When I first learnt about this game, I thought it was tied in with the Bioshock series somehow, but it turns out the game is all about delivering a story first and foremost, a story set amongst an idyllic English town where everything is perfect and not perfect at the same time.

As you start the game, you have no concept of who you are, where you are or what is going on and the only noise you can hear is the crackle of a radio in a guard shed near the gates to an observatory. This is the grand idea of the game, that at no point are you in control of things, you are just an observer moving about the place. The citizens of this town are nowhere to be found, yet there are traces of them everywhere, food left on tables, bandages in the kitchen and bbq’s smoking out back, these elements explain who these people were, what their lives where like before the incident.

As you move around the world, you will hear phones ringing and the crackle of the radios, which will help fill in elements of the story, but the bulk of what you will come to know, is obtained by following the ball of light around, because as you do shadows made of light will appear and they take the form of people from the town, Jeremy the local priest, Wendy the woman who likes to meddle and Frank the gruff outsider who does care. These people are the most interesting characters that I have seen in gaming in a while, but the more astounding part is you will never see them, only hear them.

At no point during the game will you ever see anyone from the town, only their echoes that the ball of light brings forth, which is very appreciated as you can think to yourself just who might these people be. But it is also assisted by another facet of the visuals, the town and surrounding country side, they are simply stunning, each house you enter, each car you pass, even the playground near the local camp site, all show signs of being real items, scratched wood and chipped paint, curtains blowing in a breeze and the occasional storm all feel right for the world.

The ball of light is not just something you are seeing, the world reacts to it as well, shadows will extend as the light moves around the world, it leaves behind a vapor trail of sorts that warps the world around it, distorting it as light would. It also has this crackle of noise as it moves around, it’s hard to describe but you will always know when its near you from that sound. The rest of the world is almost soundless, there are moments of stunning aural grandeur as the music kicks in, but it’s in the moments of conversation where the people go about their lives, where the game feels more natural. In the silence as you move around the world, the aspects of sound tend to feel muted, helping drive a sense of isolation.

For all that is wonderful about the presentation, the game is boring, for lack of a better word, each of the elements the game has, should in theory work really well together, but the problem is that it just doesn’t, there are very few moments where I felt a sense of purpose to what I was doing. There are key moments for you to experience, but you can actually miss a lot of the game as it does nothing to prod you in any direction, except to follow the ball of light. When you are not listening to conversations there is almost nothing to do in the world, you can’t jump, open a lot of doors or interact with a lot of items, the ability to run was not something I discovered until over 4 hours in.

Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture is a game of amazing potential and a cool story idea, but the lack of anything connecting the sections together means the game drags on longer than it really needs to. The fact that you can’t interact with the world at will, also dampens your enjoyment of what is a wonderfully created world. 

Thanks to PlayStation Australia for supplying the game for review