The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

It's a short game, but you'll probably feel like it's taking too long. The story is interesting, even though you'll probable figure it out in the first ten minutes because it's not particularly original. I like the way it was told however. Visually is one of a kind. You'll find yourself watching at those beautiful landscape missing the fact that you cannot smell the fragrance of the nature. You won't find many games like this. On the downside it's pretty linear with little interaction and not much of a challenge. Navigating through the game is a bit tedious because the character move really slow and you may have to do some backtracking. The devs might have spent most of their time on the graphics, and you can see it, but the game is not particularly polished as it as a lot of issue you couldn't miss on a proper testing. You risk to remain stuck somewhere or miss an hint and even need to exit the game to fix the issue. The game sports one of the worst save system ever saw, I don't understand how the developers could have thought of that. The game for what it offer is overpriced, but still is a good experience I suggest you to try. I will totally looking forward to another game from this developer. Regionally priced (-1 star in the rating)

The "puzzles" are completely arbitrary. "Pixel hunting" cubed. A piece can be hidden in some obscure part of a 3d world or require a random sequence of actions to find. And before any fanboys claim I didn't get the mechanics, I'm not talking about finding the crank, I'm talking about finding the entrance to mines or the pickaxe in the mines. To find all the pieces, you either have to dump hours into the "game" simply walking around and trying random things, or you have to think the exact same way as the developers did. Usually, even with the most hardcore classic point-n-click games I didn't have to look at a walkthrough more than 3 times, and even then I usually saw that the puzzle could've been solved if I'd been more patient. This game has about 10 puzzles with 5 pieces each. Compared to classic point-n-click, that's almost nothing. I "solved" 4 of them and stopped playing on the 5th. 3 of them I solved myself, and only 2 of them didn't feel like complete random bullshit. One of those "puzzles" wasn't actually a puzzle, but it gave a piece of the story, so I count it as one. Another, the portal puzzle, I wouldn't even have figured out that it was a puzzle, let alone how to solve it, if I didn't look into a walkthrough. The last puzzle required me to enter the mines first, and as I said before, the entrance is well hidden, without any cue about its whereabouts or even that there is a hidden entrance. This problem is made worse by the distances in the game and how much you need to walk around. Never have I wished so much for a "toggle run" button in a game that doesn't have it. The game looks pretty though. It is slow and sluggish, but pretty. If you like walking simulators, it is definitely one, and apparently a good one. No idea what attracts some people to walking simulators in the first place, but a lot of those people apparently rate this game highly.

The title pretty much sums up my thoughts on this game - it's average, mediocre, bland. Yeah it has nice visuals but that's where the good things end in my opinion. First of all the game is short. Would have been even shorter if not for slow animations, slow movement, long distances to travel etc. The story isn't really good nor engaging, there's no suspense (it's supposed to be a thriller, really ?). I thought discovering the mystery would be somewhat satisfying but it's not. There was no time to connect with any of the characters presented in the game. It's like 15 minutes of story and the rest is walking. There are barely any mechanics in the game. The game is barely interactive. I know, it's supposed to be that way but god damn even TellTale games have more stuff to do. You just can't get immersed in world that you can't interact with for the most part. Maybe it's not my cup of tea but this game isn't much of game. It's more of a minimally interactive movie. I had fun with The Walking Dead. I was bored playing this game.

I have to give them this. From the first minute this game had me inrtigued. Though there's an "intro" sequence, it's already interactive, you're being dropped in the middle of the action right away... In the middle of the adventure, so to speak. The game consists of puzzles which can usually be solved by hunt around for clues and then watching a scene play out. Simple, but kind of pixel-hunty. Exploration is mandatory then. Oh, and if you quit the game, you'll probably have to do some of it all over again, since the game only has autosave. Only after certain events occur in the plot. Let me repeat it: An exploration based game only saves when the plot advances. This is utter madness. That said, this is one of the smoothest running games I've came across. While tellate batman stutters and cuts into an uplayable mess due to terrible programming, this semi-open world game just sails on beautifully.

I did not enjoy this very much. The story did not interest me and the beautifully rendered environment only frustrated me, because you can't interact with it in any interesting way. The only gameplay this has is a few very simple and repetitive puzzles. I can appreciate that they tried to do something new and it's apparent how much work must have gone into it but I really hope this is not the future of gameing.