Gone Home
So let me clarify my last post.

My original issue of the game was, as I said, how it was marketed.  As in, I feel like it was being pushed as some sort of Amnesia-like horror based on the trailer and description.  I also feel like a game of that nature, especially for the short gameplay time, was not worth the $20 dollar price tag.

That aside, lets start with the positives.

Gone Home looks really nice.  It’s filled with a ton of detail.  Most objects in the house feel individual.  Magazines, books, records, many of them have their own titles and textures.  And many more objects are fully examinable.  Bonus points for playing on my 90’s nostalgia.  Seeing how labels used to be, tape cases, blank tapes, AV cables, so many tiny details.  It has many video display options, and with my crappy computer I managed high settings just fine.  The menu system was well laid out, the save system made returning to the game easy, and it offered various start up features to make things easier or as they were intended.

Gameplay wise, I can’t really use the word “game”play.  Gone Home is about exploring and minor puzzle solving.  The only way to lose is to not explore enough or look at enough stuff.  So you can’t really call Gone Home a video game.  However, that by no means Gone Home isn’t good at what it actually is:

An interactive story.

Interactive media in that form is very unexplored.  The closest thing we have is adventure games, or those old interactive book CD roms.  Gone Home seems to combine these factors into a fully interactive 3D story.  You can freely move about most of the house from the beginning.  There are a few unlockables and shortcuts, but nothing hard to come by. Every room has many intractable objects from stuff related to the plot, to random previously mentioned 90’s throwbacks.

The examine system is simple and fun to use.  The textures are well detailed and easy to read.  Sam’s handwriting looks almost exactly like my horrible own handwriting, so I was actually able to read the handwritten stuff.

The story not only covered little details of the main characters, but a few of the side characters as well.  Most people mentioned in the story have some sort of depth that’s gradually touched upon by examining household items.

All in all, if you like exploration games, you’ll enjoy rummaging through that family’s giant house and uncovering the story and sub-stories.

Now for the bad.

As I said, I felt the game was marketed all wrong. And that sentiment carries into the game itself.  The game takes place in a giant empty house during a thunderstorm.  The perfect horror setting.  And there are subtle references to creepy things.  I felt like this didn’t do a thing for the story.  The story could have taken place during the day and it wouldn’t have made that huge of a difference.

Having to go through the dark house having to find lights became annoying in the darker areas, where it would normally have built tension in a horror game.  It was kind of like if you were playing Mario and the screen became dim for no reason.  It made uncovering a couple things interesting, but the overall atmosphere could have been handled a lot better.

I found the story to be fairly bland.  Some people might say a lesbian love story is refreshing, but a love story is a love story.  I didn’t find it to be anything special in that regard.  It could have been about the main character’s sister running off with some boy and it would have had the same impact on me.  It’s by no means a -bad- story, just nothing I would go out of my way to read.

That being said, the presentation story is what I enjoyed most about the game.  It’s just a little sad the story was so lackluster.

Having explored everything, I still don’t think the game is worth $20, however, I am perfectly happy with the 5 or 6 dollars I did end up paying over it.

So, if you want to play this game, I would recommend it if you can get it on sale.  It’s definitely an interesting venture into the world of interactive stories.

Does it deserve the praise it gets?

Who knows.  Who cares really.

What will be interesting is if this inspires more stories presented like this.  Maybe interactive media will become a big thing.  Maybe videogames are actually just a subgenre of a sleeping giant - some new way to present a story and truly reach someone with your art.

Buy it. Just not for full price.