1. ALgendaryKiwi

   Aug 16, 2013

   10

   I don't usually give games a 10. In fact, there are only 2 other games that I would consider to be perfect 10s: the original portal and pacman ce dx. Those aren't necessarily the best games I've played, but they are the most perfect, if that makes sense. And that is a word that I would use to describe Gone Home: perfect. It is a game purely comprised of exploration and discovery, with virtually no other gameplay components with the exception of some very simplistic puzzles. And yet, Gone Home manages to make seemingly mundane exploration into some of the most engaging and emotional storytelling I have ever seen. Gone Home will be remembered for its brilliant design and execution, but also as a game that bravely led the charge in addressing contemporary social issues that have not as of yet found much representation in the medium.
   This game is not for everyone. If all you play are shooters and fast paced action games, then Gone Home will bore you. However, if you like slower games or games with interesting ways of telling stories, such as Journey, Heavy Rain, Dear Esther, or even mods like The Stanley Parable, than Gone home is certain to grab you and not let go for its 3 hour duration.… Expand

   • 56 of 164 users found this helpful
2. AuldWolf

   Aug 30, 2013

   10

   What's $20 worth, these days? I find that people have a weird evaluation of worth, in that if something uses operant conditioning trickery as opposed to being fun and engaging, and then sets before you a game of endless padding and grind with repetitious content, then that's going to be worth more than a good story. What is the worth of a good story? You can pay upwards of $20 for an audio book, with one author. That's actually a common price, these days. Just to have someone read one of your favourite stories to you, because you might have poor sight. So it'd be fair to say that a good story is worth at least $20, wouldn't it? The question is: Are you willing to pay $20 for a good story?
   
   People are going to go into this with expectations. Jump scares aplenty, they'll expect, and find none. One might find cheap, schlocky horror in the vein of Slenderman, yet one would find none. One might expect puzzles to be forced in there, akin to Myst, just so that it can uphold a degree of gameness, and they'd find none. So, could one appreciate a good story contained not within a book, but presented as an interactive medium? Or would they just see the empty casing of where a game could be and complain?
   
   Sadly, many have done the latter, and it is a pity that the experience was lost on them. This isn't a Dear Esther style game, either. You don't merely hold W so that you may watch and listen. No, this game invites you to explore, learn, and unravel. You enter into a dark house, with an eerily cloying atmosphere, you progress through chapters of the story with each room you light up, with hints and clues dropped into your lap as the tale comes together in your head. No Slendermen jump out at you, no kitsch puzzles are jury-rigged into the experience either.
   
   It is what it is. It's a good story. And perhaps more suited for those who read, to experience a good story told in a different medium, rather than those who only game.
   
   Is a good story worth $20? I think so. I really think so. You can grind through a game that lasts 60 hours, cringing through cutscenes with some dialogue which varies between awkwardly written and just plain bad. Gone Home doesn't represent a good game, but it is a fantastic interactive experience, one that will linger in your mind for years to come. You won't be playing stabby-stabby with guards, you won't be trying to figure out what this peculiar jigsaw piece is for, you'll simply be experiencing. Living a story through the eyes of others. And it is a sublime experience.
   
   You've paid $60 for a bad story before. I know you have, because I know I have.
   
   Is a genuinely good story that you won't forget worth a portion of that?
   
   Everyone's going to have a different answer. Sometimes though it's nice to have an experience which sits apart from those same experiences you have every day. If you can keep an open mind and approach this as an interactive book, if you can put your intellect before your fear of the unfamiliar, if you can do that? Then I promise you, you'll have a good time.
   
   If anything, a good story is the measure of the quality of a person, as a good story will stay with you for the longest time. A good story will leave you pondering the unspoken but implied truths, it will have you read between the lines, and it will make you live in the Universe it's weaved for you.
   
   Some people just want stabby-stabby or shooty-shooty. This game isn't for them in the same way that Pan's Labyrinth wasn't meant for Michael Bay fans. It's not for raging homophobes either who see everything containing homosexuality as some kind of gay agenda, out to gayify their friends and children, which accounts for the vast majority of the negative reviewers.
   
   I've spent a lot of time picking apart the opinions of those who have such a passionate hatred for Gone Home and it ultimately comes down to 'this should have been a game about a straight romance.' It's all sexual insecurities, because a nontrivial amount of gaming men feel frightened, even terrified, by empowered women. I'm very much reminded of the "But I'm a nice guy!" video. (Google it if you haven't seen it.) Consider just how worryingly desperate some are to down-vote reviews pointing this out, it should tell you everything you need to know.
   
   I don't think a person's sexual insecurities should be used to score a game, and they should be able to recognise their own biases based upon them. If a game plays on their sexual insecurities, that means they need counselling. It's not a negative statement about the game. (To the contrary, honestly.) So it's not for them.
   
   Ultimately, I see Gone Home as a metric for the quality of a person as a whole, and it can be used as such. Gone Home will show whether a person is able to enjoy a good, emotionally mature story or not. And it will also tell you whether someone has sexual security issues. Some people won't measure up, some will. As such, maybe this game is for you, or maybe it isn't. It was definitely for me.… Expand

   • 2 of 11 users found this helpful
3. guydudebro

   Aug 21, 2013

   9

   This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Sure are a lot of haters on here. First of all, this is most definitely a game. It's a linear game for sure, but it's still a game, and a great one at that. What's the difference between this and most adventure games? You click on or interact with every object you can find until something fits your puzzle and you move on. This game is no different in that aspect. Where it obviously differs is its narrative method, where it succeeds in conveying a unique (for videogames, anyway) and engaging story. The game does a fantastic job of capturing what it would really feel like to come home to a large, empty house for the first time. I think about how I would adapt this game in another medium. The book, and now film, "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" immediately comes to mind, as it is similarly a teenager's coming-of-age story set in the 90s, where the main story is told through letters (or journal entries in Gone Home). However, neither a film or a book would ever be able to capture the feeling of walking down an unlit hallway in search of a light switch, uncovering clues about how great of a student and athlete you were in high school compared to your sister, stumbling across details about your parents' strained marriage, or even just a walking through the greenhouse at night while the rain falls outside, punctuated by an occasional clap of thunder. This game was truly one of the most unique emotional experiences I have ever experienced in medium. The only thing I found a bit far-fetched was how everything was just strewn about the house like that, especially Sam's stuff. She had notes of paper in practically every single nook and cranny in that gigantic house. The mother also did poor job of hiding her affair. Also, the $20 price tag is a bit steep for this game. $10 bucks would've been the perfect price for this type of game. My suggestion for anyone wanting to play this game is to wait for a sale.… Expand

   • 3 of 11 users found this helpful
4. Drowkin

   Aug 23, 2013

   4

   As a storytelling experimentation, Gone Home hits the spot and hits it hard. The game feels interesting enough to drive you to go forward and learn what's been going on in your new house while you left. And every piece fits right into place. The 90's atmosphere is incredibly well rendered, and anybody who grew up in these times will smile at the VHS, audio tapes, old TVs, and overall looks of the house. The attention to detail is there, and is part of what compels the player to hear the whole story.
   
   But let's face it As a game in the strict sense of the term... Well, Gone Home is simply not a game. It's a VERY SHORT interactive story, that might be of interest to 15 years old girls.
   
   Video games are at a turning point, the indie market has grown, huge and mature, and I am the first one to rejoice at that fact. But Gone Home falls flat on his face when it comes to telling an interesting story. The ending is nothing more than pure disappointment, leaving me behind my screen, thinking "What That is all Am I supposed to feel something right now I had absolutely no sense of accomplishment when I got to the end of the story. No last minute twist, nothing sad, nothing happy. Just a big nothing.
   
   This game represents everything that is both good and bad about experimental storytelling. Its puzzle-driven narrative and great atmosphere makes you want to go deeper into the story... But it's shortcomings and lack of interactivity makes you wonder why is this a game and not an audio book. As part of a bigger game, it would have been incredible. Imagine that instead of having a cutscene that just unfoils the story to you, you would have to explore, read, listen, solve (easy) puzzles and just be attentive to what's going on around you.
   
   What I don't understand is how can a serious reviewer give this "game" a 9/10 or 10/10 The 7th Guest, the 11th Hour, Beneath a Steel Sky, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max... There are so many great adventure/puzzle games that manage to deliver a good story, and that actually make you feel like you accomplished something at the end, that I don't understand why Gone Home is apparently deserving of such high scores from the "professional" critics. Ironically, all these games are from... The 90's.
   
   Gone Home is simply an experiment in storytelling. Like many games are trying to do nowadays: Convincing people that the video game can be a great media to tell a good story. But Gone Home is very far from being the most interesting one.… Expand

   • 11 of 18 users found this helpful
5. Mr_Fake_Leather

   Aug 19, 2013

   2

   Gone Home has a big twist,, well no, not really, think of the first halo, now imagine that instead of having aliens on the box and in the reviews they kept that secret.
   Gone Home "twist comes less than 10 minutes into the games so if you want to know why this games such a big deal you might just want read a spoiler and see the rather shallow reason for a lot of this games positive reception.
   There are no real puzzles, sometimes you collect a key and the game tells you were to go on the map to use it.
   The rest of the time you just walk from room to room and pick up highlighted objects to unlock audio diary's,
   Sometimes your need to place a tape in a tape player but that's about as complex as it gets, there little to it passed that.
   The games story is of course it's big selling point and since the game is being sold as something you have to come into with no knowledge of, I can't talk about it without it being seen as a spoiler.
   What I will say is if this story were told in any other medium it would be a total non event.
   There's little to it and you can guess most of it before your halfway done.
   Overall I can't recommend Gone Home to anyone but the most hardcore fans of the quirky, the story while rare in games is uninspired and shallow and there's hardly any gameplay to it.… Expand

   • 26 of 47 users found this helpful
6. multibear

   Aug 25, 2013

   1

   £15 is not a justifiable price for a 90 minute long adventure game which offers so little. This title wouldn't have measured up in innovation,, craftsmanship or storytelling to other games 15-20 years ago, let alone today. The interaction is limited and poor, the puzzles are nonexistent, the story is preachy and the linearity is so forced that you might as well be on rails. I understand that many gamers are insecure and defensive about having their medium validated as an artform, but this can be achieved without promoting mediocrity.… Expand

   • 8 of 18 users found this helpful
7. deadspacer47

   Oct 2, 2013

   0

   all you do is walk,pick up something that you don't do with or listen to the bull**** the girl says from the stupid papers and documents
   SIMPLY this game is shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeet… Expand

   • 2 of 7 users found this helpful

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