problem with this is that you have to find every detail in the scene and restore the crime scene in order to save. The game is gorgeous and gives you a feeling to take your time and examine your surroundings, but it is hard to do because I'm worried about something happening, the game crashes and I lose my progress. The puzzles are not to bad, but there is some weird logical areas. In the first screenshot on this website, it features a train with the words blood on it. When you first get to this train those words do not appear yet it is clear that there is a lot of blood on it. You have to examine a whole bunch of other stuff before you can even get it to light up. Normally this wouldn't bother me that much, but it goes back to the fact that you have to solve everything before you can save. I understand there is no hand holding but there were a few times where I had to look up a walk through, not because I was stuck, but because I was running out of time to play and had to save. If you have the time to sit for long periods playing the game, it is still worth playing. If you are someone like me who is limited on time but like adventure games, this wouldn't be a good choice just because of the way saving works. It is clear that the developer is well aware of the saving issue and I hope they take that into major consideration the next time they make a game.