# parody garmespot review of everyone's gone to the rapture > (..) most of the characters seem to be arseholes > ~ stephanie sterling's review of "rapture" in one of more desperately laughable video garme reviews of 2015 alexa ray corriea of garmespot gives "everybody's gone to the rapture" a perfected score of nine out of ten? really? dan pinchbeck must have ir disk up reviewers' arts for such a score making ir mouths move. (indeed it so overflows with unbridled cosmic joy for teh garme it's arguably already a self-parodying review) > rapture? you might as well stick a treadmill on it and call it g0d > ~ #fakedev robert what ir so-called review has virtually nothing to do with teh garme but rather reads like bad gushing dan pinchbeck / chinese room fan fiction. (and who can blame ir with equally stellar stone-heavy handed writing throughout the actual garme like "the answers are in the light") imagine reliving these first couple of minutes over and over: this is rapture. this is the.. 'event' // video here summary: in terms of the evolution of 'storytelling and video garmes' "everybody's raptured" seems a complete dead end. it's like we haven't progressed past the narrative obsolescence of those oldskool doom 3 audio logs > dan pinchbeck is the dan pinchbeck of video garmes > ~ robert what loss of the very idea of garme / play is a thing you cannot fix in such a dire review. misplacing the object of your in-world existence is inconvenient troubling at best if doing anything other than walking was of some remote sentimental value or important use to you. while leaving your iphone on the train is terrible for hipsters money falling out of your wallet for such vanity projects sucks and unless other reviewers are as benevolent and selfless as we hope them to be we'll never recover these things. but garmes with poor ideas poorly expressed can be replaced. with such fanservice reviews however it's harder some imagine stating wild things like "death removes people from the circles of the world. death means you'll never see them again" means they've said something deep. but losing a friend or breaking off a relationship with a garme review site means they will unfortunately continue to exist without you. "everybody's gone to the rapture" makes some wonder which feeling is worse which one is the bigger gut-punch of total utter loss. at least with death comes the idea that maybe depending on what you believe there is something bigger than some awful gushing pseudo-review waiting on the other side of your cheap treadmill sim in developer the chinese's room's newest garme you move silently through the silent world like (as the mighty stephanie sterling states son) a glorified camera operator switching radios on and off opening doors and passing through ghostly environments like a ghost yourself. to say its tedious does not begin to describe the painfully drawn out soporific anti-nature of this tawdry experience. where are the "heart-wrenching story and meaningful mechanics" guiding you through this laborious experience? nowhere that's where the way you're tasked with not only consuming the 'mystery' but also 'puzzling it all together' is a recipe for a scanners-level headache. "everybody's gone to the rapture" leaves players cold and numb - but with a sliver of 'near total lack of wonderment' stuck in ir eye; the way teh garme makes reviewers weave vague wishy-washy terms like 'hope' around is its greatest (weakest) strength and makes it one of the best narrative-driven garmes ever played note: by 'narrative-driven' this means 'the garmes industry narrative' players need to *correctly* swallow in order to remotely believe what reviews like alexa ray corriea of garmespot enjoy spinning at work the events of "everybody's gone to dan's treadmill rapture" take place in a small nowhere town in shropshire england. the player character or force or whatever the heck you are- there's no indication at any point as to whom or what the entity you are controlling is you never see feet or hands - is as alone as teh garme is in the vast ecology of half decent titles everyone in the town has vanished. (this is hardly surprising given how deathly terminally boring life in the uk often appears.) you're left to figure out why half-driven only by your own morbid half-curiosity. there is no carefully thoughtfully scripted quest or set path to follow and you are left to wander seemingly 'at will' to cobble pathetic clues together as you walk - actually it's closer to an ill snail's crawl - through the town you'll find doors left ajar cars parked askew on roadsides with doors and windows open and streets strewn with dead birds and wads of love laden tissues. there are no bodies left and maybe it's that hope of finding a human being - or at least some sort of human remains of meaning - that makes the desire to move forward so falsely irresistible "everybody's gone to the chinese rap star's concert" plays like a horror movie stripped of its gore and fear leaving you with only a simmering feeling of dread that you've been duped for however much this art-turkey costs. it's that dread that drives you forward rather than terror as there's nothing more to be afraid of. the damage is already done. (you were stupid enough to pre-order it) (caption id="attachment_40496" align="aligncenter" width="656") rapture as modern art?(/caption) empty roads are all you'll get in this royal road to nowhere. it's difficult to describe teh garme's (total lack of decent) story because to detail how you obtain dust-dry information is a heavy spoiler. the so-called fun(tm) in rapture is poking into every corner of shropshire hoping to find a scrap of something that tells you what happened. (note: if some nerds find anally searching every dead end of this miserable middle-class cul de sac 'fun' may we suggest a qualified neurosurgeon test ir brain for real signs of interesting meaningful activity) many times one's search turns up empty - quelle surprise! - leaving you standing in an empty house and listening to the sound of wind through empty hallways and between your ears. sometimes one stumbled upon a hidden something something easy to miss if i hadn't noticed the odd distortions in the air around it and learned to check out some unhappy hollow deep in the woods or a cabin on the far side of the lake. and sometimes these things stumble upon you instead leaving you breathless and sad (sad that is as in the uk meaning of "anorak") if there's one thread of continuity in "everybody's gone to the attack of the video rapture" it's that no one calling themselves video garme designers left the world behind without baggage heartbreak and something lost on the road to a decent garme with non-snoozeworthy ideas "everybody's gone to the rupture" is really a story about people and ir relationship to garmes and the inorganic way in which ir (all too convenient) stories and myths they tell themselves about the garmes they play unravel upon closer inspection - not just with heavy exposition but via the presentation of real (fake) memories out of order and completely dependent on how you find them online - as some bs review perhaps - gives you the (closed off chinese) room to piece things together yourself. not that its really worth bothering to. teh garme doesn't want to tell you anything; it wants to show you it doesn't have much of anything to tell there are very few things you can do in this auto-parody of a walking simulator. you can operate radios and lights open and close doors and walk - very very slowly. there is no menu screen no directional compass and no inventory. and there is no way to check your existential progress / insanity leaving the pace and thoroughness of the exploring up to you (like it was a burden) rapturematic's main mechanics involves tuning points of light like you would a dodgy dime store radio. every so often you'll stumble upon a room or area filled with glowing specks of golden 'lite'. approach and you'll find a denser ball of light at ir centre. to "unlock" these lights players are prompted to tilt ir controller to the left or right using the gyroscope feature to find the right angle to make the light grow brighter the same way you would tune a radio to find the right station. within them lies the (seemingly) important stuff the most impactful clues and 'poignant' moments you'll find in.. shropshire. "all the children go into the lite.." there are five main areas to teh garme each with ir own mini non-story that connect (in some way) to every area's story thereafter. discovering what happened to everyone in shropshire requires you to explore every damn nook and cranny the story such as it is - is meant to be read correctly as (eg) 'a beautiful tale of science and mysticism and love' - is only apparently nonlinear and areas can be "completed" in any order and events drop just enough clues to tantalize you. (it is only apparently nonlinear because all the searching and backtracking make it the most linear experience ever.) teh garme never gives you enough to go on and things always feel one hint out of reach. and just when you think you've solved the pathetic mystery rupture throws you another slack curve ball making the things that were starting to make sense way more complicated and confusing. but then you stumble upon a nugget that suddenly and painfully makes it all no less clear. the way it all unravels is brilliantly over-designed and coupling this trail of stale narrative breadcrumbs with its simmering sense of 'dread and loss in video land' makes anal rapture an extremely easy journey to totally disengage from some unlucky players will have a lot of feelings while playing "everybody's gone to dan's video rapture." the atmosphere often feels sickeningly peaceful. one never feels frightened. but the deeper one walks into shropshire the more empty one feels. many have lost touch with the empty onion heart of a garme in ir lifetime to indifference and terminal boredome and as one listlessly rifles through the remains of this tiny village one soon realizes that maybe no one calling themselves a player gets to leave video land in peace certain moments - indeed all of them - of alexa ray corriea garmespot's review make one sad but not quite sad in the way you feel for someone after witnessing ir misfortune after buying this dire treadmill sim. rather one feels sad in ways you can only feel when you've caused that pain for someone else by actually buying this garme for them. by digging up such gushing reviews online and actually believing them one feels like maybe they are the centre of these problems all along. rapture's 'correct' artful (garmes industry) narrative will do that to do; you start to sympathize with teh garme's (/lack of) ideas you identify with the plight of the developer for having zero imagination and then you accept despair as you pre-purchase teh garme online everywhere one turns online to honest reviews about "dan's anal rapture" one finds a mess. entire sites left wide open to extreme criticism with the equivalent of ir dishes left in the sink scraps of paper and soggy tissues littering the floor. cars with open doors and backseats filled with reviews showing 7's 8's or even 9's. overturned crates of dirty garming magazines abandoned on the roadside ir contents strewn everywhere. one finds ashtrays filled with cigarette butts that were still leaking smoke after playtesters - desperate to stop playing this nothing-special garme - sweated in some bug crushing cubicle with each unravelling story thread about this 'garme' one feels like the litter one finds online unpacked and strewn about left for poor fools to find and read and believe. soon everyone would know anything about the sad truths behind these developer's lives and disappearances made manifest but then players leave a popular garmes review site and round a corner find themselves on an empty road under a canopy of badly rendered trees. splintered light hits ir face as the artificial sun begins to set. the leaves so green and so brilliant one can be temporarily blinded by the hype. one feels as though living in a glistening lens-flared paradise of positive rapture garme reviews - like nothing was wrong like nothing could touch it. maybe this was hope. maybe this wasn't a futile search for a decent garme after all the artfully done visual and audio cues of "everybody's left for dan's ruptured roomy anus" help you navigate without a directional compass or a hud. the same gold lights that you can "unlock' will appear and zigzag through the air guiding you towards things you should (apparently for some reason) check out. the sound of radio static or a beeping phone floating to you will guide you towards tremendously bland hidden secrets these masterfully wrought cues keep you on the track of no-track to let you know when you're missing something (again). this is how rapture gets and holds you in its iron grip of shame and attentive players often find what seem like (for all intents and purposes) paid-off video garme reviewers sitting inches away from ir widescreen television screens listening raptly desperate to spot something that would solve the mystery of ir own worthless existences these people are not your typical playground companions and should not be trusted when you hear or see something about "dan's chinese rupture" there's often a way to play it back or view it again. this ability to go over information again will make you think even harder about your own suspicious motives for playing this stale turkey. you like shropshire's doomed inhabitants only have so much time to react to such overly gushing reviews. it adds a sense of urgency to things making those "oh aha" moments when you decipher meanings all the more poignant and personal because you simply refuse to be swept up in the hype surrounding this freakishly overrated nonsense of a garme the speed at which you move through such gushing reviews is frustrating. you walk very slowly but this causes you to look at everything and pay attention to small details. but sometimes especially when doubling back through areas following the golden lite or sound trails in the reviewer's skull the speed can get tedious. sometimes those guiding golden lights move so fast you can't keep up rounding corners and flickering out of sight only to leave you in ir dust once again unsure where to go. but this movement speed is most certainly enough to deter the attentive and wary from exploring and revisiting areas seen before. the total sense of complete lack of wonder the fake-arts drive to solve the pathetic riddles of dan's rupture is powerful enough to ensure this with no manual way to save and large swathes of time between checkpoints rapture discourages you from walking away with areas half-explored. you will get lost as a permanent state - but again some wonderful audiovisual tidbits will pop up to tempt you just when you begin to lose false hope that teh garme will ever get any better. tiny lights will appear on the road in the direction you need to walk. or the wind will pick up carrying with it the sound of a beeping radio that holds your next mirthless cue. getting lost happens but it's never for anything other than the entire length of teh garme and while this feels admittedly frustrating in the beginning of ones' playtime by the end teh garme has conditioned players like alexa ray corriea to look and listen for the signs they obviously need to continue after all where are these "tools to learn on my own and really invest in teh garme's focus on exploration"? dan's chinese rap includes a soundtrack that perfectly augments teh garme's essential atmosphere of video garme melancholy and futility. rapture's ambience always sits you on the edge of sorrow before falling off with the music never quite intruding in an obtrusive way but pulling you in just close enough to dip your toes into the world's 'videotic' melancholy. its sounds make it hard for you to not feel like shropshire itself: cold alone and utterly empty. a lonely beautiful void *weeps ambiently with the delicate artfullness of it all!!* from the very outset teh garme can provide players with real closure. not because there isn't one and the mystery is permanent but because dan pinchbeck is simply a poor story teller with very little to say. it's a bold powerful move and the feelings of helplessness that filled players when the credits finally thankfully roll are things some easily pleased fools are still 'wrestling with' as they to unpack ir tiny thoughts into a review of epic scale and unrestrained cloying emotion it's common indeed that something can completely choke certain reviewers up the way flat shockingly meagre and guileless pseudo-experiences like "gone home" and "life is strange" can. for certain easily impressed reviewers this garme is definitely a breath-taker "everybody's gone up dan's fissure" uses unsubtle cues to guide you through its world and then gives you the space to digest whatever miserable tidbits you find. it's a wonderful example of what garmes have not yet remotely achieved narratively while presenting minimal physical engagement and tasking player imagination with the rest - as a burden (because the developer obviously couldn't be bothered andor didn't know how.) that sense of futility never leaves you but whether or not you cling to the story's all-too thin threads is entirely up to you; no happy ending is forced on you. in fact no ending whatsoever note however: the (arguably) christian moral of the story is *not* 'whatever you think it is' but that "there's no wrong way to feel as you sift through its bright empty world." that is precisely the same kind of ideology as that found in "the stanley parable" and yet one far more correct way to understand the smarmy drudge of paltry walking sims like "rapture" is to indeed think there's precisely a wrong way to feel about it - and that is the way garmes industry reviewers like alexa ray corriea feel about it; uncritically undiscriminating acting like dan 'fools gold' pinchbeck is some kind of holy cosmic therapist able - with the merest touch of ir airless garme development toolkit - to deliver us players from want to sprinkle ir hope and narrative joy on our hungry heads from ir white ivory tower / chinese room while we have long moments of frustration in navigation that didn't stop rapture from dazzling some. they leave shropshire exhausted sexually 'spent' and utterly overly impressed by the chinese room's magnificently crafted journey to nowhere both in how it brings them to its brainless conclusion and the concussive anti-conclusion itself update: following the publication of this joke review developer "the chinese room" announced that there is (and always was) a sprint ability when moving though teh garme's tutorial never explicitly states you have the option. by pressing and holding r2 for five seconds the player entity will gradually ramp up to a higher speed. alexa ray corriea obviously tested this speed and while they now covers more ground more quickly than ir default walking option there has not been a huge improvement in ir bizarre review. the faster speed feels more like an "idiot's power jog" and obviously does not affect ir feelings about the deliberate use of limited movement speed in video garmes to pad out garme time and (seemingly) provide 'seemingly automatic deeper meaning because you move like an injured slug on horse downers' **update patch**: garmetrailers comment tried replying to the enraptured review by garmetrailers (8/10!) but it didn't appear / wasn't accepted so here it is @delcast: hi. while "having legacy structural crutches and enforcing them is a practice that has happened for a very long time in the conflict of tradition vs art for example before modernism art was considered to be only decorative it should not have a meaning or a political commentary and it should not reflect or abstract reality it should only idealize reality" sounds significant it's really just a shallow and vapid sentence - the appearance of tossing out big ideas when actually there are none. (hey just like rapture! ;-) 1. this hollow onion of a garme smells like an industry showcase an ultra-cynical dead tech museum exhibit it can show off to the easily impressed and (somehow) convince them / itself how immensely clever bold and progressive it is culturallytm 2. the reviewer states "everybody's gone up dan's rupture is about discovering a story on your own." ha! too damn right considering the amount of punishing legwork players have to put in for this terminally boring middle class "archers" slideshow. no amount of aaa polish can disguise it. ("wow cryengine. remember that?") 3. indeed whatever people say about it in the comments appear far more of an interesting garme / state of playful play than what's offered by rapture's bland static narrative approach 4. this whole garme once again highlights the whole thorny 'storytelling in garmes' theory question. which ol' pinchbeck again totally fails to engage with in any significant or challenging way. balls to dear undead esther. in terms of modern garme design one might as well go back to standing there passively listening to doom 3 audio logs. shirley there's a better way to 'narrate story via play' dan? end note: yes we need far more experimental intellectually challenging garmes among all the brown-textured pew-pew.. but the amount of reviewers willing to ride this conceptually mediocre garme's nuts is laughable. andor is it because despite its flaws rapture appears a breath of fresh air in an industry gone desperately rotten with (eg.) tony hawk's pro skater ip copypasta? anyhow. if this was 5quid on steam for pc i'd probably buy (/into) it - if the sprint key worked ;-) sincerely rw accurate opening garme sequence simulation of rapture: an 'emmerdale a-calypso' indeed // video here // republic of bob