ICO. Shadow of the Colossus. Heavy Rain. Journey. Many thought the entrance to the holy set of best games is one only available for Sony. They were wrong. Gone Home renders all of them obsolete. It is the first game to revolutionize everything. The first game to have this week's "best story ever told through a videogame" award. The first game to be the best PC game of all time. Gone Home is not just a game, it is art. Where to even begin with this masterpiece? I don't know how to describe its artsiness accurately. Art cannot be defined. Art is something that must be lived. It must be experienced.
Yes, perhaps that is the best way to describe it. Gone Home is not just a game like all that twitchy crap. It is an experience. It is close to books and movies unlike non-art games which are all bullcrap like Call of Duty. If you don't like or understand it, you are dumb and ugly and should go back to playing that instead.
What highlights Gone Home in an overcrowded market of great polished games is its innovation. Namely, it has a deep, realistic story about teenage love. To begin, a story so verisimilar is inherently better than those that involve silly imagination. Imagination is kiddy and not for artsy grown-ups like me and my mom. It's the opposite of art.
Anyway, such a theme and its realization are infinitely complex and emotional compared to any of the conformist, non-art games out there. If put against its own, divine kin, however, Gone Home stands out for its gloomy, mysterious atmosphere, something no other game had ever done before.
The game starts with a loading screen that lasts for a whole minute. This lets you get acquainted with the dark style. Afterwards, you are told something vague about the house you're arriving at and have to investigate, a blatant breakthrough in storytelling. Then, you will probably want to lower the graphics settings, since this game is made by TRUE artists, not some stupid Linux-loving, basement-dwelling coding monkeys. That's an additional 30 seconds given for you to reflect about the cues you were just given.
Gone Home consists of walking between various restrooms, opening cabinets and cardboard boxes that seem to be everywhere, turning on at least a billion lampshades, and looking at objects. Now, you might think this is like those kiddy Monkey Island or Phoenix Wright games. I used to like them before my brother showed me how childish they are. This is a much more realistic experience, and it does not cheat the player by forcing them to play. No, Gone Home is an experience. It's the next generation. It does not force you to do anything. It just has you roam the house by visiting rooms and looking at diary pages and toilet paper, sometimes both at once. Then you walk to the next room and do the same thing. You don't need thinking, you don't need skill. Just a handful of patience.
Swag YOLO unartsy idiots might try to say that the walking around is dull padding for a story that could best be realized in another medium. What those Call of Duty tinheads can't understand is that Gone Home is not a game about gameplay, it is a game about art. My brother told me art is having a mature story, such as teenage love. Engaging gameplay is not important for artistic representation. In fact, expressing yourself through things you believe people may find engaging is not art at all. TRUE art is angsty. It makes you feel sad and depressed. Walking around and looking at toilet paper is part of the gloomy atmosphere. That's how the gameplay is important. If you can't understand that, this game is too deep for you.
I can't say much else about the story without spoiling it, but I assure you it is good. Don't listen to the gun-waving rednecks saying it could be rewritten in a single paragraph. They are just mad because there are no guns or violence or terrorists and the game is better than whatever Call of Battleguns: Gore of Army they wasted their money on. Those people are nincompoops who unfortunately slipped through the unartsy US education system. Their opinion is always invalid and I hope they die miserably for their constant attempts at tarnishing the mature wave of art games, which are coming to show that games can be like books or movies and therefore be art.
The intriguing work that is this interactive piece of entertainment has no soundtrack other than ambiance. And by ambiance I mean rainstorm sound effect loop, not ambiance music like in Solstice: Quest for the Staff of Demnos. Heck, why am I even mentioning that awful game. Oh yes, for the terrible music ambiance. Again, all that is not laziness, it's all for the artsy, gloomy, dark atmosphere.
The graphics are also not lazy at all. There are no visible character animations whatsoever, but that is OK because it does not contradict the story, as you're alone and the game is first-person. The most moving thing you will ever see is a door or perhaps... Nah, just a door. Models and textures are reused everywhere. I think that is supposed to make the player feel familiarity? Not sure on that. I'm not very good at interpreting art yet.
You should finish Gone Home within 2 hours. Chances are that you forgot to look at the back of the right toilet paper, though, so you might want to go and look at everything again. The story won't have the same impact, but it could be a way of showing your respect for this wonderful game. I think? I don't know why people are replaying this. Not even I can understand that. Anyway, it sells for £14.99. That's not all that much. It's about 10 cents per minute of a mind-blowing experience of walking through hallways with no sound or character animation.
I know most of the cool creative people have already played this game, so if you were just converted from a bloodthirsty CoD player to the only other category, art game lover, you could wait for a sale or something.
I'd personally be quick, though. Get the allowance money you saved for the unartsy and kiddy Rayman Legends and throw it at this game that must have taken several decades to develop and is clearly going for a very small profit per sale.
10/10.
