Horror: The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter

[J.R.S.S.]

Very interesting. First game in awhile that catches my eye. Perhaps even both.

[Paddy™]

Ashley Laurence from the Hellrasier movies is starring in the game:

http://theastrocrew.tumblr.com/post/9601...han-carter

[BAndrew]

I don't know if it will be scary, but I don't care because it is an awesome game!
I can't wait. I love detective stories.

[Cuyir]

Hrrm, didn't know this existed.

Really interesting career path from the people that made Bulletstorm lol.

[Tiger]

Yeah, doesn't seem like horror to me either, but it still looks like a really interesting game.

[Streetboat]

fuck yeah this looks great

[Paddy™]

You can vote for your preferred default crosshair setting on the dev blog:

http://theastrocrew.tumblr.com/post/9654...g-of-ethan

[Kappa048487127]

Do yourselves a favor, and don't pre-order it. Wait for reviews, or actual gameplay.

[Paddy™]

Fantastic game. Highly recommended. I would warn against playing the game before you get the patch though; there are a few bugs which might imped your progress. The Steam version is patched as of today, but the GOG version (which is the one I have) isn't. If you, too, have the GOG version, I advise you to wait. I had to replay a few sections because of game-breaking bugs, but the game is so good that I honestly didn't mind that much, it just kinda ruins the immersion a little.

The game feels like new territory. I'm sure it's not the first game to have these kinds of mechanics (in fact, the scene in Penumbra where you have to rearrange the objects in a room to match its original state is very similar to the murder recreations in Carter), but there's something about this game that feels like a consistently "new" kind of experience. It's hard to describe, but it feels like it has rendered the last decade of video game history obsolete, much like Amnesia did when I first played it. And just as Amnesia made every other horror game seem like a warm turd, I expect Carter to make me even less tolerant of entrenched game design formulas than I already was.

Best £14.99 I've spent in a long time.

The end credits say "Special thanks to Thomas Grip (Frictional Games)"; I wonder what his contribution was. I do know that he and Adrian Chmielarz collaborated on the 4-Layer Narrative Design Approach, which is also being used for SOMA, but I wonder if he had a more direct hand in the development of Carter.

[Chrysler]

I started playing it yesterday for 2 hours but may need to restart from beginning because of bugs or me not understanding what I should do in the game, I don't know.

At first, I alt-tabbed out of the game and couldn't get in anymore, so I had to replay most of my progress because the last auto-save was very early in the game (and there is no manual save). Then later, I walked miles in the game without anything happening at all, until I realized I must have missed important parts but the game does not stop you from going further and further...

All in all, I'm not sure what to think of the game now, but I'll definitely give it a second chance and replay from beginning.