(Spoilers, bloody hundreds of em!)
With the 90's being the next logical step for music and fashion (oh god I feel old!) earlier this year the fullbright company released a game with so many 90's music, fashion and pop culture references crammed in it's like being hit repeatedly in the face with a friends, x-files, Nirvana box set combo!
This is less a game and more a quick stroll through someone else's house with the lights out.
Your presented with the story of a young girl . She is struggling with being young, in high school and discovering gay in the mid 90's. This is drip-fed in the form of diary entries, tapes and lots and lots scrape paper scattered around the place for you to find. Imagine if you will taking that file most people keep with invoices, receipts and other important paperwork, shredding it, loading it into a leaf blower and walking around your home spraying the contents liberally as you go, because there are scraps everywhere, there in the cupboards, the cellar and even inside the walls!
It all starts off well, the atmosphere is heavy with suspense and intrigue, why are your parents not here to meet you? where is your sister? with the amount of physical evidence scattered around the place how come no one cottoned on that sis has been having school issues?
The problem I have with this game is that it feels like a single level from a much larger title. It really reminds me of the "Ghost at midnight" level from vampire bloodlines- from a game released in 2004, this stand alone mission took all your weapons away and had you explore a haunted hotel, in the dark, picking up diary scrapes and news paper clippings hidden in the rooms and walls. Just take look at the screen shots bellow.
The whole thing is a stretched out hidden object game that has a tacked on story about a lesbian couple I didn't care about as you get very little to care about, who are they? what are their loves, their hates or fears? It is of comparable quality to that of a point romance novel....hang on! now that I come to think about it, could that actually be part of the 90's theme as well? The point romance books were big in the 90's....so I've been told....moving on...
This game was critically acclaimed and lots of people seem to love it for it's 90's themes, relationship drama and fo supernatural sub plot. I don't hate it, it has some really well paced story elements, the constant storm out side the house really feels oppressive and sinister and the VHS tapes labelled X-files and other supernatural or sci-fi movies and TV shows bring back lots of memories of my teen years. But it's all just so forced and exploitative - this could be set any time period from the 50's to 2015, the 90's theme feels gimmicky and put in to invoke nostalgia so we look past the writing and game length. The teen romance between two lesbian high school girls also feels a little flimsy, you never get to know much about Sam or her girlfriend and the whole bullying at school and the parental indifference is just brushed over- you never really feel their hurt or suffering at the hands of a bigoted society, and the "oh yeah, so the girlfriend is in the army and has to go to war" plot device to separate these star crossed lovers was a bit of a slap in the face.
It all starts off well, the atmosphere is heavy with suspense and intrigue, why are your parents not here to meet you? where is your sister? with the amount of physical evidence scattered around the place how come no one cottoned on that sis has been having school issues?
The problem I have with this game is that it feels like a single level from a much larger title. It really reminds me of the "Ghost at midnight" level from vampire bloodlines- from a game released in 2004, this stand alone mission took all your weapons away and had you explore a haunted hotel, in the dark, picking up diary scrapes and news paper clippings hidden in the rooms and walls. Just take look at the screen shots bellow.
Vampire bloodlines "ghost at midnight" level
Gone Home
Vampire bloodline "ghost at midnight"
Gone Home
The whole thing is a stretched out hidden object game that has a tacked on story about a lesbian couple I didn't care about as you get very little to care about, who are they? what are their loves, their hates or fears? It is of comparable quality to that of a point romance novel....hang on! now that I come to think about it, could that actually be part of the 90's theme as well? The point romance books were big in the 90's....so I've been told....moving on...
This game was critically acclaimed and lots of people seem to love it for it's 90's themes, relationship drama and fo supernatural sub plot. I don't hate it, it has some really well paced story elements, the constant storm out side the house really feels oppressive and sinister and the VHS tapes labelled X-files and other supernatural or sci-fi movies and TV shows bring back lots of memories of my teen years. But it's all just so forced and exploitative - this could be set any time period from the 50's to 2015, the 90's theme feels gimmicky and put in to invoke nostalgia so we look past the writing and game length. The teen romance between two lesbian high school girls also feels a little flimsy, you never get to know much about Sam or her girlfriend and the whole bullying at school and the parental indifference is just brushed over- you never really feel their hurt or suffering at the hands of a bigoted society, and the "oh yeah, so the girlfriend is in the army and has to go to war" plot device to separate these star crossed lovers was a bit of a slap in the face.
The parents marital problems are also fairly shallow and the whole thing feels like a cheap paperback novel rather than an adult relationship on the rocks....hang on! the father does write cheap sci-fi so once again maybe this is what they were going for....possibly.
All in all this is soap opera level writing, with a ghost story with a ghost you never see (however "The haunting" this is most certainly not- that 1963 movie was a master class in not showing you any ghost but still scaring the hell out of you anyway with just the idea of them) and a pay off that really feels like a con instead of the ending you were hoping for. Is it wrong that I wanted the lovers dead in a twin teen suicide in the attic or a fade to black and a scream? instead I got a limp bit of voice over work while I read the last entry in a runaways diary. So Dawson's creek .....hang on!...Dawson's creek was big in the....oh forget it.
All in all this is soap opera level writing, with a ghost story with a ghost you never see (however "The haunting" this is most certainly not- that 1963 movie was a master class in not showing you any ghost but still scaring the hell out of you anyway with just the idea of them) and a pay off that really feels like a con instead of the ending you were hoping for. Is it wrong that I wanted the lovers dead in a twin teen suicide in the attic or a fade to black and a scream? instead I got a limp bit of voice over work while I read the last entry in a runaways diary. So Dawson's creek .....hang on!...Dawson's creek was big in the....oh forget it.
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